Court Opinion

ID: 9522012
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:16:50.903315+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:02:12.385429
License: Public Domain

Burgess, J.,
¶ 15. concurring. While I concur in the Court’s decision to reject defendant’s claim that he was denied his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial, I would reach this conclusion by a different and more efficient route. This alternative would align our speedy-trial jurisprudence with the framework intended by the U.S. Supreme Court in its seminal decision in Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514 (1972), and restore the courts’ ability to dispose of unfounded speedy-trial claims in a more expeditious manner.
¶ 16. The test for evaluating speedy-trial claims established by the high court in Barker requires that we first consider the length of the delay from accusation to trial. As the high court explained: “The length of the delay is to some extent a triggering mechanism. Until there is some delay which is presumptively prejudicial, there is no necessity for inquiry into the other factors that go into the balance.” Id. at 530. Thus, if a court concludes that the delay in question fails to meet the threshold standard, the claim fails as a matter of law and no further inquiry is required. See, e.g., United States v. Chahia, 544 F.3d 890, 899 (8th Cir. 2008) (finding that delay between indictment and trial was “too short a time *481period to be presumptively prejudicial” and thus concluding that it “need not consider the remaining factors to find that no Sixth Amendment speedy trial violation occurred”); State v. Goss, 777 P.2d 781, 785 (Kan. 1989) (holding that delay was not “clearly presumptively prejudicial as enunciated by Barker v. Wingo, and hence there is no necessity for inquiry into the other factors that go into the balancing”).
¶ 17. Although the Barker Court did not elaborate on the “presumptively prejudicial” inquiry, it did explain that the delay sufficient to “provoke such an inquiry is necessarily dependent upon the peculiar circumstances of the case.” Barker, 407 U.S. at 530-31 (emphasis added). By way of example, it observed that the delay “tolerated for an ordinary street crime is considerably less than for a serious, complex conspiracy charge.” Id. at 531. In a later decision, the Court explained that Barker contemplates a “double enquiry,” requiring a threshold assessment of whether the state has failed to “proseeute[ ] [the] case with customary promptness,” and only if this is shown must the court then consider the length of delay as one factor among many to be weighed in the balance. Doggett v. United States, 505 U.S. 647, 652 (1992).
¶ 18. Although seemingly straightforward, the “presumptively prejudicial” trigger has been a source of continuing uncertainty. One early commentator observed that Barker was “not quite clear” as to how to determine whether a delay is sufficient to trigger further inquiry, H. Uviller, Barker v. Wingo: Speedy Trial Gets a Fast Shuffle, 72 Colum. L. Rev. 1376, 1383 (1972), and lower courts have since proven this observation to be depressingly accurate. Indeed, despite the Supreme Court’s express pronouncement that the delay sufficient to trigger a plenary analysis is “necessarily dependent upon the peculiar circumstances” of the case, many courts — including our own — have instead opted for rigid timeframes entirely divorced from the circumstances. See, e.g., State v. Keith, 160 Vt. 257, 267, 628 A.2d 1247, 1253 (1993) (concluding that it was “unnecessary to examine the reasons for the delay” in holding that 20-month delay was sufficient “to trigger a review of the other three [Barker] factors”), overruled on other grounds by State v. Britton, 2008 VT 35, ¶ 42, 183 Vt. 475, 955 A.2d 1108, rev’d on other grounds sub nom. Vermont v. Britton, 556 U.S. 81 (2009); State v. Unwin, 139 Vt. 186, 195, 424 A.2d 251, 257 (1980) (“We believe that a delay of more than six months in a case involving an incarcerated defendant is long *482enough to require that the other [Barker] factors be considered”). The preference for such bright lines over context has not, however, led to consistent results. Compare United States v. White Horse, 316 F.3d 769, 774 (8th Cir. 2003) (holding that “a nine and one-half month interval [between accusation and trial] is too short to be presumptively prejudicial”), with Wells v. Petsock, 941 F.2d 253, 258 (3d Cir. 1991) (holding that seven-month delay was “long enough to require plenary inquiry into the remaining Barker factors”), and City of Billings v. Bruce, 1998 MT 186, ¶ 55, 965 P.2d 866 (“[W]e establish 200 days as the necessary length of time to trigger further speedy trial analysis”).
