Court Opinion

ID: 9698610
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:55:50.378025+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:42.193216
License: Public Domain

Douglas, J.,
dissenting: On October 8, 1978, the defendant, along with thirty or so others, was arrested. Five weeks later, he was found guilty in Hampton District Court. He immediately appealed to the superior court, but was not arraigned until more than a year later, January 2, 1980. To the extent that the State relies on the flood of Seabrook cases as a reason for the delay, I find the argument unpersuasive. On July 3, 1979, almost eight hundred Seabrook cases were dismissed, thereby clearing the docket of the backlog of cases dating from the 1,414 mass arrests in 1977.
When I dissented in State v. Dufield, 119 N.H. 28, 33, 398 A.2d 818, 821 (1979), I recommended a speedy trial rule. In doing so, I recognized an exception for “unusual docket congestion due to mass arrests.” Id. at 34, 398 A.2d at 822. But in this case, the docket crowding in Rockingham County had ended some six months before the defendant was arraigned. The defendant in this case requested no continuances that delayed the proceeding. In two cases companion to this defendant’s case, a different Trial Judge {Randall, J.) dismissed the cases for lack of a speedy trial. See State v. William Smith, S-137-79 and State v. Steven Birnbaum, S-195-79.
*92Even under Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514 (1972), this case should be dismissed to provide an incentive for improved case-processing:
“[U]nreasonable delay in run-of-the-mill criminal cases cannot be justified by simply asserting that the public resources provided by the State’s criminal-justice system are limited and that each case await its turn.”
Barker v. Wingo, supra at 538 (White, J., concurring).
Recently, the Chief Justice of the United States in his twelfth annual “State of the Judiciary” address to the American Bar Association in Houston, Texas, strongly supported speedy trial from the vantage point of society at large. Said Warren Burger:
“[T]he deterrent effect of swift and certain consequences: swift arrest, prompt trial, certain penalty and— at some point — finality of judgment”
would improve the criminal justice system. The National Law Journal, February 16, 1981, at 27, col. 1.
As this court said in State v. Cole, 118 N.H. 829, 831, 395 A.2d 189, 190 (1978):
“A delay of over fourteen months from the time of arrest to the time of trial is substantial, especially in a misdemeanor case such as this. . . . Even though he was free on bail during the delay, the defendant was constantly subject to call by the court. A person in such a situation is unable to lead a ‘normal life.’ . . . One of the basic reasons for the speedy trial right is ‘to minimize [the] anxiety and concern of the accused’.. . .”
(Citations omitted.) I find that rationale applicable to this case as well.
Accordingly, I dissent on the issue of speedy trial.