Out of Legal Limbo

In 1964, the usually enlightened cam pus town of Chapel Hill, N.C., jailed scores of faculty and students for trying to desegregate local public accommodations. To keep the demonstrators quiet, Solicitor (Prosecutor) Thomas Cooper used a ploy of keeping them in a kind of legal limbo by indefinitely postponing their trials. Last week the Supreme Court voided the ploy, and in the process made history: for the first time, the court extended the Sixth Amendment right of speedy trial to all American courts.

The case involved Zoologist Peter H.

Klopfer, 36, of nearby Duke University, who had joined several other professors in a Chapel Hill restaurant demonstration. Two of the professors were beaten; all were arrested for criminal trespass (possible rap: two years). When Klop fer got a hung jury, Judge Raymond Mallard declared a mistrial. Subsequent ly, the "trespass" Supreme cases in Court light of tossed the out 1964 similar Civil Rights Act, which desegregated public accommodations. But Klopfer remained in jeopardy: 18 months after the indic ment, Judge Mallard allowed Solicitor Cooper to make use of a "nolle prosequi with leave," meaning the power to re instate the prosecution at any time he pleased.

Klopfer felt that he could not leave home for speaking engagements or a planned year's study in Germany. He could not even stray very far from the courthouse: Cooper would suddenly and temporarily call up the case, sending a squad car to haul Klopfer from the classroom to the courtroom. Klopfer demanded a trial, but North Carolina's top court rejected his request -- putting him in Cooper's power indefinitely.

Archaic Rules. The right to speedy trial was articulated as long ago as Magna Carta (1215) and later in the Sixth Amendment (1791) for the pur pose of preventing prolonged detention without trial. Today, most states apply the right to defendants on bail or in jail; one modern purpose is to prevent ero sion of trial evidence. But Klopfer was out of luck in North Carolina, which restricted the right only to defendants in custody.

In voiding the nolle prosequi last week, the Supreme Court simply con tinued its corporating" recent the trend of Constitution's gradually Bill "in of Rights in the due-process clause of the 14th Amendment, which is binding on states. But what is speedy trial? While a few states require trial anywhere from two to six months after indictment, fed eral courts require only no "unnecessary delay," a phrase that sometimes allows delays of several years. And who is entitled to speedy trial? In federal and most state courts, the current answer is:

only those who specifically demand the right -- a constitutional anomaly that may reach the Supreme Court one of these days.

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