State v. Johnson

The right to a speedy trial is a fundamental right guaranteed to an accused by the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution and applicable to the states by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Barker v. Wingo, 407 U. S. 514, 515 (92 SC 2182, 33 LE2d 101) (1972). It is a “slippery” right “generically different from any of the other rights enshrined in the Constitution for the protection of the accused,” it has an “amorphous quality,” and its violation results in the “unsatisfactorily severe remedy of dismissal of the indictment” with prejudice. Id. at 519, 522. Because…