Court Opinion

ID: 9753079
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 18:56:20.582321+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:29.358934
License: Public Domain

FERREN, Associate Judge,
with whom MACK and NEWMAN, Associate Judges, join, dissenting.
The majority acknowledges that “this case approaches the boundary” of unconstitutional delay. Ante at 1105. In my judgment, the majority strains — unconstitutionally — for affirmance.
I.
The plain facts are:
• Appellant was incarcerated in the D.C. Jail, unable to make a $2,500 bond, for the 25 months between arrest and trial. No other charges were pending, and appellant was not serving time for another offense. (A parole detainer relating to a previous conviction was lodged solely because of appellant’s arrest in this case; it was lifted 13 months after arrest.)
• Appellant persistently asserted his speedy trial rights, beginning 10 months after his arrest (seven months after indictment).
• Although appellant filed a motion to suppress his confession within a month after his indictment, the trial court elected not to hear it for 10 months until trial was set to begin and appellant had been incarcerated for 14 months.
*1108• The court granted appellant’s motion to suppress, triggering a government appeal to this court. The government subsequently moved to withdraw the appeal but waited five and a half months to do so after receiving the transcript of the suppression hearing. The total time required to note and withdraw the appeal was seven months. Trial did not begin for another four months.
• Once appellant had alerted the trial court and the prosecutor to his speedy trial concerns after 10 months had elapsed without progress — and four months remained before the scheduled hearing on the suppression motion — both the court and the prosecutor confronted an obvious Sixth Amendment problem: how to avoid unnecessary delay if the court were to grant defendant’s motion to suppress, and the government were to note an appeal, while the defendant remained incarcerated. Presumably, the trial court could (and I believe should) have advanced the date of the suppression hearing. Alternatively, once the later-scheduled hearing took place and, as a consequence, the government’s appeal went forward, the court could have granted appellant’s motion to reduce bond (since the parole detainer by then had been lifted), in order to eliminate prejudicial incarceration from the anticipated delay. In any event, the prosecutor could have expedited the government’s appeal. None of these happened. Indeed, the seven-month process from suppression hearing to withdrawal of the government’s appeal took much too long. If properly expedited, this process should have taken no more than three months, for by the majority’s own calculation, ante at 1096-1097, the government unaccountably delayed its appeal decision, after receiving the suppression hearing transcript, for at least four months. Accordingly, depending on whether the court should have advanced the date of the suppression hearing, the case should have been cleared for trial approximately 13 to 17 months after arrest.
• Finally, once the government moved to withdraw its appeal, the trial court promptly held a status hearing, even before this court’s mandate had issued. At that time, appellant again asserted his Sixth Amendment right. The trial court, however, deferred trial for another four months. One month should have sufficed. Thus, trial should have begun 14 to 18 months, not 25 months, after arrest. The unjustified delay while appellant remained incarcerated on the present charges alone — having persistently asserted his speedy trial rights beginning 10 months after arrest — violated the Sixth Amendment.
II.
Before elaborating the foregoing analysis, I believe it is important to note how the court system typically fails to perceive, prevent, and justly resolve speedy trial problems.
The trial court’s denial of a speedy trial motion is appealable only after conviction. United States v. MacDonald, 435 U.S. 850, 98 S.Ct. 1547, 56 L.Ed.2d 18 (1978) (MacDonald I). At that point, this court has only two choices: affirm the conviction or dismiss the indictment with prejudice. There is no intermediate sanction. Strunk v. United States, 412 U.S. 434, 440, 93 S.Ct. 2260, 2263, 37 L.Ed.2d 56 (1973); Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514, 522, 92 S.Ct. 2182, 2187, 33 L.Ed.2d 101 (1972). For this reason, appellate courts commonly tend to rationalize affirmance of speedy trial appeals, for the sake of preserving convictions in a congested court system, when any objective observer would find the result distorted beyond fair application of the Supreme Court’s criteria announced in Barker. As trial court backlogs increase, speedy trial protections decrease. Appellate judges become the agents of a public that wants to preserve convictions but is unwilling to finance an adequate, expeditious court system.
