Negligence in Trying Indicted Defendant Violates Speedy Trial Right
Doggett v. United States, Supreme Court of the United States (1992), 505 U.S.647, 112 S.Ct. 2686
FACTS:
On February 22, 1980, a federal grand jury indicted Petitioner Marc Doggett for conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine. Under Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) orders, police attempted to arrest Doggett at his parent's home only to find that he was not home. Ignorant of the secret indictment, Doggett had gone to Columbia, South America four days earlier.
In order to apprehend Doggett on his return, the DEA sent word to all U.S. Customs stations and other law enforcement agencies. Doggett's name was entered in a United States Customs' computer and other law enforcement computer systems.
In September 1981, the DEA discovered that Doggett had been detained in Panama on drug charges and requested the Panamanian government to expel him to the United States. Subsequently, Panamanian officials allowed petitioner to travel to Columbia, but notified the State Department of Doggett's departure. Apparently, the State Department did not reveal the information to any other government office. As a result, the DEA remained ignorant of Doggett's location until it discovered his 1982 travel to Columbia in 1985. The DEA assumed that petitioner had settled in Columbia and made no effort to track him down.
In 1982, Doggett passed unchallenged through United States Customs in New York and settled in Virginia where he married, earned a college degree, found work, and lived openly under his own name.
In 1988, the U.S. Marshall's Service ran a credit check on several persons which turned up Doggett's address and place of employment. On September 5, 1988, almost six years after his indictment, officials arrested Doggett. He entered a conditional plea of guilt, but reserved his right to appeal his Sixth Amendment speedy trial issue. The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction and the Supreme Court granted certiorari.
PROCEDURAL QUESTION:
Where a person has been indicted and remained ignorant of the charges, where he made no effort to avoid detection and through government negligence has not been brought to trial for nearly nine years following the indictment, has the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial been violated?
HELD: Yes.
RATIONALE:
Justice Souter delivered the opinion of the Court.
* * *II
The Sixth Amendment guarantees that, "[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy ... trial...." On its face, the Speedy trial Clause is written with such breadth that, taken literally, it would forbid the government to delay the trial of an "accused" for any reason at all. Our cases, however, have qualified the literal sweep of the provision by specifically recognizing the relevance of four separate enquiries: whether delay before trial was uncommonly long, whether the government or the criminal defendant is more to blame for that delay, whether, in due course, the defendant asserted his right to a speedy trial, and whether he suffered prejudice as the delay's result. See Barker [v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514], supra, at 530.
The first of these is actually a double enquiry. Simply to trigger a speedy trial analysis, an accused must allege that the interval between accusation and trial has crossed the threshold dividing ordinary from "presumptively prejudicial" delay, 470 U.S., at 530-531, since by definition, he cannot complain that the government had denied him a "speedy" trial if it has, in fact, prosecuted his case with customary promptness. If the accused makes this showing, the court must then consider, as one factor among several, the extent to which the delay stretches beyond the bare minimum needed to trigger judicial examination of the claim. See id., at 533-534. This latter enquiry is significant to the speedy trial analysis because, as we discuss below, the presumption that pretrial delay has prejudiced the accused intensifies over time. In this case, the extraordinary 8 ½ year lag between Doggett's indictment and arrest clearly suffices to trigger the speedy trial enquiry; its further significance within that enquiry will be dealt with later.
As for Barker's second criterion, the Government claims to have sought Doggett with diligence. The findings of the courts below are to the contrary, however, and we review trial court determinations o negligence with considerable deference. [Citations omitted.] The Government gives us nothing to gainsay the findings that have come up to us, and we see nothing fatal to them in the record. For six years, Government's investigators made no serious effort to test their progressively more questionable assumption that Doggett was living abroad, and, had they done so, they could have found him within minutes. . . . .
The Government goes against the record again in suggesting that Doggett knew of his indictment years before he was arrested. Were this true, Barker's third factor, concerning invocation of the right to a speedy trial, would be weighed heavily against him. But here again, the Government is trying to revisit the facts. At the hearing on Doggett's speedy trial motion, it introduced no evidence challenging the testimony of Doggett's wife, who said that she did not know of the charges until his arrest, and of his mother, who claimed not to have told him or anyone else that the police had come looking for him.
* * *III
The Government is left, then, with its principal contention: that Doggett fails to make out a successful speedy trial claim because he has not shown precisely how he was prejudiced by the delay between his indictment and trial.
