Betterman v. Montana
The Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment's speedy trial guarantee only covers the period from arrest or charge through conviction, not the time between a guilty plea or verdict and sentencing.
Because a Montana man's 14-month wait for sentencing happened after his guilty plea, the Court held the Speedy Trial Clause simply did not apply to it, though it noted other legal tools like due process claims and court rules could still address unreasonable sentencing delays.
“The Sixth Amendment speedy trial right, however, does not extend beyond conviction, which terminates the presumption of innocence.”
The Court's core holding that the speedy trial right ends once someone is convicted.
How it got here: The Montana Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and sentence, rejecting his speedy trial claim; the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case to resolve a split among courts.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Brandon Betterman failed to appear in court on domestic assault charges and was charged with bail jumping. After he pleaded guilty, he sat in jail for more than 14 months before being sentenced, largely because of delays in preparing his presentence report and scheduling. He was ultimately sentenced to seven years, with four suspended, and argued the delay violated his speedy trial rights.
The question before the Court
Does the Constitution's right to a speedy trial protect a defendant from a long delay between pleading guilty and being sentenced?
The Court's answer
No — the Sixth Amendment's speedy trial guarantee protects someone only from the time they're arrested or charged until they're convicted or plead guilty. Once that happens, the presumption of innocence that the speedy trial right is designed to protect disappears, so the Clause no longer applies, even to a lengthy wait for sentencing like the 14 months Betterman spent in jail.
That doesn't mean delayed sentencing is beyond all legal challenge. The Court pointed to court rules requiring sentencing "without unnecessary delay" and suggested that, in extreme cases, a defendant could raise a due process claim instead. Betterman didn't raise a due process argument, so the Court left open exactly what test would apply to such a claim in the future.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Defendants who face long waits between a guilty plea or conviction and their sentencing hearing cannot use the Speedy Trial Clause to get their charges dismissed. They must instead rely on court rules requiring timely sentencing or, if extreme enough, a due process claim — a harder and less defined path with no automatic dismissal remedy.
What changes now
The ruling is final on the constitutional question: the Speedy Trial Clause does not apply to sentencing delays. Betterman's conviction and sentence remain affirmed. The Court left open whether a due process claim could address extreme sentencing delays in future cases, since Betterman did not raise one here, and did not decide how bifurcated sentencing proceedings involving fact-finding might be treated.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether unreasonable sentencing delay could violate due process rights, since Betterman never raised that claim, nor did it address bifurcated sentencing proceedings where a jury finds facts that increase the sentence, or whether the speedy trial right revives after a successful appeal and new prosecution.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas agreed the Speedy Trial Clause doesn't cover ordinary sentencing delay, but flagged that bifurcated sentencing proceedings where enhancements function like elements of a greater offense might be different. He declined to say now what legal test should govern a future due process challenge to sentencing delay, suggesting options like state remedies, mandamus, or statutes, and cautioned against assuming the Barker test would simply transfer over.
Concurrence — Justice Sotomayor
Justice Sotomayor agreed the Speedy Trial Clause claim failed, but wrote to stress that the proper test for a due process challenge to sentencing delay remains genuinely open. She noted the Court has used the four-factor Barker test in analogous delay contexts, like civil forfeiture, and thought it could sensibly extend to sentencing delay, but wanted a future case to decide the question properly.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court divided a criminal case into three phases — investigation, arrest-through-conviction, and post-conviction sentencing — and identified different legal protections against delay tied to each phase.
- The Speedy Trial Clause protects the presumption of innocence, which exists only for someone accused but not yet convicted; once a person is convicted or pleads guilty, that presumption disappears.
- Historical sources, including founding-era legal commentary, treated 'accused' as a status ending at conviction and treated 'trial' as a discrete event followed by a separate sentencing judgment, supporting a reading that the speedy trial right ends at conviction.
- The Court noted that the only remedy for a speedy trial violation is dismissal of the charges, and applying that remedy to sentencing delay would unfairly wipe out a validly obtained conviction rather than just fixing the delay.
- The Court observed that Congress's Speedy Trial Act and many state laws impose firm deadlines for arrest, charging, and trial, but say nothing about sentencing deadlines, reinforcing that the constitutional right was never understood to reach that stage.
- The Court concluded that because presentence investigation reports reasonably take time to prepare, the presumption-of-innocence rationale behind the Speedy Trial Clause has no application once guilt has already been established.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Marion (404 U. S. 307)
The Court relies on this case's rule that the speedy trial right does not arise before arrest or charge.
Reaffirms Barker v. Wingo (407 U. S. 514)
The Court leans on this case's description of the harms pretrial detention causes to the presumptively innocent.