The problem, however, can be obviated by the trial courts, which typically — and unnecessarily — apply this same, all-or-noth*1109ing analysis before trial. As to each pretrial speedy trial motion, the courts usually decide between denying the motion altogether or (very rarely) dismissing the indictment or information with prejudice. Instead, trial courts should consider an intermediate approach pretrial, in order to prevent a Sixth Amendment dismissal or compromise (as in this case) posttrial.1
More specifically, instead of either denying a speedy trial motion or dismissing the indictment with prejudice, the trial court can respond to a defendant’s assertion of the right, for example, by advancing the case on the trial calendar, or by advancing other pretrial proceedings, such as a motion to suppress, which could lead to further delay if the defendant eventually prevails and the government appeals pretrial (as in this case). If such expedition is not practical and “the sole wrong done by delay is ‘undue and oppressive incarceration prior to trial,’ the remedy ought to be release from pretrial confinement,” e.g., by reduction of bond, for a defendant (as in this case) who is not imprisoned for other offenses. Amsterdam, Speedy Criminal Trial: Rights and Remedied, 27 Stan.L. Rev. 525, 535 (1975) (citation and footnotes omitted). Alternatively, “if prolongation of the ‘anxiety’ and other vicissitudes ‘accompanying public accusation’ is sufficiently extensive, the remedy ought to be dismissal of the accusation without prejudice” to reprosecution.2 Id. (citation and footnotes omitted). Accordingly, the most drastic pretrial remedy, dismissal with prejudice, is not the only option when speedy trial concerns are imminent. The trial court can reserve the dismissal remedy for cases of inordinately long delays, of impaired defense (such as death of a defense witness), or of unconscionable prosecutorial delay warranting a severe sanction. Id. at 534-37.
Obviously, absent a practical ability to advance the trial date, such intermediate remedies can have significant impacts on the public if the accused is considered dangerous and/or likely to flee. But, for predictably dangerous defendants, pretrial detention without bail is available with — it is important to note — a statutory guarantee of trial within 60 days (subject to exceptions). D.C.Code § 23-1322 (1981 & Supp. 1984); United States v. Edwards, 430 A.2d 1321 (D.C.1981) (en banc), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 1022, 102 S.Ct. 1721, 72 L.Ed.2d 141 (1982). And, for all other incarcerated defendants who assert their speedy trial rights, the court should be expected to assess, under the circumstances presented, whether to advance the trial or to reduce bond to a more affordable level,3 in order to alleviate interim prejudice.
*1110Unless the public is willing to pay for an expeditious court system, the use of an intermediate pretrial remedy — e.g., a reduction of bond or a dismissal without prejudice — is surely preferable to what commonly happens now: denial of pretrial relief, followed by conviction and appeal, resulting either in an affirmance that compromises Sixth Amendment rights or in a dismissal of the indictment, with prejudice, because the speedy trial right, when asserted, has been ignored each step of the way.
With this background, I turn to the case before us.
III.
Appellant Graves, Alvin Poston, and Larry Brown were charged with first-degree murder/felony murder, first-degree burglary, and robbery. Although jointly indicted, each eventually received a separate trial.4
A.
