## Facts

- Joanne Lindstrom (a legal secretary) and Dennis Slater (a trial attorney) helped form Bay Therapy, Inc., a Florida corporation that purported to provide physical therapy to injured persons under physicians’ prescriptions.
- The government alleged Bay Therapy was used to inflate personal-injury claims by billing insurers for unnecessary or unperformed treatments and by altering or duplicating billing records.
- The prosecution’s key witness, a former Bay Therapy employee, testified that she discussed record alteration with Lindstrom and Slater, changed records with Lindstrom, and was instructed by them to duplicate billing cards and to obtain patient signatures for treatments not received.
- Other witnesses, including former patients and insurance personnel, corroborated parts of the billing practices and business operations.
- The defense asserted the key witness was driven by hostility and a personal vendetta and sought to impeach her with evidence of serious psychiatric illness and extreme retaliatory behavior reflected in psychiatric and medical records.
- The district court reviewed the records in camera, largely denied defense access to them, and limited cross-examination to narrow questions about whether and when the witness had been psychiatrically committed, excluding inquiry into diagnoses and specific conduct offered to show bias and impaired capacity.

## Issues

1. Whether a roughly three-year preindictment delay violated the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause or the Sixth Amendment speedy-trial right, including where two potential defense witnesses died during the delay.
2. Whether restricting defense access to the government’s key witness’s psychiatric/medical records and sharply limiting cross-examination about her psychiatric history violated the Sixth Amendment right of confrontation.

## Decision

- The court rejected the preindictment-delay claim, holding the defendants did not show the government intentionally delayed indictment to gain a tactical advantage or to harass; the Sixth Amendment speedy-trial right does not attach before indictment.
- The court held the restrictions on access to psychiatric information and the limitations on cross-examination of the key witness violated the Confrontation Clause.
- The court reversed the convictions and remanded for further proceedings.

## Legal Principles

- To establish unconstitutional preindictment delay under due process, a defendant must show actual prejudice and that the government intentionally delayed to gain a tactical advantage or to harass; prejudice alone is insufficient.
- The Sixth Amendment speedy-trial right applies only after accusation (e.g., indictment or arrest), not to preindictment delay.
- The Confrontation Clause protects meaningful cross-examination to expose a witness’s bias, motive, and capacity to perceive, recall, or relate events; these matters are not collateral.
- Psychiatric evidence bearing on a key witness’s bias or capacity may be constitutionally required for impeachment, even when evidentiary limits (including restrictions associated with Rule 608(b)) would otherwise constrain character impeachment.
- When psychiatric or medical records may contain material impeachment evidence regarding a central prosecution witness, the defense must be given sufficient access, subject to appropriate safeguards, to make effective use of that material.
- Improper restriction of cross-examination concerning a key witness’s mental condition and related bias is not harmless where the government’s case substantially depends on that witness’s credibility.

## Conclusion

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed that preindictment delay does not violate due process absent deliberate prosecutorial delay for advantage, but reversed the convictions because the trial court’s denial of meaningful access to psychiatric records and its severe limits on cross-examination prevented effective impeachment of the government’s key witness and violated the defendants’ Sixth Amendment confrontation rights.


United States v. Lindstrom, 698 F.2d 1154 (11th Cir. 1983)