A
We have observed in prior cases that unreasonable delay between formal accusation and trial threatens to produce more than one sort of harm, including "oppressive pretrial incarceration," "anxiety and concern of the accused," and "the possibility that the [accused's] defense will be impaired" by dimming memories and loss of exculpatory evidence. Barker, 407 U.S., at 532; see also Smith v. Hooey, 393 U.S. 347, 377-379 (1969); United States v. Ewell, 383 U.S. 116, 120 (1966). Of these forms of prejudice, "the most serious is the last, because the inability of a defendant adequately to prepare his case skews the fairness of the entire system." 407 U.S., at 532. Doggett claims this kind of prejudice, and there is probably no other kind that he can claim, since he was subjected neither to pretrial detention nor, he has successfully contended, to awareness of unresolved charges against him.
The Government answers Doggett's claim by citing language in three cases, United States v. Marion, 404 U.S. 307, 320-323 (1971), United States v. MacDonald, 456 U.S. 1, 8 (1982), and United States v. Loud Hawk, 474 U.S. 302, 312 (1986), for the proposition that the Speedy Trial Clause does not significantly protect a criminal defendant's interest in fair adjudication. In so arguing, the Government asks us, in effect, to read part of Barker right out of the law, and that we will not do. In context, the cited passages support nothing beyond the principle, which we have independently based on textual and historical grounds, see Marion, supra, at 313-320, that the Sixth Amendment right of the accused to a speedy trial has no application beyond the confines of a formal criminal prosecution. Once triggered by arrest, indictment, or other official accusation, however, the speedy trial enquiry must weigh the effect of delay on the accused's defense just as it has to weigh any other form of prejudice that Barker recognized. [Citations omitted.]
As an alternative to limiting Barker, the Government claims Doggett has failed to make any affirmative showing that the delay weakened his ability to raise specific defenses, elicit specific testimony, or produce specific items of evidence. Though Doggett did indeed come up short in this respect, the Government's argument takes it only so far: consideration of prejudice is not limited to the specifically demonstrable, and, as it concedes, [Citation omitted.], affirmative proof of particularized prejudice is not essential to every speedy trial claim. [Citations omitted.] Barker explicitly recognized that impairment of one's defense is the most difficult form of speedy trial prejudice to prove because time's erosion of exculpatory evidence and testimony "can rarely be shown." 407 U.S., at 532.
* * *B
This brings us to an enquiry into the role that presumptive prejudice should play in the disposition of Doggett's speedy trial claim. We begin with hypothetical and somewhat easier cases and work our way to this one.
Our speedy trial standards recognize that pretrial delay is often both inevitable and wholly justifiable. The government may need time to collect witnesses against the accused, oppose his pretrial motions, or if he goes into hiding, track him down. We attach great weight to such considerations when balancing them against the costs of going forward with a trial whose probative accuracy the passage of time has begun by degrees to throw into question. See Loud Hawk, supra, at 315-317. Thus, in this case, if the Government had pursued Doggett with reasonable diligence from his indictment to his arrest, his speedy trial claim would fail. Indeed, that conclusion would generally follow as a matter of course however great the delay, so long as Doggett could not show specific prejudice to his defense.
The Government concedes, on the other hand, that Doggett would prevail if he could show that the Government had intentionally held back in its prosecution of him to gain some impermissible advantage at trial. [Citation omitted.] That we cannot doubt. Barker stressed that official bad faith in causing delay will be weighed heavily against the government, 407 U.S., at 531, and a bad-faith delay the length of this negligent one would present an overwhelming case for dismissal.
Between diligent prosecution and bad-faith delay, official negligence in bringing an accused to trial occupies the middle ground. While not compelling relief in every case where bad-faith delay would make relief virtually automatic, neither is negligence automatically tolerable simply because the accused cannot demonstrate exactly how it has prejudiced him. It was on this point that the Court of Appeals erred, and on the facts before us, it was reversible error.
Barker made it clear that "different weight [are to be] assigned to different reasons" for delay. Ibid. Although negligence is obviously to be weighed more lightly than a deliberate intent to harm the accused's defense, it still falls on the wrong side of the divide between acceptable and unacceptable reasons for delaying a criminal prosecution one it has begun. And such is the nature of the prejudice presumed that the weight we assign to official negligence compounds over time as the presumption of evidentiary prejudice grows.