(1)
As to appellant’s speedy trial claim, four time phases are identifiable. During Phase I (October 16, 1979 — August 11, 1980), his case proceeded in typical fashion: arrest and incarceration (10/16/79), parole detain-er lodged (10/18/79), $2,500 bond set (10/22/79), bond review motion denied (12/3/79), indictment (1/16/80), arraignment (1/30/80), filing of a motion to suppress statements (2/15/80), status hearings continued at government request (3/30/80, 4/7/80), and status hearing held (4/24/80) at which codefendant Brown’s case was severed and appellant’s. and codefendant Poston’s joint trial was scheduled for August 11,1980 — a period totaling ten months from the arrest.5
(2)
Speedy trial concerns developed during the next four months in Phase II (August 11, 1980 — December 11, 1980), when the government received three continuances over defense objection — one because the prosecutor was injured and unavailable, and two because police witnesses were unavailable. Trial eventually was set for December 11, 1980, fourteen months after arrest. Because more than a year had passed since the date of arrest, appellant presumptively had been denied his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial. Parks v. United States, 451 A.2d 591, 600 (D.C. 1982), cert. denied, 461 U.S. 945, 103 S.Ct. 2123, 77 L.Ed.2d 1303 (1983); Branch v. United States, 372 A.2d 998, 1000 (D.C. 1977). During this four-month period, moreover, appellant — who remained incarcerated — persistently had asserted his speedy trial rights in a variety of ways. He twice moved to dismiss the indictment for lack of prosecution (8/11/80, 9/3/80); he alternatively “assert[ed] our right to a speedy trial” (9/30/80); he then moved to dismiss for lack of a speedy trial (11/13/80); and, after the parole detainer had been lifted (11/21/80), he moved for reduction of bond (12/3/80). The court denied all motions.
(3)
On December 9, 1980, before trial was to begin at the outset of Phase III (December 11, 1980 — July 2, 1981), the trial court granted appellant’s motion (filed 2/15/80) *1111to suppress his confession. On December 12, the government announced its intention to appeal that ruling. Codefendant Po-ston’s case was therefore severed, and appellant’s trial was deferred. Appellant promptly moved once again for reduction of bond (12/16/80), which the court denied (1/13/81). In the meantime, the government had received the transcript of the suppression hearing (1/2/81) but did not file it in this court for almost four months (4/30/81). Nor did the government file a brief or ask this court to expedite the appeal, see D.C.Code § 23-104(e) (1981); D.C. App.R. 4 III,6 as we require unless the government is willing to have the pretrial appeal period count as a “significant” charge against the government for speedy trial purposes. Day v. United States, 390 A.2d 957, 969 & n. 6 (D.C.1978).
While the government was apparently doing nothing, appellant himself wrote a long, handwritten letter to the trial court (dated 4/8/81, mailed 4/14/81) “attempting to secure a fair and speedy trial” and complaining about the “still further delay” caused by the government’s appeal. Soon thereafter, defense counsel moved, again unsuccessfully, for reduction of bond and for dismissal on speedy trial grounds (4/27/81). Upon learning that the trial court had not received appellant’s letter, counsel forwarded a copy (5/21/81).
On June 12, 1981, the government moved this court to dismiss the appeal — six months after the appeal had been noted and five and a half months after the government had received the transcript of the suppression hearing. At a trial court status hearing on June 17, counsel announced his intention to file another speedy trial motion (since the trial court apparently treated appellant’s letter as a pro se motion and denied it). On June 19, this court dismissed the government’s appeal. Our mandate was issued on July 2, 1981— almost 21 months after the arrest.
(4)
On August 14, 1981, during Phase IV (July 2,1981 — November 5,1981), appellant again moved for a speedy trial dismissal. The trial court took the motion under advisement and deferred trial until October 28. After several continuances because of the trial court’s unavailability, the court denied appellant’s speedy trial motion on November 5, 1981, calling the ruling a “close one.” Trial began that day, almost 25 months after appellant’s arrest. Appellant had been incarcerated the entire time, including almost 12 months after the parole detainer had been lifted. Under the circumstances, Phase IV, like Phase III, constitutes a “significant” charge against the government, id., since it began 21 months after arrest, it followed significant delay during the government appeal, appellant once again asserted his speedy trial right, and the court failed to expedite.
B.
In applying the Supreme Court’s “balancing test, in which the conduct of both the prosecution and the defendant are weighed,” Barker, 407 U.S. at 530, 92 S.Ct. at 2192, we must consider four factors: “Length of delay, the reason for the delay, the defendant’s assertion of his right, and prejudice to the defendant.” Id.
