Court Opinion

ID: 9457386
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:20:16.020848+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:19.738387
License: Public Domain

*1124FAHY, Senior Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
I would reverse appellant’s conviction on the ground he was not afforded the speedy trial to which he was entitled under the Sixth Amendment. The offense occurred on March 1, 1967, when appellant was 18 years of age. He was arrested the next day but was not brought to trial until thirty months later, on September 3, 1969. Proof with respect to the attempted rape was an uncomplicated matter, involving only five Government witnesses.1 Obviously the trial was not speedy as a factual matter. Absent strong countervailing evidence this goes a long way toward establishing that the trial also was not speedy as a legal matter.
We held in McNeill v. United States, No. 21,570 (D.C.Cir. June 4, 1968) (unreported), that “the burden is on the Government, not the defense, to bring a case to trial.” Moreover, “the longer the time between arrest and trial, the heavier the burden of the Government in arguing that the right to a speedy trial has not been abridged.” Hedgepeth v. United States, 124 U.S.App.D.C. 291, 294, 364 F.2d 684, 687 (1966). When thirty months elapsed after arrest before trial of this simple case, the accused always having been available except for four months, the Government’s burden, it seems to me, was not met. Reliance upon a theory of silent acquiescence by appellant in the delay, because of other prosecutions against him, is not a discharge of the Government’s responsibility under McNeill and the Sixth Amendment. See also Coleman v. United States, 142 U.S.App.D.C. 402, 442 F.2d 150 (1971).
Delays caused by appellant’s trial counsel, of course, are different. McNeill v. United States, supra. In addition, some delays are unavoidable and must be accepted in the interests of public justice. See Beavers v. Haubert, 198 U.S. 77, 87, 25 S.Ct. 573, 49 L.Ed. 950 (1905). The only delays in this case which can in any sense be attributable to appellant, however, were the four months from October 1967 to February 1968 when appellant’s competency to stand trial was being investigated, and the delay of sixteen days from April 29 to May 15, 1969 to obtain a transcript, not earlier requested because, as stated by defense counsel, “there was a strong indication that the case would not go to trial.”2 Moreover, the four months consumed in the investigation of his competency cannot be entirely eliminated, for the passage of that time must also be taken into account by the Government in appraising its obligation timely to certify the case for trial.
The chief reason ascribed by the Government to justify the delay is that some eight months after the offense, during which of course appellant could have been tried, he became involved in other offenses for which he was tried. Thus, he was indicted in another case, Criminal No. 1409-67, on November 6, 1967, some six and one-half months after the indictment in the present case, on six counts of robbery and assault with a dangerous weapon. The counts of this indictment were severed to require three separate trials. *1125He was then tried on two of the counts ten months after the indictment, resulting in a mistrial. One month later he was acquitted on two counts; five and one-half months after this he was acquitted on two other counts; and four months later he was acquitted on the remaining two counts. He was also indicted in another case, Criminal No. 1447-67, on November 20, 1967.3 This indictment was dismissed six months later. Finally, December 4, 1967, seven and one-half months after the present indictment, he was indicted in still another sex case, Criminal No. 1506-67.4 *This case was tried in April 1968, resulting in a mistrial; nearly a year later, in January 1969, he was tried again in that case and acquitted.
To find now that it would have been oppressive of appellant and his court-appointed counsel for the Government to have certified this case for trial while the proceedings incident to the foregoing indictments were in progress, and that, therefore, he was not denied a speedy trial in this case, I think has neither factual nor legal support. Such a theory was never advanced by appellant or his counsel. It is wholly gratuitous. Far more oppressive was the choice of the Government to hold off trying this earlier offense while repeatedly and unsuccessfully seeking to convict him for other offenses in six separate trials. Had this case of earlier origin been tried and resulted as it later did in a conviction, it might well be that the other six trials, none of which resulted in convictions, would never have occurred. In any event appellant has been subjected to the extraordinary oppression incident to defending in six other trials prior to the trial in the case at bar two and one-half years after his arrest.
