CASE BRIEF

A case brief should be 1-2 pages. (250-500 words) The brief for each case should be submitted before the date on the work schedule. Be prepared to discuss your brief in class.

Facts: Summarize the facts of the case. List only the essential facts that you need to understand the holding and reasoning of the case.

Procedure: Most of the cases that you'll read in law school will be appellate court decisions. In this section, you want to list what happened in the lower court(s). Do not go into too much detail. One or two sentences are sufficient for this section.

Issue(s): What is/are the question(s) facing the court? Form the issue questions in a way that they can be answered by yes or no.

Holding: How did the court answer the issue question(s)? YES/NO?

Reasoning: This is the most important section of your case brief. Here you want to list the reasoning of the majority in reaching its decision. You can actually be quite detailed in this section. List what the law was before this case was decided and how the law has changed after this decision. Law professors love to discuss the reasoning of a case in class discussions.

Concurring/dissenting opinions: Even though I read the concurring and dissenting opinions, I rarely brief them. However, there are some cases (e.g. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer) where the concurring or dissenting opinions end up becoming more important than the majority's opinions. In such cases, you should add this section to your case brief.

Chapter 5 - Barker v. Wingo and the Right to a Speedy Trial

Barker v.Wingo
The Right to a Speedy Trial

The case of Barker v. Wingo serves as a prime example of how the issue of time comes into play in the judicial system. In this situation, two suspects were arrested for the murder of an elderly couple. The District Attorney felt that there was a stronger case against one of the accused, Silas Manning, and felt that a conviction could not be gained against the other man, Willie Barker, without Manning’s testimony against him. The prosecution of Manning took six trials and an unexpectedly long amount of time. Further delays after it was time to try Barker (for example, the illness of the chief investigator on the case), required more continuances and it wasn’t until more than five years after his arrest that Willie Barker was tried and convicted of murder with the help of the testimony of Silas Manning.
In this scenario, the Court assessed the delays that had taken place, and determined that they were extraordinary, but that the concept of “the right to a speedy trial” was not as clear as it might appear at first glance. Because of the difficulty of defining just what constitutes an appropriate amount of time, especially when the differences between cases are considered, it is impossible to determine just when that right to a speedy trial has been violated. Although in the Barker case the court determined that the delay had been extraordinary, it did not find that Barker had been unduly prejudiced by the delay.
Just as it states in the Case Close-up, it is extraordinarily difficult to say when a long time between an arrest and the sentencing of a criminal is too long. And it would seem that it is a difficult question to which there is no clear answer. Most people would agree that there is a problem and that sometimes the amount of time it takes to prosecute and convict a criminal is ridiculous. The problem comes in determining why it is so hard to process criminal cases in a timely manner and what the solution is.
Proponents of the law-on-the-books approach focus on procedural and resource problems that exist within the justice system. This approach of adding resources (prosecutors, judges, etc) and/or eliminating some of the “busywork” stages of procedure (preliminary hearings, pretrial motions, etc) seems logical, but has recently been questioned. Studies seem to show that the amount of resources a court has doesn’t seem to affect processing time at all. Some courts have fewer resources and a greater caseload and still have a shorter processing time than courts with more resources and fewer cases.
Speedy trial laws have also seemingly proven ineffective in shortening processing time. This is primarily because they don’t aren’t based on any reason for delay so they don’t offer any alternative to the status quo, and they also don’t provide effective enforcement controls. Thus the laws are good in theory, but often are not enforced, and when they are enforced, it is often to the detriment of concurrent civil cases.
The law-in-action approach to court delay recommends not merely the institution of more human resources and procedural downsizing, but the evaluation of what other aspects of the courtroom could be having an effect on the time it takes to prosecute cases. The human aspects that slow down processing are many. If only one person (a witness, defendant, lawyer, etc.) is missing from a hearing or trial, the entire process stops and waits or reschedules for a time when every one can be there. Overlapping schedules between the judge, prosecutor, defense lawyer, and even jailor can cause conflicts that upset the process flow.
Because the court system is an attempt to coordinate the efforts of several different groups, it is hard to make everything flow smoothly when each group is concerned with only their part of the process. What is most convenient for the police may not be the most advantageous for the prosecution, and so on. These “conflicts of interest” so to speak, result in delay.
I don’t know that there is a solution to the problem of delay. Of course the ideal justice would be swift justice, but if the process of determining the guilt of a criminal is put in a time constraint, it might become impossible. On the one hand adequate justice might not be found in a shorter amount of time, guilty parties might go free; and on the other hand, innocent suspects and victims cannot very well be expected to put their lives on hold for an indefinite amount of time. The sacrifice and inconvenience that they suffer could be an injustice also. Essentially there is no easy answer.
The correct answer to how long is too long differs from case to case. On some crimes a statute of limitations is appropriate, on others, such as murder, it is not. I would agree with the judge in the Barker v. Wingo case, that even if the delay was significant, if it was unavoidable and did not cause the undue harm to the defendant, then it probably does not qualify as a violation of the right to a speedy trial. This is especially true in the cases where the defendant truly is guilty of the crime, as in the Barker case.