Title: Commonwealth v. Francis

State: massachusetts

Issuer: Massachusetts Supreme Court

Document:

NOTICE:  All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal 
revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound 
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error or other formal error, please notify the Reporter of 
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SJC-12683 
 
COMMONWEALTH  vs.  KEVIN FRANCIS. 
 
 
 
Suffolk.     November 4, 2019. - June 24, 2020. 
 
Present:  Gants, C.J., Lenk, Gaziano, Lowy, Budd, Cypher, 
& Kafker, JJ. 
 
 
Constitutional Law, Assistance of counsel, Fair trial, Waiver of 
constitutional rights.  Due Process of Law, Assistance of 
counsel, Fair trial.  Fair Trial.  Practice, Criminal, 
Assistance of counsel, Fair trial, Waiver, Postconviction 
relief. 
 
 
 
Indictment found and returned in the Superior Court 
Department on December 17, 1981. 
 
 
Following review by this court, 391 Mass. 369 (1984), a 
motion for a new trial, filed on September 29, 2015, was heard 
by Mitchell H. Kaplan, J. 
 
A request for leave to appeal was allowed by Gants, C.J., 
in the Supreme Judicial Court for the county of Suffolk. 
 
 
Amy M. Belger (Ira L. Gant, Committee for Public Counsel 
Services, also present) for the defendant. 
Dara Z. Kesselheim, Assistant District Attorney (Craig 
Iannini, Assistant District Attorney, also present) for the 
Commonwealth. 
 
 
 
2 
 
KAFKER, J.  The defendant, Kevin Francis, was convicted of 
murder in the first degree in 1982.  This is the defendant's 
appeal, pursuant to G. L. c. 278, § 33E, from the denial of his 
second motion for a new trial.  The victim, who was the 
defendant's former girlfriend, had been stabbed multiple times 
in the chest and skull.  The defendant had previously threatened 
her and had been identified by an eyewitness chasing the victim 
with a knife. 
At the time of his arraignment, the defendant was nineteen 
years old, indigent, and entitled to court-appointed counsel.  
Stephen Hrones, an experienced criminal defense lawyer, appeared 
at the defendant's arraignment to try to represent him at trial.  
Hrones was not on a list of attorneys who were approved by the 
court to serve as assigned counsel in murder cases, but it was 
his practice to be on the lookout for such cases.  In a sidebar 
discussion with the judge and prosecutor that excluded the 
defendant, Hrones asked if he had been added to the approved 
list of appointed counsel and informed the judge that he would 
represent the defendant privately pro bono if he could not be 
appointed by the court.  The court informed Hrones that he was 
not on the approved list but allowed Hrones to serve as private 
counsel so long as he would not be paid with any public funds.  
The judge did not seek the defendant's approval of the 
arrangement or inform the defendant in a colloquy or otherwise 
 
3 
that he was entitled to court-appointed, State-funded counsel.  
Hrones also did not explain the arrangement or secure his 
appointment as private counsel through any prior or subsequent 
discussions with the defendant.  Hrones nonetheless represented 
the defendant at trial and in his direct appeal. 
After this court affirmed his conviction, the defendant 
represented himself when filing his first motion for a new trial 
in May 1991.  At that time, he had in his possession his trial 
and arraignment transcripts, including the arraignment judge's 
summary of the sidebar discussion that took place during the 
arraignment, which stated that Hrones was private counsel and 
not appointed public counsel.  The defendant's case was also 
screened by the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) in 
1992-1993 and again in 2000 without the issue being raised in 
any motion.  It was not until his second motion for a new trial, 
filed in 2015, that a claim was raised that Hrones's appointment 
violated the defendant's rights under the Sixth Amendment to the 
United States Constitution or art. 12 of the Massachusetts 
Declaration of Rights.  This is the sole issue presented here.  
There is no suggestion that Hrones's representation at trial was 
ineffective apart from the appointment itself, as no ineffective 
assistance of counsel claims are made here by appellate counsel 
in the second motion for a new trial.  Nor were any identified 
 
4 
in our G. L. c. 278, § 33E, review in 1984.  See Commonwealth v. 
Francis, 391 Mass. 369 (1984). 
 
