Mississippi Offender Serving Life Sentence Wins Habeas Appeal

A repeat offender who waited 1,233 days to be tried for shooting a firearm he wasn’t permitted to have into a trailer in Mississippi is entitled to a writ of habeas corpus, the Fifth Circuit said Thursday.

Dismissal of an indictment is the only possible remedy for a speedy trial violation. Here, the state court agreed that Brian Scott Berryman’s Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial had been violated, but only as to one of two counts, and instead of dismissing the entire indictment, it dismissed only the tainted count.

That was an unreasonable application of clearly established law, ...