Court Opinion

ID: 9883484
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 01:43:35.653418+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:23.751123
License: Public Domain

Benton, J.,
dissenting.
“[T]he right to a speedy trial is as fundamental as any of the rights secured by the Sixth Amendment.” Klopfer v. North Carolina, 386 U.S. 213, 223 (1967).
[I]t is the prosecution which has the responsibility of vindicating society’s interests in swift and certain justice; it is the prosecution which has the duty of implementing the constitutional guarantee of a speedy trial; it is the prosecution which has ready access to the data concerning delay attributable to law enforcement personnel and court administrators; and when delay is attributable to the defendant, proof of that *136fact poses little problem for the prosecution. . . . [W]hen a defendant challenges the delay as unreasonable, the burden devolves upon the Commonwealth to show, first, what delay was attributable to the defendant and not to be counted against the Commonwealth and, second, what part of any delay attributable to the prosecution was justifiable.
Fowlkes v. Commonwealth, 218 Va. 763, 766-67, 240 S.E.2d 662, 664 (1978) (footnote omitted). Unlike the majority, I believe that the four factors used to determine whether Neil E. Beachem’s right to a speedy trial has been violated weigh heavily in Beachem’s favor. See Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514 (1972).
More than five years elapsed between the Commonwealth’s filing of a detainer in the State of Maryland for Beachem and the commencement of a preliminary hearing in Virginia. The Commonwealth concedes that “approximately three and one-half years” is the period of delay for which the Commonwealth must answer. The Commonwealth argues, and the majority accepts, that the failure of the Commonwealth to obtain custody of Beachem and commence his trial was simply negligence. I disagree.
The Commonwealth’s detainer was lodged against Beachem in November, 1982. Although both Virginia and Maryland have enacted the Interstate Agreement on Detainers (IAD), see Md. Ann. Code Art. 27, § 616A (1986); Code § 53.1-210 (1988), the Commonwealth took no further action during the next ten months to obtain custody of Beachem. Articles IV and V of the IAD provide a mechanism by which the Commonwealth could have obtained custody of Beachem for purposes of trial.
In October 1983, Beachem filed in the Circuit Court of Fairfax County, Virginia (the place of the offense for which he now stands convicted), a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, alleging denial of the right to a speedy trial. The Commonwealth challenged the legal sufficiency of his petition by filing a demurrer. Although the Commonwealth was put on notice of Beachem’s speedy trial claim by the habeas action, more than thirteen months elapsed from the time Beachem filed his petition to the date Maryland officials received the Commonwealth’s request for custody of Beachem. The Commonwealth subsequently wrote two letters to Maryland officials but took no further substantial action to obtain custody of *137Beachem. It was not until 1986 that an extradition hearing was held in Maryland. During this three and one-half year period the Commonwealth also resisted Beachem’s attempts to obtain a writ of mandamus to require action on his petition for a writ of habeas corpus.
Thus, even after the question of a speedy trial came to the attention of the Commonwealth in the emphatic form of Beachem’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus, the Commonwealth resisted Beachem’s attempt to force the Commonwealth to bring him to trial. The Commonwealth sought to thwart Beachem’s action in the Fairfax Circuit Court while neglecting its responsibility to obtain his custody in order to commence trial. Having made a demand for release from prosecution because of failure to prosecute in a timely fashion, Beachem had no obligation to ensure the Commonwealth’s compliance with the IAD. “The burden of compliance with the procedural requirements of the IAD rests upon the party states and their agents.” Pittman v. State, 301 A.2d 509, 514 (Del. 1973). “ ‘[T]he ultimate responsibility for [administrative derelictions] must rest with the government rather than with the defendant.’ ” Fowlkes, 218 Va. at 768, 240 S.E.2d at 665 (quoting Barker, 407 U.S. at 531).
The United States Supreme Court in Smith v. Hooey, 393 U.S. 374 (1969), described as “self-evident” that an incarcerated defendant’s “ability to confer with potential defense witnesses, or even to keep track of their whereabouts, is obviously impaired . . . . [A] man isolated in prison is powerless to exert his own investigative efforts to mitigate these erosive effects of the passage of time.” Id. at 379-80. Beachem proffered for the record that witnesses who owned and operated a motel and who knew him would testify that he was in the motel on the day of the offense. He further stated that those witnesses moved during his incarceration and cannot be located. The long delay in returning Beachem to Virginia and in the appointment of counsel diminished the possibility of locating these witnesses. By his proffer of the absence of his alibi witness, Beachem has demonstrated substantial prejudice which should be weighted heavily in his favor in assessing whether a violation occurred. See Dickey v. Florida, 398 U.S. 30, 35-38 (1970).
This record establishes that the Commonwealth failed to discharge its “constitutional duty to make a diligent, good-faith ef*138fort to bring [Beachem to trial].” Smith, 393 U.S. at 383. Consequently, the conviction should be reversed and the charges dismissed.