The first dispositive question at issue is whether the 
defendant's Sixth Amendment and art. 12 rights were violated 
when he was deprived of the opportunity to choose between paid, 
court-appointed counsel and the representation offered by Hrones 
and, relatedly, whether excluding the defendant from the sidebar 
discussion that established this arrangement violated the 
defendant's right to be present at a critical stage of his 
criminal proceedings.  Second, if the defendant's rights were 
violated, we must determine whether they warrant a new trial 
more than thirty-seven years after the defendant's conviction.  
We conclude that the defendant's right to choice of private 
counsel and right to be present during a critical stage of the 
proceedings under both the Federal and State Constitutions were 
violated.  Although a novel question, we also conclude that 
these violations of his constitutional rights are structural 
errors requiring automatic reversal absent waiver, as the choice 
of private counsel is a fundamental right to be made by the 
defendant -- not by the court and counsel and without the 
defendant's consent.  Nonetheless, the delay of more than thirty 
years in bringing these claims in these circumstances, where the 
claim was not first brought until 2015, but the transcript 
clearly depicting the constitutional violations was available 
 
5 
for the defendant in 1991 and for the public defense counsel 
screening his claims in 1992-1993 and 2000, waives the claims 
under State and Federal constitutional law.  We also conclude 
that there was no substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice,1 
as the defendant was capably represented at trial by an 
experienced criminal defense counsel, and no errors in the 
quality of that representation have been identified -- the only 
error identified is the appointment itself. 
1.  Background.  The conviction of murder in the first 
degree underlying this appeal was reviewed by this court in 
Francis, 391 Mass. 369.  We summarize the relevant facts.  On 
September 19, 1981, an eyewitness, Terrence Smith, was driving 
along Blue Hill Avenue toward Mattapan Square in Boston at 
approximately 7 P.M.  Id. at 370.  Smith saw a young woman on 
the sidewalk running toward him, and saw that she was carrying a 
stick and wearing a "rain or shine" jacket, new boots, and 
dungarees.  Id.  Smith then saw a man running about forty or 
fifty yards behind the woman.  Id.  As the man got closer, the 
                                                 
 
1 Because we are not currently reviewing the defendant's 
conviction of murder in the first degree under G. L. c. 278, 
§ 33E, we do not review whether the claimed errors caused a 
substantial likelihood of a miscarriage of justice, the standard 
uniquely designated for § 33E review.  See Commonwealth v. 
Randolph, 438 Mass. 290, 296 (2002).  Instead, we review the 
claimed errors under a slightly more stringent standard 
designated for all other unpreserved claims on appeal, namely 
whether the errors created a substantial risk of a miscarriage 
of justice.  Id. 
 
6 
eyewitness saw he was carrying a knife.  Id.  Smith testified 
that the man came within fifteen feet of him and that he saw "a 
very good side view" of the man.  Id.  At 7:15 P.M. that 
evening, the police received a call to report to the Franklin 
Field area, and upon arrival they discovered the body of the 
victim, Vanessa Marson, who was the defendant's former 
girlfriend.  Id. at 370-371.  The medical examiner testified 
that the victim died of multiple stab wounds to her chest and 
skull.  Id. at 370.  Smith identified the defendant from an 
array of ten or twelve photographs as the man he saw the evening 
of the murder and identified by means of a photograph the victim 
as the woman he saw running.  Id.  He later identified the 
defendant at trial.  Id. at 370-371.  The evidence also showed 
that the defendant had threatened the victim two months before 
the murder occurred.  Id. at 371. 
 
The defendant was charged with murder in the first degree 
and arraigned on January 8, 1982.  At the time of the 
arraignment, the defendant was nineteen years old and indigent.  
Attorney Hrones appeared at the defendant's arraignment on his 
own initiative. 
Hrones had been a member of the bar since 1972.  He had 
represented defendants pro bono in murder cases on four or five 
occasions before representing the defendant, and had tried 
numerous serious felony cases.  Nevertheless, neither the 
 
7 
defendant nor his family had any contact with Hrones before the 
arraignment or had otherwise arranged to retain Hrones's 
services.  The defendant met Hrones for the first time at the 
arraignment. 
 
