Via SCOTUSBlog, the Supreme Court will hear argument tomorrow in Vermont v. Brillon, a speedy trial case out of Vermont with a twist.   From the AP via Bashman :

After he was charged with hitting his girlfriend in the face, career criminal Michael Brillon sat in jail without bail for nearly three years, going through six public defenders before being tried for assault.

The delays paid off – for Brillon: A Vermont court threw out his conviction and freed him from prison last spring, saying his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial had been violated.

The problem, of course, is that the delay, though substantial, was on the defense side of the courtroom, not the prosecution.  But since the defendant’s counsel(s) are assigned, and paid for, by the government.  The problem is that this creates a potential for defendants gaming the system.

The ruling outraged victim’s rights’ advocates and others, both because Brillon was freed and for fear that other suspects would take his cue, hoping for a similar outcome.

“The motivation would certainly be there,” said Erica Marthage, one of the Vermont prosecutors who will appear at Tuesday’s oral argument before the Supreme Court in Washington.

While the prosecution’s position, essentially a slippery slope argument, is understandable, this really doesn’t seem to present as difficult a scenario to address as they claim.  After all, all courtrooms have a person in a black robe sitting on a big bench, whose job it is to move cases forward with appropriate speed and ascertain whether defendants, in their interactions with their assigned attorney, are legitimate.  If a defendant is determined to be gaming the system, the court can refuse to relieve counsel despite the defendant’s objections and, more significantly, can ultimately determine that the defendant has waived his right to counsel by conduct designed to prevent a case from moving to completion.

The reason why this becomes a more significant determination is that states, as money to compensate indigent counsel becomes increasingly tight, will continue to overload public defenders and attorneys representing the indigent to the point where they will be unable to prepare for trial, and cases will languish while defendants rot in jail without bail.

Maureen Dimino, indigent defense counsel for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said cases like Brillon’s will become more common as cash-strapped states cut funding for public defender services, burdening those lawyers with so many cases that they seek more delays to prepare.

“This is going to become a bigger and bigger issue due to the economic crunch. The states are failing to fund these systems, causing these undue delays,” she said.

Thus, it strikes me as offering the Supremes a fairly clear path to addressing the problem by putting the onus on the judge to distinguish between the defendant whose delay is self-induced for the purpose of creating a speedy trial issue where none need exist, as opposed to the very real, very legitimate problems of systemic delays due to inadequate funding and a severe shortage of lawyers to represent the indigent.

Of course, since the victims rights people are outraged by Brillon’s “victory”, one can never assume the Court will see its way clear to expecting trial judges to do their job and thus preserve the defendants’ right to a speedy trial while finding the conceptual ledge that prevents the slide down the slipper slope.