United States v. Jefferson D. Ross, United States of America v. Charles Elmer Wynn

In the late evening of September 27, 1968, aboard the S. S. Chatham, a vessel anchored in the harbor of Nha Trang, South Vietnam, Karl Von Rodenstein was severely beaten and narrowly averted being thrown overboard. A jury found appellants Ross and Wynn to have been the perpetrators of these vicious acts and pronounced them guilty of assault with intent to commit murder, a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 113 (a). We are satisfied there is substantial evidence to support the jury’s verdict. For this reason and because resolution of this appeal does not require a factual analysis of the crime, we deem it unnecessary to recite the gruesome details of the brutal beating inflicted on Von Rodenstein.

Appellants contend they were denied due process of law and the right to a speedy trial because by the time the indictment was returned some eleven months after the commission of the offense, the one witness who could have planted the seed of doubt as to Von Ro- denstein’s veracity (and thus persuaded the jury to discount Von Rodenstein’s testimony that appellants initiated the assault in his cabin) had been lost at sea one month earlier. According to the appellants, the death of the Chatham’s…