United States v. Richard Mohawk

Opinion by Judge O’SCANNLAIN.

In 1983, Richard Mohawk was convicted of armed bank robbery and sentenced to a term of twenty years in prison. He filed a timely notice of appeal from his conviction. Today, after more than ten years, we decide that appeal in his favor. In the end, we are called upon to determine whether, because of this extraordinary delay, it would violate due process to permit- the government to subject Mohawk to a second trial.

I

On January 28, 1983, three people robbed a Security Pacific National Bank in Los An-geles, California. The government sought to prove that appellant Mohawk was among them. One of the robbers wore a hooded jacket and carried a sawed-off shotgun, which was fired during the course of the robbery, wounding a customer. Before the grand jury, the officer who arrested Mohawk testified that, at the time of the arrest, Mohawk was wearing a hooded jacket like the one identified by witnesses to the robbery. Mohawk, however, insisted that the officer’s testimony was false.

It appears that Mohawk’s appointed counsel greeted this avowal with great skepticism. First one attorney and then a second were designated to represent Mohawk, but neither…