Court Opinion

ID: 9458169
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:44:26.282333+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:39.530776
License: Public Domain

McGOWAN, Circuit Judge
(concurring separately):
I concur in the result and in Part I of Judge Tamm’s opinion. My failure to join in Part II does not derive from any lack of sympathy with its purposes, but from the following reasons:
1. The promulgation of a rule providing for automatic dismissal in the event a criminal charge is not tried within a certain period seems to me more appropriately to be a function of the Judicial Council of the Circuit. Any such rule should have the benefit of collective exploration and consideration by all the judges, and it should be embodied in a formal rule which has been carefully drafted. There are a number of contingencies which need to be covered with precision, over and above the mere proscription of trial after a certain elapsed time. The precedent in this regard represented by the set of rules issued by the Second Circuit on January 13, 1971 is highly relevant to the manner in which an appellate court should proceed in this area.
2. The Judicial Conference of the United States on October 29, 1971 approved, and transmitted to the Supreme Court, a proposed amendment to Rule 50(b) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure which in substance would require each district court to formulate a plan for the prompt disposition of criminal cases, which plan must include a fixed time limit within which the trial is to take place. A plan so formulated by the district court must be submitted for approval to a reviewing authority consisting of the Judicial Council of the Circuit and one judge of the district court. This reviewing authority, as well as the Judicial Conference of the United States, is given power to modify the plan at any time.
Thus there appears to have been a judgment by the Judicial Conference of the United States that the time limits on criminal trials should be fixed in the first instance by the district courts, subject to approval or modification by higher authority. There is obviously some merit in giving the district court, as the court most immediately affected, the opportunity of participating in the formulation of a limitation rule. Although it may be that an individual circuit should not feel disabled from acting at this time to propound such a rule, the question of whether to proceed in the face of the course of action initiated by the Judicial Conference is a factor to be considered by the Judicial Council.
3. The dimensions of the criminal case problem in the District Court of this Circuit will be substantially altered within a few months when, on August 1, *11281972, it loses jurisdiction over the serious D.C. Code felonies which it presently has. It may well be that, divested of that jurisdiction, and having only Federal Code crimes to contend with, a limiting period for the trial of criminal cases would be more nearly of the order of six months (as the Second Circuit has prescribed) than the one year which Judge Tamm contemplates. The judgment of the District Court itself on that score would be highly relevant.