By the Sea of Confusion

Though the Sixth Amendment guarantees a "speedy and public trial" in criminal cases, the U.S. Supreme Court has never specified just how fast authorities must act. Lengthening criminal court dockets and ever more crowded jails have prompted a few state courts to impose deadlines after which charges against an untried defendant must be dropped. Last winter the Florida Supreme Court handed down its own time standards, but the initial result was what Dade County Criminal Court Judge Paul Baker called a "sea of confusion."

The controversy began in January when a teen-ager accused of car theft was murdered in a crowded Miami jail cell. The killing evoked angry responses from press and public, and the legislature hastily ordered the state supreme court to issue rules requiring prompt trials. The court directed that those accused of felonies must be tried within 180 days or set free; those charged with lesser offenses have to be tried within 90 days. If any defendant formally requests a prompt trial, the time limit is 60 days. The court's directive came less than a month after the youth's murder--startling speed for so major a change in judicial practice.

Reverse Pressure. The principal impact came in Dade County (Miami), which suffered from the worst backlog. Two months ago the state received a new shock. A middle-aged busboy accused of molesting a ten-year-old boy was set loose when the time limit ran out. In fact, since March more than 100 defendants in the county, including two accused of assault with intent to murder, have been freed. The public pressure that started the train of events has turned massively against the speedy-trial deadlines.

Judge Baker, for one, has undertaken a personal campaign to revise the guidelines. Arguing that the supreme court's ukase was not a model of clarity, he ruled in a case before his court that the new policy is unconstitutional. It is impermissibly vague, he said, and violates the separation of state powers because "the legislature has no authority to order the supreme court to do anything." His decision applies only in his courtroom, and the state supreme court quickly overruled him. But last week Baker asked the U.S. Supreme Court to "stop the Supreme Court of Florida from wholesale dismissal of defendants."

Plea Bargaining. Meanwhile, the new standards had been modified to give authorities more time. But Dade County still had more than 5,000 cases to dispose of and the time limit now has run out for all those who were awaiting trial when the new rules went into effect. Right up to the deadline, prosecutors and judges were engaging in a frantic binge of plea bargaining--allowing defendants to plead guilty to lesser charges to avoid the time and expense of trials. There simply was no way to try everyone. Overcrowded Florida court calendars may now be a problem of the past. Still, the state's confusion-ridden changeover should serve as a warning to other states facing the same reform. New York, which will shift next May to court-ordered speedy-trial deadlines except in homicide cases, has as yet done little to head off the sort of difficulty that plagued Florida.

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