Speedy Trial Act Violated; Delays in Transfer Were Not Reasonably Excluded From Speedy Trial Clock

United States v. Black, 2022 WL 288173 (February 1, 2022) (KS): the panel finds the Speedy Trial Act was violated and reverses the district court’s denial of Black’s motion to dismiss the indictment. (J. Phillips dissented.). Black was arrested in Missouri and indicted for robberies in both the Western District of Missouri and the District of Kansas. While in Missouri, Black asked the District of Kansas to transfer the charges to Missouri pursuant to Fed.R.Crim.P. 20 so he could plead guilty there. Kansas transferred the indictment to Missouri and then on the docket marked the case and charges terminated. When he was arraigned in Missouri, Black didn’t plead guilty to the Kansas charges. The Missouri court was required by Rule 20 to return the case to Kansas for trial. That was done 6 months later. A month after that the Missouri district court accepted Black’s guilty plea on the Missouri charges. It then waited 50 days to schedule sentencing, which didn’t take place until 11 months after he arraigned. Black appeared in the District of Kansas 16 days later. The government argued that the charges remained pending in Kansas in spite of the transfer, therefore, the speedy trial clock started eleven months after the Missouri arraignment, when Black first appeared in Kansas. The panel disagreed. It held that when Black was arraigned in Missouri, the Kansas robbery charges were pending there. In other words, by transferring the case from Kansas to Missouri, only the Missouri court “had possession and control of the case.” At that time then, the Missouri court was the only court where the Kansas charges were pending. Rule 20, the panel added, treats “a prosecution” as something that can occur only in one district.” Thus, regarding the Kansas charges, the speedy trial clock started on the date Black was arraigned in Missouri. The panel said that a 50-day delay in Missouri and another of at least 54 days in Kansas could not be reasonably excluded from the speedy trial count. Because more than 70 non-excludable days elapsed between Black’s first appearance in Missouri and his motion to dismiss, the Speedy Trial Act was violated. The panel remanded the case to the district court to decide whether to dismiss the indictment with or without prejudice.