On the facts here, there were 14 months of delay chargeable to the government by the end of Phase II, although it is so-called neutral, institutional delay attributable primarily to court congestion. See Parks, 451 A.2d at 601. Nonetheless, by the end of this period of more than a year, the burden had shifted to the government to disprove a speedy trial violation. See id. at 600; Branch, 372 A.2d at 1000. Indeed, by then appellant had asserted his speedy trial rights five times, in one form or another, over a four month period. See Miller v. United States, 479 A.2d 862, 866 (D.C.1984) (motion for release); Reese v. United *1112States, 467 A.2d 152, 159 (D.C.1983) (motions for bond reduction and dismissal); Parks, 451 A.2d at 601 (motions for review of conditions of release, advancement of trial date, and dismissal); Tribble v. United States, 447 A.2d 766, 770 (D.C.1982) (motion for bond reduction); Branch, 372 A.2d at 1002 (motion for release); United States v. Galloway, 164 U.S.App.D.C. 204, 209-10, 505 F.2d 311, 316-17 (1974) (motion for release). Furthermore, appellant was prejudiced by continuous incarceration. See Barker, 407 U.S. at 532-33, 92 S.Ct. at 2193.
On the other hand, the delay to date was excusable to some extent because of (1) the gravity and accompanying complexity of a multiple-defendant murder case (although, once severed, appellant’s trial took only three days), see id. at 531, 92 S.Ct. at 2192,7 and (2) the fact that, as to prejudice, appellant was subject to a parole detainer until virtually the end of Phase II, was a veteran of the criminal justice system with no manifest anxiety, and was not noticeably affected by the delay in the preparation of his defense. See Parks, 451 A.2d at 602-04. As of the 14-month end of Phase II, therefore, the government could sustain its burden of proving no speedy trial violation.
Phases III and IV — eleven additional months — are different. In the first place, “ ‘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.’ ” Day, 390 A.2d at 966 (quoting Hedgepeth v. United States, 124 U.S.App.D.C. 291, 294, 364 F.2d 684, 687 (1966)). Second, the government’s showing “must ‘convincingly outweigh’ the appellant’s assertions.” Id. at 970 (quoting United States v. Rucker, 150 U.S.App.D.C. 314, 316, 464 F.2d 823, 825 (1972)). Finally, these eleven months represent “significant” delay chargeable against the government, see id. at 969, because the prosecutor and the courts failed to expedite. As explained earlier, this entire period should have covered no more than four months— three months for the withdrawn appeal and one month until trial after remand.
By at least mid-January 1981, a month into Phase III, the prosecution had to be aware that its appeal of the pretrial suppression ruling was marginal. By then, too, the trial court was aware that appellant had continually been asserting his Sixth Amendment rights since mid-August 1980 and that the government had the burden of disproving a speedy trial violation. Because the prosecution and the court had not advanced the pretrial suppression hearing — a potentially costly mistake — they were confronted in mid-January by several critical facts: appellant’s continuous incarceration for 15 months; the lifting of his parole detainer in November 1980; two denied motions to reduce bond in December 1980 (one soon after the parole detainer had been lifted, the other four days after the government had announced its intention to appeal the suppression ruling); three denied motions to dismiss for want of prosecution or for lack of a speedy trial; and one denied motion "assertpng] our right to a speedy trial.”
Therefore, in order to remedy the presumptive Sixth Amendment violation, the prosecutor and the trial court had only two *1113options: (1) they could collaborate on a responsive intermediate sanction — bond reduction — to eliminate the principal prejudice, or (2) if still committed to appellant’s continued incarceration, but see supra note 3, they could keep the bond intact, and the prosecutor could see to it that the government appeal was expedited. Instead, while appellant remained incarcerated, the prosecutor and the courts took 11 months, of which seven were absolutely unjustifiable, to make the decision for withdrawal, to accomplish the remand, and to set the eventual trial date.