* * *
To be sure, to warrant granting relief, negligence unaccompanied by particularized trial prejudice must have lasted longer than negligence demonstrably causing such prejudice. But even so, the Government's egregious persistence in failing to prosecute Doggett is clearly sufficient. The lag between Doggett's indictment and arrest was 8 ½ years, and he would have faced trial 6 years earlier than he did but for the Government's inexcusable oversights. The portion of the delay attributable to the Government's negligence far exceeds the threshold needed to state a speedy trial claim; indeed, we have called shorter delays "extraordinary." See Barker, supra, at 533. When the Government's negligence thus causes delay six times as long as that generally sufficient to trigger judicial review, see n.1, supra, and when the presumption of prejudice, albeit unspecified, is neither extenuated, as by the defendant's acquiescence, e.g., id., at 534-536, nor persuasively rebutted, the defendant is entitled to relief.
IV
We reverse the judgement of the court of Appeals and remand the case for proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Justice O'Connor, dissenting.
I believe the Court of Appeals properly balanced the considerations set forth in Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514 (1972). Although the delay between indictment and trial was lengthy, petitioner did not suffer any anxiety or restriction on his liberty. The only harm to petitioner from the lapse of time was potential prejudice to his ability to defend his case. We have not allowed such speculative harm to tip the scales. Instead, we have required a showing of actual prejudice to the defense before weighing it in the balance. As we stated in United States v. Loud Hawk, 474 U.S. 302, 315 (1986), the "possibility of prejudice is not sufficient to support respondents' position that their speedy trial rights were violated. In this case, moreover, delay is a two-edged sword. It is the Government that bears the burden of providing its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The passage of time may make it difficult or impossible for the Government to carry this burden." The Court of Appeals followed this holding, and I believe we should as well. For this reason, I respectfully dissent.
Notes
1. Did Doggett prove any prejudice to the merits of his defense? Is the Court presuming prejudice based on the length of the delay? Since Doggett pled guilty, reserving his right of appeal, do you believe that his defense was impaired by the length of the delay?
2. Should governmental negligence in bringing a case to trial allow a defendant to go free? If the courts required defendants similarly situated to demonstrate prejudice to their defense, would this serve as a better solution? Will a prejudiced defendant be able to prove prejudice to the case?
Sixth Amendment Right to Speedy Trial: the Remedy for a Violation
STRUNK v. UNITED STATES, Supreme Court of the United States (1973), 412 U.S. 434, 93 S.Ct. 2260
FACTS:
Defendant Clarence Strunk was found guilty of transporting a stolen motor vehicle across a state border. He received a five-year sentence which was to be served concurrently with a sentence he was then serving in the State of Nebraska.
A federal district court denied a pretrial motion to dismiss the prosecution on the ground of a violation of the Sixth Amendment guarantee of a speedy trial. The defendant preserved his speedy trial objection and appealed to the Court of Appeals.
Although the Court of Appeals agreed that his right to a speedy trial had been violated, it refused to reverse the conviction. The Court of Appeals remanded the case to the trial court with instructions to reduce the actual sentence imposed by 259 days. This period of time was the length of the unnecessary delay which occurred between indictment and arraignment.
Since the existence of the finding of a violation of defendant's speedy trial right was not contested by the government, the sole issue for determination was the remedy to be given for a violation of a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial.
PROCEDURAL QUESTION:
Where a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial has been violated, is the correct remedy absolute dismissal with prejudice?
HELD: Yes.
RATIONALE:
Opinion of the Court by Mr. Chief Justice BURGER, announced by Mr. Justice DOUGLAS.
* * *II
[W]e note that the court clearly perceived that the accused had an interest in being tried promptly, even though he was confined in a penitentiary for an unrelated charge. Under these circumstances,
"the possibility that the defendant already in prison might receive a sentence at least partially concurrent with the one he is serving may be forever lost is trial of the pending charge is postponed." Smith v. Hooey, U.S. 374, 378, 89 S.Ct. 575, 577, 21 L.Ed.2d 607 (1969) (footnote omitted).
The Court of Appeals went on to state:
"The remedy for a violation of this constitutional right has traditionally been the dismissal of the indictment or the vacation of the sentence. Perhaps the severity of that remedy has caused courts to be extremely hesitant in finding a failure to afford a speedy trial. Be that as it may, we know of no reason why less drastic relief may not be granted in appropriate cases. Here no question is raised about the sufficiency of evidence showing defendant's guilt, and, as we have said, he makes no claim of having been prejudiced in presenting his defense. In these circumstances, the vacation of the sentence and a dismissal of the indictment would seem inappropriate. Rather, we think the proper remedy is to remand the case to the district court with direction to enter an order instructing the Attorney General to credit the defendant with the period of time elapsing between the return of the indictment and the date of the arraignment. Fed.R.Crim.P. 35 provides that the district court may correct an illegal sentence at any time. We choose to treat the sentence here imposed as illegal to the extent of the delay we have characterized as unreasonable." 467 F.2d, at 973.
