Key legal question
Whether the appellate court sufficiently accounted for the violation of the right to a hearing within a reasonable time when sentencing
Extracted holding
The sentencing court sufficiently accounted for the excessive delay by substantially reducing the sentence; a further reduction or waiver of punishment was not required.
Extracted reasoning
A delay violation must be expressly noted and considered in sentencing; possible consequences range from sentence reduction to waiver or discontinuance depending on seriousness, prejudice, complexity, and responsibility for delay. Here, although the appellate court referred to the delay only briefly, it largely adopted the first instance reasoning, which had extensively reduced the sentence because of the long delay. The resulting sentence was within its discretion.