¶ 19. Treating the passage of time alone as a “delay” triggering a Barker analysis distracts from, rather than vindicates, the right to speedy trial. When no actual, untoward delay in proceedings can be demonstrated, motions to dismiss — as in this case — prompt unnecessary pretrial litigation resulting in true delay. Reading Unwin to treat as “delay” the fact that a defendant is not brought to trial within six months of arraignment, when nothing can be identified as unduly postponed, made late, restrained, put off or otherwise hindered secures no constitutional right to a speedy trial and is wasteful — particularly where, as here, defendant agreed to many of the delays and never expressly demanded that he proceed to trial.
¶ 20. It is time to restore to this threshold inquiry the context contemplated by the high court in Barker. Although the Supreme Court has since noted that lower courts “have generally found” delays “approaching] one year” to be presumptively prejudicial, Doggett, 505 U.S. at 652 n.l, it has never retreated from its original position in Barker that the length of delay necessary to address the other speedy-trial factors is “necessarily dependent” on the fact-specific circumstances of the case, nor endorsed the position of this Court in Keith that “the reasons for the delay” are essentially irrelevant to the analysis. 160 Vt. at 267, 424 A.2d at 1253.
¶ 21. With this understanding in mind, an analysis of the undisputed record evidence here provides no basis to conclude that the State failed in any respect to prosecute this case with its “customary promptness,” Doggett, 505 U.S. at 652, and thus no grounds to conclude that the delay was “presumptively prejudicial” necessitating any further inquiry. The docket entries in this matter disclose that defendant was arraigned on felony charges in *483September 2008 and assigned counsel. At the first regularly-scheduled conference on November 19, 2008, the parties were directed to file a discovery schedule within thirty days. Defendant agreed to a discovery schedule timely filed on December 16, 2008, which indicated that several planned depositions would be completed by March 2009, and the matter would be ready for trial by June 1, 2009.
¶ 22. Several depositions were conducted in January 2009, and a pretrial conference was scheduled in April 2009 for the following month. Following the conference, attended by defendant, the matter was set for the next jury draw in August 2009. Defendant noticed and conducted several additional depositions in July 2009, and thereafter moved in early August to continue the jury draw based on the recent disclosure of additional witnesses. The court granted the motion, and the case was scheduled for the next jury draw in October 2009. In the interim, in early September 2009, defendant moved to exclude any in-court identification of defendant, and the court scheduled the matter for a hearing.
¶ 23. Thus, when defendant filed his first pro se motion to dismiss on September 9, 2009, nothing in the record to that point — or in the motion — suggested that the matter had proceeded in any manner inconsistent with the normal, orderly pretrial process. The same may be said of the ensuing months leading up to defendant’s first trial in March 2010. The undisputed record evidence for this period discloses that, in October 2009 — based on defendant’s expressed dissatisfaction with his assigned counsel — the court granted defense counsel’s motion to withdraw, appointed new counsel, and scheduled the next status conference for December 2009; denied defendant’s motion to exclude in December 2009, and scheduled defendant’s motion to dismiss for a hearing in February 2010; conducted a two-day hearing on defendant’s motion in February 2010; set the matter for the next jury draw in March 2010; disposed of a series of contested motions by the State to introduce prior bad act evidence in early March 2010; and ultimately held a two-day jury trial at the end of that month.
¶ 24. As the Supreme Court cogently observes, “[o]ur speedy trial standards recognize that pretrial delay is often both inevitable and wholly justifiable” in order to meet the needs of the parties to identify, interview, and depose witnesses, file and oppose pretrial motions, and sometimes — as here — accommodate a *484defendant’s request to substitute counsel. Doggett, 505 U.S. at 656. Nothing in defendant’s motion to dismiss or the record before the trial court raised any factual dispute or suggestion that the delays following defendant’s arraignment were attributable to any cause other than routine pretrial proceedings, or that the State had failed to prosecute the matter with diligence.
¶ 25. As this case vividly illustrates, regardless of the length of time between arraignment and trial, not every motion to dismiss for a speedy-trial violation based on passage of time alone necessarily meets the “presumptively prejudicial” test. Consistent with Barker, the trial court here could easily and properly have reviewed the motion to dismiss in light of the undisputed record evidence and rejected the claim at the threshold, without the additional, unnecessary, and wasteful expenditure of judicial time and resources of a two-day evidentiary hearing. In the long run, such an approach would have been far more protective of defendant’s speedy-trial rights.
¶26. I am authorized to state that Chief Justice Reiber joins this concurrence.