It is correct, as the Court of Appeals noted, that Barker prescribes "flexible" standards based on practical considerations. However, that aspect of the holding in Barker was directed at the process of determining whether a denial of speedy trial had occurred; it did not deal with the remedy for denial of this right. By definition, such denial is unlike some of the other guarantees of the Sixth Amendment. For example, failure to afford a public trial, an impartial jury, notice of charges, or compulsory service can ordinarily be cured by providing those guaranteed rights in a new trial. The speedy trial guarantee recognizes that a prolonged delay may subject the accused to an emotional stress that can be presumed to result in the ordinary person from uncertainties in the prospect of facing public trial or of receiving a sentence loner than, or consecutive to, the one he is presently serving - uncertainties that a prompt trial removes. Smith v. Hooey, 393 U.S., at 379, 89 S.Ct., at 577, 578; United States v. Ewell, 383 U.S. 116, 120, 86 S.Ct. 773, 776, 15 L.Ed.2d 627 (1966). We recognize, as the Court did in Smith v. Hooey, that the stress from a delayed trial may be less on a prisoner already confined, whose family ties and employment have been interrupted, but other factors such as the prospect of rehabilitation may also be affected adversely. The remedy chose by the Court of Appeals does not deal with these difficulties.
The Government's reliance on Barker to support the remedy fashioned by the Court of Appeals is further undermined when we examine the Court's opinion in that case a whole. It is true that Barker descried dismissal of an indictment for denial of a speedy trial as an "unsatisfactorily severe remedy." Indeed, in practice, "it means that a defendant who may be guilty of a serious crime will go free, without having been tried." 407 U.S., at 522, 92 S.Ct., at 2188, 33 L.Ed.2d 101. But such severe remedies are not unique in the application of constitutional standards. In light of the policies which underlie the right to a speedy trial, dismissal must remain, as Barker noted, "the only possible remedy." Ibid.
Given the unchallenged determination that petitioner was denied a speedy trial, the District Court judgment of conviction must be set aside; the judgment is therefore reversed and the case remanded to the Court of Appeals to direct the District Court to set aside its judgment, vacate the sentence, and dismiss the indictment.
Reversed and remanded.
Notes
1. For constitutional purposes, the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial does not accrue until a defendant has been indicted, arrested for the specific crime at issue, or has had an information filed against him/her. Pretrial release does not toll the running of the right to a speedy trial, but may reduce the level of prejudice to a defendant. Such a reduction in harm may make a defendant's assertion of a violation of the right to a speedy trial less likely to have merit.
2. Why should a defendant receive dismissal of the case for a violation of the right to a speedy trial? Does the remedy of freeing a potentially guilty defendant make logical sense? Should the sentence merely be reduced by the length of the unconstitutional delay? Would this be appropriate? Would it "cure" the wrong?
Speedy Trial not Violated by Pre-Arrest, Pre-Indictment Delay
UNITED STATES v. MARION (1971), Supreme Court of the United States, 404 U.S. 307, 92 S.Ct. 455
FACTS:
In 1970, a federal grand jury indicted several defendants on multiple counts of fraud in selling home improvements, altering the terms of contracts, and failing to preform duties under the contracts. The earliest act covered by the indictments occurred in March of 1965 and the last act allegedly happened in February 1967.
Defendant Marion filed a motion to dismiss the indictment contending that the delay between the last alleged crime and the indictment violated his right to due process of law and his right to a speedy trial. He claimed that the delay between the alleged crimes and the return of the indictment created a substantial prejudice to his case since a defense would require him to remember minute details of business transactions long since concluded. However, Marion merely alleged the presence of prejudice; he did not attempt to prove or demonstrate specific prejudice.
The trial court dismissed the indictment but the prosecution perfected an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States.
PROCEDURAL QUESTION:
In considering whether the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial has been violated, may a court consider the period of time between the last alleged criminal act and the arrest, indictment, or the filing of an information?
HELD: No.
Mr. Justice WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.
II
Appellees do not claim that the Sixth Amendment was violated by the two-month delay between the return of the indictment and its dismissal. Instead, they claim that their rights to a speedy trial were violated by the period of approximately three years between the end of the criminal scheme charged and the return of the indictment; it is argued that this delay is so substantial and inherently prejudicial that the Sixth Amendment required the dismissal of the indictment. In our view, however, the Sixth Amendment speedy trial provision has no application until the putative defendant in some way becomes an "accused," an event that occurred in this case only when the appellees were indicted on April 21, 1970.
