Court Clears Man Who Waited 7 Years for Trial on Pot Charges
It was after his third mental competency test, all of which he passed, that Joseph Tigano started getting desperate. After all, by that point he had spent six years locked inside the Niagara County, N.Y., jail, awaiting trial on a charge of growing pot. It would be another year before the trial began.
The wheels of justice are known for turning slowly, but they moved so sluggishly in Mr. Tigano’s case that on Tuesday, the United States Appeals Court for the Second Circuit issued a scathing opinion dismissing his indictment. In the opinion, the court said the case was the most egregious trial delay it had ever seen, implicating everyone whom Mr. Tigano had come in contact with: judges, lawyers, prosecutors, United States marshals, even a court reporter.
“No single, extraordinary factor caused the cumulative seven years of pretrial delay,” the appellate judges wrote. “Instead, the outcome was the result of countless small choices and neglects.”
The court released Mr. Tigano in November, two years into a 20-year sentence and nine years after his arrest. But the opinion issued Tuesday was the first detailed account of why he had been freed.
Mr. Tigano’s listless prosecution began in July 2008 when agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration descended on his property in Cattaraugus, N.Y., an hour south of Buffalo, and discovered what the government described as a “hydroponic marijuana grow operation” of more than 1,000 plants. He and his father, Joseph Tigano Sr., were charged with marijuana distribution and were scheduled to appear in court in March 2009.
After the father asked for a brief delay, the parties met in Federal District Court in Buffalo that April. During the hearing, the opinion said, Mr. Tigano, 53, was eager to get things moving and reminded the court at least 10 times of his right to a speedy trial. The behavior struck his lawyer, Thomas Farley, as unusual. Mr. Farley requested that his client take a mental competency test.
Four months later, the results came back: Mr. Tigano was perfectly fit for trial. But he was also angry at Mr. Farley for having forced him to take the test and asked the court if he could represent himself. Another month went by as the court considered his request and assigned a “standby” lawyer to assist him. Then, in January 2010, the second lawyer asked for a competency test. Four months later, it produced the same result: Mr. Tigano was fine.
Over the next two years, the court said, Mr. Tigano’s case became mired in “confusion among judges” and various other “small neglects.” There were three different jurists handling different aspects of the case, and they often found themselves awaiting the others’ decisions. The government was also slow in turning over discovery material, according to the opinion. At one point, as an important hearing neared, a court reporter filed a transcript nearly four months late.
By July 2012, Mr. Tigano had finally had enough and agreed to open plea negotiations with the government. (His father pleaded guilty one year later and was sentenced to time served.) But even Mr. Tigano’s plea discussions were hindered by delays. The prosecutor on his case had been assigned another trial, and Mr. Tigano took a “back seat within the U.S. attorney’s office,” according to the opinion. Things were slowed down further when Mr. Tigano’s lawyer tried to persuade him to take the guilty plea, which he had started to have doubts about, complaining it was taking too long.
In September 2013, all of the parties agreed to come to court to schedule a trial. But the government and Judge William M. Skretny had trouble picking a date because of what the opinion called “congested calendars.” Though a trial was eventually set for that December, Judge Skretny decided to delay it, advising Mr. Tigano to reconsider his plea. “You spent some time in jail,” he said. “I don’t think waiting until January is going to really materially affect anything.”
It was at this point that a strange case took an even stranger turn. In January 2014, Mr. Tigano’s standby lawyer filed a motion asking the court to force her client to take a third competency test. She was concerned, the motion said, that “in refusing to plead guilty and insisting on his right to a trial,” Mr. Tigano was acting “imprudently.” Judge Skretny referred the matter to one of his magistrates, saying, “Whatever time it takes, it takes.”
The magistrate ordered Mr. Tigano to undergo a 15-day examination at Manhattan’s federal jail — and that, too, was delayed when the warden there reported that the jail had a “high volume of cases.” When he finished the test on May 2, 2014, he was once again deemed fit to stand trial. But instead of returning him to Buffalo, the Marshal Service, which often transports prisoners, “seems to have lost track” of him, the order said. He missed two pretrial hearings, which led to more delays.
Finally, on May 4, 2015 — six years, nine months and 26 days after his arrest — Mr. Tigano’s trial began.
A jury found him guilty four days later.
“It was shocking what happened here — how the system showed a flagrant disregard to his right to a speedy trial,” said Gary Stein, a lawyer who handled Mr. Tigano’s appeal. “There was no reason why he should have endured seven years of pretrial incarceration for a one-week trial. Things like this aren’t supposed to happen.”
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