“Justice delayed is justice denied” is an old legal adage. But no court has determined exactly how long a criminal case can be pending in Maine before justice has been denied.
The case of an Aroostook County man that is before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court may set the standard for how long charges can be pending before a judge may find that it took too long to set a trial date and that the charges should be dismissed.
Maine is one of only nine states that have no explicit time limit defining defendants’ constitutional right to a speedy trial, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine. Limits in other states vary from 24 days in Michigan for a misdemeanor if a defendant is in jail to two years in Arizona for those charged with murder in cases in which the state is seeking the death penalty.
Determining how long a delay is too long before a defendant’s right to a speedy trial has been violated would help clear the huge backlog of pending criminal cases caused by the judicial system’s curtailed scheduling during the pandemic, according to groups that advocate for defendants’ rights.
But the Maine attorney general’s office is arguing that this is not the case for determining such a time limit.
Justices on Maine’s high court will hear oral arguments in the case at 11:30 a.m. Thursday at the Capital Judicial Center in Augusta.
Dennis Winchester, 58, of Van Buren was charged in multiple burglaries and thefts in northern Aroostook County in 2014. He was convicted in early 2015 in one case and sentenced to five years in prison with all but three years suspended.
Another six charges were filed at the same time, but it was not until he’d served his prison sentence in late 2017 that the district attorney proceeded with those cases. Winchester entered conditional guilty pleas, preserving his right to appeal on the basis that his right to a speedy trial had been denied. He was sentenced to five years in prison.
Winchester is incarcerated at Bolduc Correctional Facility in Warren. He is scheduled to be released in April 2025 if his convictions are not overturned.
Winchester’s convictions have been upheld by the state supreme court, but those appeals did not include a speedy trial argument. What is before the justices now is Winchester’s appeal of last year’s denial of his post-conviction review, in which he argued that his lawyers were incompetent because they ignored his requests to file motions for a speedy trial. He is asking that the convictions be overturned and that he be released.
Justices asked for “friend of the court” briefs in the Winchester case addressing whether Winchester’s right to a speedy trial had been violated under the Maine or the U.S. constitutions.
Both documents guarantee a defendant’s right to a speedy trial in criminal cases but neither constitution sets a deadline.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, the Maine Indigent Legal Defense Commission and Bangor criminal defense attorney Zachary Smith filed briefs arguing that Winchester’s right to a speedy trial was violated. The attorney general’s office, which also filed a “friend of the court brief,” maintains that it was not.
Under Maine law a defendant must file a motion asking for a speedy trial. In the federal court system, a speedy trial is assumed and defendants waive their right to a speedy trial when they or their attorneys seek to continue the proceeding. It is not unusual in federal court for several speedy trial waivers to be filed while a criminal case is pending.
Although the Maine Constitution does not say a trial must be held within a year after a defendant has been charged, the expectation when Maine became a state was that trial would be held within 12 months of charges being lodged, according to Rory McNamara, who wrote the “friend of the court” brief for the commission.
The longer defendants have unresolved criminal charges hanging over them, he said, pressure grows on them to plead guilty and “just get it over with.”
“These are precisely the sort of times which the drafters [of the Maine Constitution] had in mind when they conceived of the speedy trial provision,” McNamara said. “This court should return the speedy trial clause to its rightful place assiduously guarding Mainers against the tyranny of pre-trial limbo.”
Zachary Heiden of the ACLU of Maine said that addressing how long is too long for trials to be delayed could help the state’s court system deal with its huge backlog of criminal cases. As of Sept. 9, there were 28,357 misdemeanor, felony and civil violation cases pending in Maine’s courts, according to data compiled by the judiciary, up nearly 65 percent from the 17,187 cases pending at the start of 2019.
“This appeal provides a critical opportunity for this court to re-establish its independent interpretation of the right to a speedy trial under Maine’s Constitution, breathing life back into a right that has too often in recent years existed only on paper,” the ACLU of Maine said in its brief.
The attorney general’s office claims that the delays in Winchester case were of his own making, so he has no standing to argue that the state violated his right to a speedy trial.
“Winchester’s multiple changes of counsel and protracted litigation of a motion to suppress were the causes of the delay,” Assistant Attorney General Donald Macomber said in his brief. “Winchester never filed a demand for speedy trial, nor did he move to dismiss the indictments based on an alleged violation of his right to speedy trial, nor did he show any actual prejudice to his defense, such as missing witnesses or diminished memory, as a result of the delay.”
Because those motions weren’t filed, they weren’t preserved as grounds for appeal, he argued.
“If this court is considering expanding the protection of the Maine Constitution’s right to a speedy trial for the first time since statehood, it should wait for a case on direct appeal where the issue has been preserved and litigated [in a lower court],” Macomber said.
In addition to hearing Winchester’s case in Augusta, the court this week resumes its fall visits to Maine high schools for the first time since 2019.
Justices will convene on Tuesday morning at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School in South Paris and on Wednesday morning at the Leavitt Area High School in Turner.
The court will hear oral arguments Wednesday afternoon and all day Thursday at the courthouse in Augusta.
There is no timetable for when the court issues decisions.