I believe a fair application of the Barker criteria inescapably leads to a conclusion that the government’s nonshowing in support of eleven months of “significant delay” (including seven that were absolutely unjustifiable) does not “convincingly outweigh” the persistently asserted speedy trial claim of this continuously incarcerated defendant/appellant.
IV.
The majority takes at least three major, unjustifiable shortcuts to reach its result.
A.
First, the majority minimizes appellant’s efforts to assert his speedy trial rights because he often moved to dismiss for lack of a speedy trial or for want of prosecution but never moved for a speedy trial. See ante at 1098. Significantly, the majority’s premise is not correct. On September 3, 1980, appellant both moved to dismiss for want of prosecution and, alternatively— and affirmatively — “assert[ed] our right to a speedy trial.” Only after the denial of that motion did appellant begin to seek the more severe, dismissal remedy on speedy trial grounds (11/30/80). As the delay got worse and worse, therefore, appellant’s four motions to dismiss between September 1980 and August 1981 were completely understandable and should have been construed, in fairness, to embrace requests for all lesser Sixth Amendment remedies. Commonwealth v. Gove, 366 Mass. 351, 363, 320 N.E.2d 900, 909 (1974) (“[W]e view the defendant’s motion to dismiss as the functional equivalent of a specific demand for speedy trial.... It is sufficiently emblematic of concern.”); see Cain v. Smith, 686 F.2d 374, 384 (6th Cir.1982).
Similarly, the majority’s response to appellant’s motions for bond review, an intermediate speedy trial remedy, is terribly wrong. The majority finds only a “minimal” assertion of the right, ante at 1099, and accords “little weight” to it, ante at despite the fact that the two bond review motions in December 1980 after the parole detainer had been lifted and again after the suppression ruling — and after appellant had been incarcerated for 14 months — were nicely tailored to appellant’s claimed prejudice from the delay: incarceration. See Miller, 479 A.2d at 866; Reese, 467 A.2d at 159; Parks, 451 A.2d at 601 & n. 21; Tribble, 447 A.2d at 770; Branch, 372 A.2d at 1002; Cain, 686 F.2d at 384; Amsterdam, supra, at 535. Again on April 27, 1981, appellant sought a bond reduction; again, he was denied; and again, a majority of this court fails to see the Sixth Amendment implications.
The majority accordingly belittles appellant’s persistent request for the minimum relief available (bond reduction), then ignores appellant’s early, affirmative request for a speedy trial (which was denied), and finally faults him for subsequently requesting only the maximum relief available (dismissal). That is simply reaching for a result — ineffective assertion of the right to a speedy trial — that the record obviously does not support. It is hard to imagine more persistence.
B.
The majority also unfairly makes light of appellant’s prejudice from incarceration. My colleagues first note Barkers summary of the three forms of prejudice from pretrial delay: “oppressive pretrial incarceration,” “anxiety and concern of the accused,” and “the possibility that the defense will be impaired.” 407 U.S. at 532, *111492 S.Ct. at 2193. They next point out the Court’s statement that, “[o]f these, the most serious is the last, because the inability of a defendant adequately to prepare his case skews the fairness of the entire system.” Id. Finally, they stress that appellant does not claim his 25 months in jail prejudiced preparation of his defense. Primarily for that reason the majority finds minimal prejudice.
The majority accordingly ignores the Supreme Court’s emphasis, both before and after Barker, on the prejudice inherent in pretrial incarceration and on the significance of such prejudice for Sixth Amendment claims. In United States v. Marion, 404 U.S. 307, 92 S.Ct. 455, 30 L.Ed.2d 468 (1971), the Court said that “the major evils protected against by the speedy trial guarantee exist quite apart from actual or possible prejudice to an accused’s defense.” Id. at 320, 92 S.Ct. at 463. More recently, the Court reaffirmed that language from Marion:
The Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial is thus not primarily intended to prevent prejudice to the defense caused by passage of time; that interest is protected primarily by the Due Process Clause and by statutes of limitations. The speedy trial guarantee is designed to minimize the possibility of lengthy incarceration prior to trial, to reduce the lesser, but nevertheless substantial, impairment of liberty imposed on an accused while released on bail, and to shorten the disruption of life caused by arrest and the presence of unresolved criminal charges.
