Court Opinion

ID: 9621929
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:09:25.529341+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:11.383078
License: Public Domain

O’SCANNLAIN, Circuit Judge, dissenting:
After acknowledging that a Speedy Trial Act violation had occurred, the trial judge quite properly dismissed the indictment against Beau Lee Lewis without prejudice, weighing each factor the Act requires. Today, the court holds that the district court abused its discretion because it failed to calculate the precise number of days by which the Act was violated and that such failure “prevented it from accurately and carefully weighing the statutory factors provided by Congress.” Maj. Op. at 1176-77. Because I do not believe that any such requirement is imposed by the Act or by any of our precedents I respectfully dissent.
I
The Speedy Trial Act requires that a defendant’s trial begin within 70 days of his indictment, or the date of his first appearance before a judicial officer, whichever is later. 18 U.S.C. § 3161(c). Other provisions of the Act, however, provide exceptions under which certain delays may be excluded from this 70-day limit in appropriate circumstances. Id. § 3161(h). As the majority notes, in this case over two-and-a-half years elapsed between Lewis’s indictment and the date of his first trial, in which he was convicted. Lewis appealed, and in United States v. Lewis, 349 F.3d 1116 (9th Cir.2003) (per curiam) (“Lewis /”), we reversed his convictions, holding that the Speedy Trial Act had been violated because at least 117 days between Lewis’s indictment and his trial were not excludable under the Act. We remanded to the district court to determine whether to dismiss Lewis’s indictment with or without prejudice. Id. at 1121-22.
In Lewis I, Lewis had argued that the district court erred in finding that multiple portions of the delay between his indictment and trial were excludable under the Act. We held that the district court erred *1178in finding at least one of these periods excludable — the 117 days between January 13, 2000 and May 9, 2000, when the government’s pending motion to present a witness’s testimony non-sequentially was the sole basis for delay. Id. at 1120. As a consequence, we declined to reach the question of whether any other periods were excludable because such period alone was sufficient to establish a Speedy Trial Act violation. Id. at 1122 n. 9.
In this appeal, Lewis argues that on remand the district court was required to reach the other period contentions to determine whether to dismiss the indictment against him with or without prejudice under the guidance the Act provides, see 18 U.S.C. § 3162(a)(2), and the majority agrees. Such a conclusion not only contravenes the statute’s plain text, I suggest it transforms the statutory standard of review from abuse of discretion to de novo.
II
When a Speedy Trial Act violation has occurred, the court must determine whether to dismiss the indictment against the defendant with or without prejudice by “considering], among others, each of the following factors: the seriousness of the offense; the facts and circumstances of the case which led to dismissal; and the impact of a reprosecution on the administration of this chapter and on the administration of justice.” 18 U.S.C. § 3162(a)(2). I agree with the majority that the Supreme Court has explained that Congress intended “the presence or absence of prejudice to the defendant” to be a fourth factor relevant to this determination. United States v. Taylor, 487 U.S. 326, 334, 108 S.Ct. 2413, 101 L.Ed.2d 297 (1988). But the Act gives “neither remedy ... priority,” id. at 335, 108 S.Ct. 2413, and Congress has left the decision to dismiss with or without prejudice “to the guided discretion of the district court,” id. (emphasis added).
While § 3162(a)(2) provides a non-exclusive list of factors the district court may consider, it contains no express requirement that the court calculate the precise number of days that were or were not excludable under the Act before deciding whether to dismiss with or without prejudice, nor do our precedents set forth any such rule. The majority attempts to bridge this gap by noting that we have “recognized that ‘the sheer length of the period involved’ can weigh toward a dismissal with prejudice.” Maj. Op. at 1176-77 (quoting United States v. Clymer, 25 F.3d 824, 831-32 (9th Cir.1994)) (emphasis added). This observation is, of course, unassailable. A longer period of delay will weigh in favor of dismissal with prejudice in many, if not all cases. Yet § 3162(a)(2) enumerates other factors which a district court must consider, and our prior cases do not portend the rule the majority announces today, that a district court’s “failure to consider all improperly excluded periods” is enough to constitute an abuse of discretion in applying § 3162(a)(2). Maj. Op. at 1176-77.
Indeed, in Clymer we referred to the total number of days (excludable and non-excludable) between the defendant’s indictment and his trial in stating that the “sheer length” of this total period “weighted] heavily in favor of a dismissal with prejudice.” 25 F.3d at 831-32. But we expressly declined to make the distinction between excludable and nonexcludable days which the majority now determines is required. Rather, after holding that the Speedy Trial Act had been violated, we simply remanded to the district court without unnecessary further calculations. 25 F.3d at 832 (“Even giving the government the benefit of every doubt, about five months of this period was not excludable under the Act. Were we forced to decide how much of the delay is actually excluda-ble, we might conclude that the non-ex-*1179dudable delay is considerably more than that.”) (emphasis added). Thus, our decision in Clymer firmly supports the conclusion that § 3162(a)(2) does not require a calculation of the total number of excluda-ble and non-excludable days before a court may decide whether to dismiss with or without prejudice. As such, I believe the district court cannot abuse its discretion by failing to recite such calculations.
