United States v. Lazauskas

Stephen J. Lazauskas (defendant), an airman at Lackland Airforce Base, was charged with selling and using ecstasy. The pretrial process was delayed on several occasions, including a delay that occurred during Lazauskas’s Article 32 hearing. The convening authority appointed an investigating officer for the hearing and granted the investigating officer the power to grant reasonably requested delays. Lazauskas initially believed that all of the witnesses for the United States government (plaintiff) would testify in person at the hearing. After Lazauskas learned that the government planned to allow two of its witnesses to testify by telephone, he requested a continuance until the two witnesses were available to testify in person. The investigating officer granted this request, delaying the hearing by six days. At his arraignment, Lazauskas moved to dismiss the charges against him, arguing that his right to a speedy trial had been violated because 189 days had elapsed between referral of charges and the commencement of his trial. The military judge denied Lazauskas’s motion after determining that 72 days out of the 189-day delay were excluded from the military’s 120-day speedy-trial time limit. The court concluded that, taking into account the excluded delays, only 117 days had elapsed, and therefore Lazauskas’s trial had commenced within the allowable time limit. Lazauskas appealed, contesting, among other things, the military judge’s ruling that the six-day delay during the Article 32 hearing had been properly excluded.