United States v. MacDonald (MacDonald II), 456 U.S. 1, 8, 102 S.Ct. 1497, 1502, 71 L.Ed.2d 696 (1982) (emphasis added).
Although Marion and MacDonald II focused on preindictment delay and concluded that the relevant concern is Fifth Amendment due process, not the Sixth Amendment guarantee of a speedy trial, the analysis in those cases does not diminish the Court’s expression of Sixth Amendment values. Furthermore, if my colleagues in the majority are correct that Barker can be said to “subsume” within the Sixth Amendment a paramount due process concern for a fair trial without delay prejudicial to defense s preparation, see ante at 1102, this does not preclude a paramount Sixth Amendment concern for “minimizpng] the possibility of lengthy incarceration prior to trial.... ” MacDonald II, 456 U.S. at 8, 102 S.Ct. at 1502. In any event, however these three Supreme Court cases should be reconciled, a defendant’s incarceration — deprivation of liberty — is archetypical prejudice to which speedy trial guarantees are directed. Appellant was incarcerated for 25 months, of which 11 months were “significant” delay (and at least seven months were absolutely unjustifiable).8 The majority’s effort to diminish the impact of that deprivation because appellant “is single and had been unemployed for several years before his arrest in this case,” ante at 1105, is self-evidently absurd.
C.
Finally, citing Day, 390 A.2d at 970, the majority makes much of the fact that appellant did not press the government and this court to expedite the pretrial appeal. The majority again ignores the record. In Day, appellant did not assert his speedy trial claim until after this court had decided the government’s pretrial appeal (which had been delayed awaiting disposition of an appeal in another case). In contrast, appellant here asserted his speedy trial rights on four occasions before the suppression hearing and the government appeal. Moreover, unlike Day, this is not a case in which this court was effectively seized of a record, transcript, briefs, and argument. It would have been virtually pointless for appellant to have moved this court to expedite; ap*1115pellant could only effectively express his desire for expedition to the prosecutor. That desire was not a mystery while the prosecutor pondered what to do about the government appeal.
Furthermore, as soon as the government’s appeal was announced, appellant moved for a bond reduction. He did so again later, while the appeal was pending. These were wholly proper assertions of a Sixth Amendment right, specifically directed at the claimed prejudice. Appellant was ignored — both then and now.
Finally, while the appeal was pending, appellant also moved the trial court to dismiss on speedy trial grounds and even sent a personal letter to the trial court complaining of the delay. Technically, the motion, as well as appellant’s letter, should have been tailored instead for relief from this court, since the trial court temporarily lacked jurisdiction to entertain such a motion. But the real answer is not that appellant defaulted but that the prosecutor received still additional word that appellant desired the government to expedite its appeal, and that the trial court, knowing of appellant’s oft-expressed concerns, should have directed appellant and the prosecutor to this court, rather than leave it to us — after conviction — to say whether appellant really did, or did not, want expedition.
I cannot join in the majority’s hypertech-nical rationalizations to ignore appellant’s persistent course of action.9
V.
There is an obvious conflict between the public’s understandable desire to uphold the conviction of a murderer and this court’s obligation, as an independent branch of government, to protect constitutional rights on a consistent, principled basis. If this case had concerned only a robbery, I cannot help believing the result would have been different. The Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial, however, does not distinguish between murderers and robbers, no matter how much we may want it to do so.
Respectfully, therefore, I must dissent.

. As a noted commentator has written:
If ... the sixth amendment is to serve the limited function that it can serve to protect defendants against the several evils of oppressive trial delay, what is needed is the development of doctrines and procedures that effectuate other speedy-trial remedies than the remote, over-costly and hence grudgingly administered dismissal remedy. This development must begin with judicial recognition that there is more than one sixth amendment right to a speedy trial, and that the rights guaranteed by the sixth amendment against various consequences of trial delay call for differing forms of redress and measures of the permissible duration of criminal proceedings.
