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Utah Supreme Court weighs whether state's two-year failure to notify defendant warrants dismissal for speedy-trial violation
Summary
At oral argument the justices probed whether a roughly two-year period when a defendant was unaware of charges and the State's admitted negligence create "presumptive prejudice," or whether the defendant must show non-speculative harm tied to a delayed parole hearing or other effects.
Utah Supreme Court justices heard competing arguments over whether a two-year period in which state prosecutors failed to notify a defendant of criminal charges amounts to a violation of the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial.
"May it please the Court, subject to this Court's questions, of course, I plan on focusing the balance of my argument mostly on the standards applicable to the 2 disputed factors here, which is the assertion of the right and the prejudice," state counsel John Nelson told the justices, arguing that a defendant must assert both a desire for "speed" and for a "trial" for the assertion factor to weigh in his favor. Nelson urged the Court to require specificity and to exclude speculative prejudice from weighing in the defendant's favor.
Responding for the respondent,…
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