The majority notes that on remand, Lewis asked the district court to make specific findings as to whether each period of delay he challenged was excludable under the Act, Maj. Op. at 1176, and labels the district court’s failure to do so a “misconstruction of our mandate” in Lewis I, id. at 1176. But the trial judge made precisely such findings before Lewis’s first trial, deeming all such periods excludable. In Lewis I, we held that the district court erred with respect to one 117-day period, but we never implied that this error tainted its findings with respect to the other periods. As such, I do not believe it was necessary for the trial judge to reconstruct its prior work on remand. Indeed, such an exercise would be redundant. When Lewis requested that the district court reissue specific findings on these other periods, the court acknowledged its previous conclusions and declined to revisit them. I find nothing in the Speedy Trial Act or our decision in Lewis I to prohibit such a course of action.
Since § 3162(a)(2) does not require the calculation the majority demands, the next question is whether the district court abused its discretion in weighing the statutory factors.
Ill
A
Section 3162(a)(2) lists three factors, “among others,” which a court must consider in deciding whether to dismiss an indictment with or without prejudice, and the Supreme Court has held that prejudice is a fourth. Taylor, 487 U.S. at 334, 108 S.Ct. 2413. As I view the record in this case, the district court considered each of these factors at length. It first acknowledged that Lewis was prejudiced as a result of the delay. Specifically, the district court explained that Lewis lost the opportunity to be represented by the counsel of his choice when his first attorney withdrew to accept a position with the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Netherlands after the 117-day nonexcludable delay had occurred. The district court appropriately defined the right to one’s counsel of choice as. a “hallmark of our system of justice” and reasoned that Lewis’s loss weighed in favor of dismissal with prejudice.
And then it considered the other § 3162(a)(2) factors. As such, the district court examined the severity of the offenses with which Lewis was charged: one count of money laundering in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1956, two counts of conspiracy in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371, six counts of smuggling merchandise into the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 545, and nine counts of illegal importation and false labeling of wildlife in violation of 16 U.S.C. § 3372. Noting that a conspiracy requires the assistance of multiple parties, that the smuggling conduct with which Lewis was charged contravened international treaties, and that a high number of animals were involved in Lewis’s scheme, the district court determined that this combination of offenses was “serious” and that their severity weighed in favor of dismissal without prejudice.
Finally, the district court considered the third factor: the impact of a reprosecution on the administration of the Speedy Trial Act and the administration of justice. In reasoning that such factor weighed in favor of dismissal without prejudice, the district court noted two important facts: *1180First, Lewis was not incarcerated during the time of pretrial delay and, second, Lewis was charged with playing a central, rather than a peripheral, role in the crimes alleged.
B
The district court balanced the prejudice Lewis suffered against the consequences of reprosecution and the severity of his offenses and concluded that a dismissal without prejudice was the appropriate remedy. Based on the record before us, I cannot conclude that the district court abused its discretion in reaching such a decision. It considered each factor enumerated in § 3162(a)(2) with care. The offenses with which Lewis was charged, money laundering, conspiracy, smuggling, and illegal importation and false labeling of wildlife, are indeed serious offenses in their own right and are even more so when combined. In addition, it reasonably concluded that the consequences of reprosecution would not be severe. The district court was guided by Clymer, where we determined that the consequences of re-prosecution weighed in favor of dismissal with prejudice where the defendant was “incarcerated for the entire pretrial period.” 25 F.3d at 832. Lewis, on the other hand, has remained out of prison for the duration. The defendant in Clymer as a “relatively minor figure” in the criminal enterprise alleged in that case, id. at 826, whereas Lewis was charged as a central player here. In such circumstances, I believe the district court was well within its discretion to conclude that reprosecution would not conflict with the ends of justice.
Of course, the district court acknowledged that Lewis suffered prejudice from the loss of his counsel of choice and that this factor weighed in favor of dismissal with prejudice. Yet the majority seems to conclude that the district court’s failure to quantify the precise number of days which were not excludable under the Act caused it to undervalue the degree of prejudice Lewis suffered. I simply cannot discern what relevance this calculation would have had in the district court’s analysis. The prejudice Lewis suffered was a direct result of the 117-day delay. Whether or not other periods were also non-excludable would neither have added to nor subtracted from this harm. Without the 117-day delay, Lewis’s trial would have begun before the date his counsel departed.
While the loss of his first attorney is not the only prejudice Lewis, alleges (the general burden of an indictment looming over one’s head is not to be discounted), it is certainly his greatest. Because the addition of other non-excludable periods would not have added to this harm, I cannot conclude that the district court abused its discretion in failing to perform additional calculations, nor can I conclude that it abused its discretion in finding that the prejudice Lewis suffered was not so great as to overwhelm the minimal consequences of reprosecution and the severity of Lewis’s offenses.
Lewis was granted a continuance to allow his new counsel to prepare for trial. He was charged as a central figure in the commission of serious offenses, and was not incarcerated during the pre-trial delay. The district court explained as much in a reasoned decision, considering all factors required by § 3162(a)(2). In this area of the law, we do not engage in de novo review; I cannot conclude that the bounds of discretion were exceeded here.