The Sixth Amendment provides that "[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial. . . ." On its face, the protection of the Amendment is activated only when a criminal prosecution has begun and extends only to those persons who have been "accused" in the course of that prosecution. These provisions would seem to afford no protection to those not yet accused, nor would they seem to require the Government to discover, investigate, and accused any person within any particular period of time. The Amendment would appear to guarantee to a criminal defendant that the Government will move with the dispatch that is appropriate to assure him an early and proper disposition of the charges against him.
* * *
Inordinate delay between arrest, indictment, and trial may impair a defendant's ability to present an effective defense. But the major evils protected against by the speedy trial guarantee exist quite apart from actual or possible prejudice to an accused's defense. To legally arrest and detain, the Government must assert probable cause to believe that arrestee has committed a crime. Arrest is a public act that may seriously interfere with the defendant's liberty, whether he is free on bail or not, and that may disrupt his employment, drain his financial resources, curtail his associations, subject his to public obloquy, and create anxiety to him, his family and his friends. These considerations were substantial underpinnings for the decision in Klopfer v. North Carolina, supra; see also Smith v. Hooey, 393 U.S. 374, 377-378, 89 S.Ct. 575, 576-577, 21 L.Ed.2d 607 (1969). So viewed, it is readily understandable that it is either a formal indictment or information or else the actual restraints imposed by arrest and holding to answer a criminal charge that engage the particular protections of the speedy trial provision of the Sixth Amendment.
Invocation of the speedy trial provision thus need not await indictment, information, or other formal charge. But we decline to extend the reach of the amendment to the period prior to arrest. Until this event occurs, a citizen suffers no restraints on his liberty and is not the subject of public accusation: his situation does not compare with that of a defendant who has been arrested and held to answer. Passage of time, whether before or after arrest, may impair memories, cause evidence to be lost, deprive the defendant of witnesses, and otherwise interfere with his ability to defend himself. But this possibility of prejudice at trial is not itself sufficient reason to wrench the Sixth Amendment from its proper context. Possible prejudice is inherent in any delay, however short; it may also weaken the Government's case.
The law has provided other mechanisms to guard against possible as distinguished from actual prejudice resulting from the passage of time between crime and arrest or charge. As we said in United States v. Ewell, supra, 386 U.S., at 122, 86 S.Ct., at 77, "the applicable statute of limitations. . . is . . . the primary guarantee against bringing overly stale criminal charges."
As this Court observed in Toussie v. United States, 397 U.S. 112, 114-115, 90 S.Ct. 858, 860, 25 L.Ed.2d 156 (1970):
"The purpose of a statute of limitation is to limit exposure to criminal prosecution to a certain fixed period of time following the occurrence of those acts the legislature has decided to punish by criminal sanctions. Such a limitation is designed to protect individuals from having to defend themselves against charges when the basic facts may have become obscured by the passage of time and to minimize the danger of official punishment because of acts in the far-distant past. Such a time limit may also have the salutary effect of encouraging law enforcement officials promptly to investigate suspected criminal activity."
There is thus no need to press the Sixth Amendment into service to guard against the mere possibility that pre-accusation delays will prejudice the defense in a criminal case since statutes of limitation already perform that function.
Nevertheless, since a criminal trial is the likely consequence of our judgment and since appellees may claim actual prejudice to their defense, it is appropriate to note here that the statute of limitations does not fully define the appellees' rights with respect to the events occurring prior to indictment. Thus, the Government concedes that the Fifth Amendment would require dismissal of the indictment if it were shown at trial that the pre-indictment delay in this case caused substantial prejudice to appellees' rights to a fair trial and that the delay was an intentional device to gain tactical advantage over the accused.
* * *IV
In the case before us, neither appellee was arrested, charged, or otherwise subjected to formal restraint prior to indictment. It was this event, therefore, that transformed the appellees into "accused" defendants who are subject to the speedy trial protections of the Sixth Amendment.
Reversed.
Notes
1. In United States v. Lovasco, 431 U.S. 783 (1977), the Court held that where law enforcement officials possessed sufficient evidence to have charged defendant 17 months before the case was presented to a grand jury, such practice does not violate the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial. The Court was not impressed by the fact that two of Lovasco's witnesses had died during the time following the development of probable cause and the return of the indictment. At best, the preindictment delay could give rise to a Due Process argument, but proof of prejudice to one's case would only initiate the process. The reason or reasons for the delay may be determinative to an inquiry under Due Process. As was mentioned in Marion, if a prosecutor were to purposefully delay the initiation of a prosecution for the purpose of gaining an unfair tactical advantage, the practice would create a Fifth Amendment Due Process violation, rather than a speedy trial transgression.