Court Opinion

ID: 9812205
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:37:59.113502+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:24:31.116803
License: Public Domain

MEYERS, J.,
filed a dissenting opinion.
The majority holds that a defendant must raise a speedy-trial claim in the trial court in order to preserve the issue for appellate review. The majority seems to *770be applying the rules of preservation to a right that is owed to the defendant even though preservation analysis is for error. Failure to request a speedy trial is not an error, thus there is nothing to preserve. If the defendant had requested a speedy trial and the request had been improperly denied then we may be dealing with error preservation, but that did not occur here.
We should not categorically say that a defendant cannot complain for the first time on appeal that he failed to get his constitutional right to a speedy trial. An appellant is certainly less likely to get relief if he waits until the point of appeal to raise the speedy-trial issue, but failure to raise the issue at trial does not in and of itself preclude an appellant from relief.1 The right to a speedy trial is not in the category of complaints that must be preserved under Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 33.1 by filing a request, objection, or motion in the trial court. Instead, it is waivable only and is not extinguished by inaction alone. There could be reasons that the defendant did not file a motion for a speedy trial and reasons that relief should be granted on appeal. Whether a defendant waived the right to a speedy trial must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis and waiver of the right should not be presumed unless the delay was caused by the defendant. Much like the right to a trial by jury, the record must affirmatively show that the right was consciously waived.
The record here does not reflect that the defendant waived his constitutional right to a speedy trial. The court of appeals erred in concluding that Appellant’s failure to file a motion for speedy trial or motion to dismiss the indictment for lack of a speedy trial precluded him from appellate review. Because preservation analysis is for error, not for the category of constitutional rights that belong to the defendant unless affirmatively waived, I respectfully dissent to the majority’s holding that a defendant must preserve his right to a speedy trial by raising the issue in the trial court.

. See Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514, 532, 92 S.Ct. 2182, 33 L.Ed.2d 101 (1972) ("We emphasize that failure to assert the right will make it difficult for a defendant to prove that he was denied a speedy trial.”)