concurring.
I concur in Judge Flaum’s excellent and detailed opinion. I write, then, only to express my strongly held belief that criminal justice, if it is to be effective at all as a detriment, must be administered in hot blood; that is, as close to the criminal act as possible. All speedy trial acts and statutes of limitation aside, criminal prosecutions have a salutary effect on the individual defendants and the community at large when the process is sure and swift. The long delay between crime and punishment betokens an attitude that the agencies established to protect society from crime are both disinterested and leisurely about their business.
Neither is true, I am aware, and there well may be some perfectly valid reason for the long delay in the present case. Nevertheless, no reason appears on the record— and perhaps that too has logical and sensible explanation — but the perception of swiftness, fairness, and sureness that engenders respect for the law and its agencies by the public and offenders alike is not enhanced by such severe delays between the arrest and trial.
We depend on public acceptance of the rule of law to keep society from tearing itself apart. Speed in execution of the law gives strength to the faith in its usefulness so necessary for a self-governing nation.