United States v. Rice, No. 13-10152 (9th Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CaseDefendant appealed his conviction and sentence for conspiracy to commit money laundering and money laundering, as well as failure to appear. The court concluded that, although the district court should have acted more promptly in granting defendant's request to appear pro se, defendant's Sixth Amendment rights were not violated at the March 6, 2009 initial appearance and arraignment. The court found no Sixth Amendment violation in the record as a whole where the district court's actions during the July 28 initial appearance and arraignment on the failure-to-appear charges ensured that there was no constitutional violation. When the court granted defendant's request to proceed pro se, he was given more time to prepare for trial than if his motion had been granted at the original March 6 initial appearance and arraignment. Further, the court found no violation of defendant's statutory right to a speedy trial where his trial began 54 non-excludable days after his January 12, 2012 appearance, well within the 70-day statutory limit. In this case, the government concedes that the sentence, restitution, and forfeiture imposed by the district court were based on a loss amount that included money laundered before defendant joined the conspiracy. Therefore, the court remanded for resentencing and recalculation of restitution and forfeiture. The court affirmed the conviction.
Court Description: Criminal Law. The panel affirmed convictions for conspiracy, money laundering, and failure to appear, but vacated the sentence and remanded for resentencing and recalculation of restitution and forfeiture. The panel held that although the district court should have acted more promptly in granting the defendant’s request to appear pro se, the district court did not violate the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to self-representation. The panel held that the defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights were not violated at a March 6, 2009, initial appearance and arraignment on the conspiracy and money laundering charges, which proceeded precisely as if the defendant were representing himself with the assistance of standby counsel. The panel wrote that even assuming that some delay in addressing the defendant’s March 6 self-representation UNITED STATES V. RICE 3 request can be attributed to the defendant’s failure to appear for a pretrial conference, the district court, which did not conduct a Faretta hearing until July 28, 2009, and in the interim struck a dozen pretrial motions because they were not filed by counsel, should have taken up the self-representation request more expeditiously. The panel held that the district court’s actions during the July 28 initial appearance and arraignment on the failure-to- appear charges ensured that there was no constitutional violation. The panel explained that the district court, when granting the defendant’s request to proceed pro se, placed the defendant in the same situation on July 28 as would have obtained had his Faretta motion been granted on March 6 by inviting him to refile all motions, extending the time to file motions to a date to which the defendant stipulated, and giving him more time to prepare for trial than he would have had otherwise. The panel found no violation of the defendant’s statutory right to a speedy trial. In light of the government’s concession that the district court improperly based the sentence, restitution, and forfeiture on a loss amount that included money laundered before the defendant joined the conspiracy, the panel remanded for resentencing and recalculation. 4 UNITED STATES V. RICE
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