Amsterdam, Speedy Criminal Trial: Rights and Remedies, 27 Stan.L.Rev. 525, 541 (1975).

. See, e.g., Bethea v. United States, 395 A.2d 787 (D.C.1978) (high anxiety warranted dismissal of information against unincarcerated defendant who had no previous experience with criminal justice system and unsuccessfully asserted right to speedy trial of uncomplicated, petty offense).

.As noted in another context:
The right to bail ... is often illusory. It is true that “under our local bail provisions ... money bond may not be used to assure detention,” Villines v. United States, D.C.App., 312 A.2d 304, 306 (1973), and that bail accordingly "may be used only to prevent flight of the appellant or to assure his appearance for trial.” Jones v. United States, D.C.App., 347 A.2d 399, 401 (1975); accord, Villines, supra, 312 A.2d at 306; see D.C.Code 1973, § 23-1321(a). Nonetheless, even when not constitutionally excessive, bail in fact may be set too high for the accused to afford. See, e.g., Villines, supra, at 305. Not uncommonly, an accused remains incarcerated before trial for months because of an unaffordable right to bail, coupled with uncorrectable congestion in the *1110courts (it is said) and other systemic delays falling short of Sixth Amendment speedy trial violations. See, e.g., United States v. Calhoun, D.C.App., 363 A.2d 277, 278-82 (1976); United States v. Jones, D.C.App., 254 A.2d 412, 414 (1969).
United States v. Edwards, 430 A.2d 1321, 1355 n. 5 (D.C.1981) (en banc) (Ferren, J., concurring and dissenting), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 1022, 102 S.Ct. 1721, 72 L.Ed.2d 141 (1982).

. The facts underlying the arrests are related fully in Brown v. United States, 464 A.2d 120 (D.C.1983), where we affirmed the conviction of codefendant Brown. We also affirmed codefen-dant Poston’s conviction. Poston v. United States, No. 81-626 (D.C. July 16, 1982). Brown was tried within 17 months of arrest; Poston's trial began within 14 months. Neither presented a speedy trial claim on appeal.

. For purposes of evaluating appellant’s speedy trial claim, the pertinent time frame begins with arrest. Dillingham v. United States, 423 U.S. 64, 96 S.Ct. 303, 46 L.Ed.2d 205 (1975) (per curiam).

. Effective January 1, 1985, this rule was amended in respects not relevant here and renumbered D.C.App.R. 4(c).

. As to the reasons for delay, the Supreme Court has stressed the importance of "the peculiar circumstances of the case.” Barker, 407 U.S. at 530-31, 92 S.Ct. at 2192. For example, “the delay that can be tolerated for an ordinary street crime is considerably less than for a serious, complex conspiracy charge.” Id. at 531, 92 S.Ct. at 2192. This is not to say that the Sixth Amendment automatically permits a greater delay in trying accused murderers than in prosecuting alleged pickpockets. Rather, the Court said that the more grave and complex the offense, the more likely it is that the case will require protracted preparation and pretrial rulings which typically — and justifiably — take more time than prosecution of a simple misdemeanor. The gravity and complexity of multiple felony charges against several codefendants, for example, may weigh significantly in the government’s favor in its effort to disprove a speedy trial violation when a year or more has elapsed since arrest. But the government still must justify the delay — an increasing burden as time elapses — by reference to the "peculiar circumstances of the case,” id. at 530-31, 92 S.Ct. at 2192, not to the nature of the charges as such.

. Arguably, eleven months were absolutely unjustifiable, since the trial court should have advanced the suppression hearing once appellant asserted his speedy trial rights in August 1981. See supra Part I.

. Day is also distinguishable by the fact that appellant in that case did not claim prejudice from 321/» months of incarceration of which 18 were attributable to disposition of a government appeal. His only expressed concern — prejudice to defense preparation — was not established.