US SUPREME COURT DECISIONS

Petitioner was indicted in 1960 on a Texas criminal charge. He was then, and still is, a prisoner in a federal penitentiary. For the next six years, he vainly sought to gain a speedy trial in respondent's court. In 1967, he filed in that court a motion, which has not been acted on, to dismiss the charge for want of prosecution. Petitioner then filed a mandamus petition requesting an order to show cause why the charge should not be dismissed. The Texas Supreme Court denied the petition on the basis of a previous decision acknowledging that a state prisoner would have been entitled to be brought to trial but holding that a different rule applies "when two separate sovereignties are involved," since "[t]he true test should be the power and authority of the state unaided by any waiver, permission or act of grace of any other authority."

Held: Under the Sixth Amendment, as made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth, the State, on petitioner's demand, was required to make a diligent, good faith effort to bring petitioner to trial in respondent's court. Pp. 393 U. S. 377-383.

Vacated and remanded.