Court Opinion

ID: 9476152
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:48:16.726843+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:08.866074
License: Public Domain

EDITH H. JONES, Circuit Judge,
dissenting from Denial of Panel Rehearing:
I have dissented once and with due respect to my colleagues must do so again, as the issues on rehearing have changed.
First, I disapprove the majority’s rejection of the standard set forth in United States v. Krynicki, 689 F.2d 289 (1st Cir.1982) for considering the applicability of 18 U.S.C. § 3161(h)(1)(H), which would bring *1142Bigler’s trial within the 70-day limit of the Speedy Trial Act. Krynicki follows the usual appellate1 rule and holds that a purely legal issue pertaining to the Speedy Trial Act, not raised in the district court but dispositive of the case, may be considered on appeal. Declining to consider the issue would, in the First Circuit’s and in my view, result in a miscarriage of justice. Bigler, an admitted serial bank robber, may go free although he was timely tried. My colleagues suggest Krynicki is unpersuasive because Bigler has had no opportunity to brief the 10-day travel time exclusion. They could have, as we often do, afforded him the opportunity to file a responsive brief to the government’s petition for rehearing. But what good would it do? The statute explicitly allows the 10-day exclusion. 18 U.S.C. § 3161(h)(1)(H). There is no factual dispute. Bigler’s briefing could not change the law.
Second, I disagree with the majority’s reading of Henderson v. United States, _ U.S. _, 106 S.Ct. 1871, 90 L.Ed.2d 299 (1986), and our precedent in United States v. Horton, 705 F.2d 1414 (5th Cir.1983), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 997, 104 S.Ct. 496, 78 L.Ed.2d 689 (1983). The Sixth Circuit recently properly interpreted United States v. Henderson to require automatic exclusion of “[a]ll of the time from the filing of appellant’s pretrial motions until the hearing thereon....” United States v. Keefer, 799 F.2d 1115, 1122 (6th Cir.1986). Horton held squarely that § 3161(h)(1)(F) “places no rigid time strictures on [pretrial motion] practice whatever, and only the shadow of an implied one.” Horton, 705 F.2d at 1416. In so doing, it overruled the contention that anything less than egregious circumstances, such as deliberate refusal to schedule a hearing on a pretrial motion with intent to evade the Speedy Trial Act limits, would violate Subsection F. We are therefore bound, in my view, by both the Supreme Court and our prior controlling authority to exclude the period between the filing of Bigler’s pretrial motions 2 and their consideration by the trial court. Five circuit courts, cited by the majority, would agree. My disagreement with the majority does not change the outcome of this case but is significant lest the “open issue” perceived by the majority supply false hope to future criminal appellants.

. Singleton v. Wulff, 428 U.S. 106, 121, 96 S.Ct. 2868, 2877, 49 L.Ed.2d 826 (1976), (an appellate court is justified in resolving an issue not passed on below where the proper resolution is beyond any doubt or injustice might otherwise result); United States v. Parker, 722 F.2d 179, 183 n. 2 (5th Cir.1983); See generally Davis & Childress, Standards of Review in Criminal Appeals: Fifth Circuit Illustration and Analysis, 60 Tul.L.Rev. 461, 470-71 (1980). Further emphasizing the discretionary quality of this Court’s decision is the fact that we may raise, sua sponte, an issue of exhaustion in a habeas corpus case. McGee v. Estelle, 722 F.2d 1206, 1214 (5th Cir.1984) (en banc).

. Bigler filed motions to dismiss under the Speedy Trial Act and for violation of his double jeopardy rights.