# United States v. Ewell

> Supreme Court of the United States · February 23, 1966 · 383 U.S. 116

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9423148

## Case

- **Full name:** UNITED STATES v. EWELL Et Al.
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** February 23, 1966
- **Citations:** 383 U.S. 116; 86 S. Ct. 773; 15 L. Ed. 2d 627; 1966 U.S. LEXIS 2215
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Brennan
- **Judges:** White, Brennan, Fortas, Douglas
- **Cited by:** 1,029 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- **Yellow flag:** Reported overruled on other grounds by Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 (1967) — not on the Supreme Court's list.
- Negative treatments: 1
- Distinguished by: 0
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9423148

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- holding that, “[w]e cannot agree that the passage of 19 months between the original arrests and the hearings on the later indictments itself demonstrates a violation of the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a speedy 19 trial.”
- holding that the government was not responsible for delay from withdrawal of guilty plea
- noting that “ordinary procedures for criminal prosecution are designed to move at a deliberate pace. A requirement of unreasonable speed would have a deleterious effect both upon the rights of the accused and upon the ability of society to protect itself.”
- stating that the substantial interval between the defendants’ original and subsequent indictments did not in itself violate the speedy trial provision of the Constitution

## Opinion text

MR. Justice Brennan,
concurring in the result.
I am unable to join the Court’s opinion, because it could be read as implying approval of a course of government conduct that I find most oppressive. Appellees were indicted initially under only one of the three statutes which this Court held in Gore v. United States, 357 U. S. 386, over my dissent, might constitutionally be applied to a single narcotics sale. Their successful at *126 tacks upon their sentences brought on these new indictments for all three statutory offenses. I can think of no plausible reasons for this tactic except to increase the pressure on appellees to plead guilty by raising the threat of cumulative sentences, or to punish them for asserting their rights to challenge their original sentences. The Government offered to abandon this tactic and limit prosecution to 26 U. S. C. § 4704 (1964 ed.) only on rehearing, after the prosecution seemed imperiled.
Government tactics of this kind raise very serious questions for me. Cf. Green v. United States, 355 U. S. 184 ; Abbate v. United States, 359 U. S. 187, 196-201 (separate opinion); Van Alstyne, In Gideon’s Wake: Harsher Penalties and the “Successful” Criminal Appellant, 74 Yale L. J. 606 (1965). But I agree with the Court that, because the prosecution is now limited to § 4704, appellees have suffered no prejudice. I would not, however, as the Court seems to do, imply approval of the tactics the Government employed. Indeed, the Government informed us after argument that this problem is involved in another case, pending below, where an accused initially indicted for only one offense has been reindicted for three. It does not appear that the Government has limited the prosecution in that case to § 4704.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9423148. Public record. Not legal advice.