Four particular periods can be emphasized during which, appellant reasonably could have been tried for the present offense. First, he could have been tried during the period from March 1967, when he was arrested, to October 1967, when he was examined for mental competency. Secondly, appellant could have been tried on March 4, 1968. The Government had certified the case for trial on that date. It was already a year old. Appellant had been detained in custody since his mental examination on October 19, 1967, an examination which of course he had a right to request, and the court to grant, without forfeiting his right to a speedy trial. Nevertheless, the case was decertified by the Government for trial March 4, 1968, without a reason being given. Thirdly, he could have been tried between April 26, 1968 and July 10, 1968. During this period appellant moved to sever the counts in Criminal No. 1409-67 and to dismiss the indictment in Criminal No. 1447-67.5 Fourthly, I think the Government could have tried appellant for the instant offense on May 15, 1969. On April 17, 1969, the Government announced it was ready for trial, the case later being set for trial for April 29, 1969. Shortly before the date set for trial, however, appellant, claiming “that there was a strong indication that the case would not go to trial,” requested a delay until May 15, 1969, to obtain a preliminary hearing transcript.6 The further delay until Sep*1126tember 3, 1969, ordered by the court on April 28, 1969, probably due to the fact the complaining witness was out of the country and pregnant, is of course understandable, but it does not argue against appellant’s position that he was denied a speedy trial.
Judge MacKinnon questions the reasonableness of concluding that the Government should have certified appellant’s case for trial during any one of the four above-mentioned periods. P. 1121 n. 12 supra. The collateral factors advanced for this position, however, are not in my view such as relieved the Government of its own burden to bring this case to trial at any one of these opportunities. First, there is no indication in the record, nor a contention by the Government on this appeal, that the reason the case was decertified from the ready calendar on March 4, 1968, was because “the parties elected instead to get ready for and to try Criminal No. 1506-67 which was tried from April 23rd to the 26th, 1968.” P. 1121 n. 12 supra. Secondly, the fact that appellant requested a continuance on July 10, 1968, in Criminal No. 1409-67 — the counts of the indictment had been severed one and a half months earlier to require three separate trials— did not derogate from the Government’s responsibility to certify for trial the instant case between April 26 and July 10, 1968, when it had the opportunity. Thirdly, the request on May 7, 1969, for a continuance in Criminal No. 1409-67 does not indicate, as Judge MacKinnon says, that “the parties were treating Criminal No. 1409-67 as the next case for trial and there is nothing in the record to indicate they could get ready to try any other case.” P. 1121 n. 12 supra. To the contrary, the request of May 7 for a continuance in Criminal No. 1409-67 probably was occasioned by the earlier continuance of April 28 of the present case to September 3, 1969. The indications are that appellant would have been ready to try this case on May 15, 1969, after he obtained a preliminary hearing transcript.
It seems obvious from the whole course of events that the Government, after failing in each of the other trials, resorted to this substantially earlier case thirty months after appellant’s arrest not to avoid oppressiveness of him but to serve alone its own purposes, in disregard of appellant’s Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial. The delay was purposeful, lengthy, and oppressive. See United States v. Parrott, 248 F.Supp. 196, 203 (D.D.C.1965). It was also prejudicial if for no other reason than appellant was incarcerated for some 18 months, with the charge overshadowing him for thirty months. The Supreme Court recently has referred to “the important values implicit in the constitutional guarantee of a speedy trial.” Groppi v. Wisconsin, 400 U.S. 505, 510, 91 S.Ct. 490, 493, 27 L.Ed.2d 571 (1971), citing Klopfer v. North Carolina, 386 U.S. 213, 87 S.Ct. 988, 18 L.Ed.2d 1 (1967); Smith v. Hooey, 393 U.S. 374, 89 S.Ct. 575, 21 L.Ed.2d 607 (1969); and Dickey v. Florida, 398 U.S. 30, 39, 90 S.Ct. 1564, 26 L.Ed.2d 26 (1970) (Brennan, J., concurring). These cases are instructive of the Court’s solicitude to protect the right to a speedy trial, which it describes as “one of the most basic rights preserved by our Constitution.” Klopfer v. North Carolina, supra, 386 U.S. at 226, 87 S.Ct. at 995.
I respectfully dissent.

. The trial testimony was completed in two days, with the examination and cross-examination of witnesses covering 153 pages of the transcript.

. The District Court on February 26, 1969, said that it would dismiss the case “[u]n-less the Government gives written assurance within one month that it can produce the complaining witness for trial in April.”

. Carnal knowledge, robbery and assault with a dangerous weapon.

. Robbery, rape, assault with intent to rape, assault with a dangerous weapon.

 Both motions were granted by the District Court.

. Appellant’s counsel stated at the hearing on September 3, 1969, to dismiss the indictment for lack of a speedy trial, that “[t]he only delay which I requested * * * was that from April 29 until May 15.” He explained: “I was constrained at this time to ask for what I wanted was a brief continuance, long enough to get the preliminary hearing transcript. As it turned out, a much longer continuance was granted because at the time the complaining witness in this case was pregnant and it was not thought well to bring her over on a plane too close to her time of confinement.” The Government’s only response was that the delay until September 3, 1969 “was reasonable in view of the fact that the complainant was pregnant.” Moreover, *1126the Government states on this appeal that “because the complainant was expecting her second child during that summer, the case was continued until September 1969.”