At the time of the arraignment, there was a Superior Court 
rule in effect that provided that "[n]o person shall be assigned 
as counsel in a murder case unless he is included in the 
official Standing List of Counsel established by a majority vote 
of the justices."  Rule 53(1) of the Rules of the Superior Court 
(1982).  Hrones was not included in the official Standing List 
of Counsel at the time of the defendant's arraignment in 1982, 
and was reminded of this fact at the arraignment during a 
sidebar discussion with the judge.  The court conducted this 
sidebar discussion in court with the prosecutor and Hrones, out 
of the presence and earshot of the defendant.  The judge 
explained the substance of that sidebar discussion, as reflected 
in the record: 
"I would like the record to show that when the case of 
Kevin Francis was called for arraignment, Mr. Rhones [sic] 
stepped up and asked if he and the assistant district 
attorney could approach the bench.  I allowed them to do 
so. 
 
"Mr. Rhones said to me that he would represent the young 
man for no pay if he could not be appointed, and asked me 
if his appointment to the list of attorneys who may 
represent indigents accused of murder had been approved at 
the last meeting of the judges.  I told him it had not. 
 
 
8 
"As chairman of the committee involved I know that Mr. 
Rhones has applied three or four times and been turned down 
each time. 
 
"This in itself does not prevent him from private 
representation, and I am allowing him to represent the 
defendant privately. 
 
"I just want the record to show that at no time throughout 
the trial should any judge consider paying him out of 
public funds." 
 
After the sidebar discussion, in open court, the judge asked 
Hrones if he was going to file an appearance for the defendant 
as private counsel.  Hrones answered in the affirmative. 
The judge knew at the arraignment that the defendant was 
entitled to counsel who met the requirements to be court-
appointed counsel in murder cases, at no charge to the 
defendant, and that Hrones was not on the list of attorneys who 
satisfied these requirements.  Yet at no point during the 
arraignment did the judge conduct a colloquy with the defendant 
to ensure that the arrangement was acceptable to him.  Nor did 
the judge ensure that Hrones had conferred with the defendant 
regarding his representation.  He only ensured that the record 
reflected that Hrones was to receive no public funds in 
compensation for his representation. 
After a jury trial, the defendant was convicted of murder 
in the first degree on September 21, 1982, and sentenced to life 
imprisonment.  After the trial, Hrones was appointed by the 
court as public counsel to represent the defendant on appeal on 
 
9 
May 6, 1983, and received public funds for doing so.  This court 
conducted plenary review pursuant to G. L. c. 278, § 33E, and 
affirmed the defendant's conviction.  Francis, 391 Mass. at 376.  
Seven years later, the defendant filed a pro se motion for a new 
trial on May 24, 1991.  In that motion, the defendant raised an 
ineffective assistance of counsel claim.  He also argued that 
the trial judge gave improper instructions to the jury.  At the 
time the defendant filed the motion, he had transcripts of the 
trial and the arraignment in his possession -- including a 
transcript with the trial judge's summary of the sidebar 
conference discussed supra.  Nowhere in the defendant's motion 
or its accompanying memorandum of law did the defendant raise a 
Sixth Amendment or art. 12 claim based on his right to choose 
counsel.  The motion was denied without a hearing by the trial 
judge on September 23, 1993. 
An attorney for CPCS screened the defendant's case in 1992-
1993.  As part of that process, the attorney wrote to the 
defendant and asked him to provide copies of all police reports 
and other documents or information in the defendant's 
possession.  The defendant did so, yet neither the defendant nor 
CPCS raised the Sixth Amendment or art. 12 issue in the trial 
court.  Although it is not clear whether the attorney had the 
transcripts, he certainly could have requested them. 
 
10 
 
On August 18, 1999, the defendant wrote a letter to a 
second attorney at CPCS requesting an assignment of 
postconviction screening counsel.  In response to an earlier 
inquiry from CPCS regarding whether the defendant's trial 
counsel was hired by him or court appointed, the defendant 
responded:  "Court appointed."  At the time, CPCS was reviewing 
the defendant's request for postconviction screening counsel.  
CPCS assigned counsel to screen the defendant's case on February 
17, 2000.  Counsel did not file an appearance on the defendant's 
behalf until 2013. 
 
Twenty-two years after the defendant's first postconviction 
motion was denied, the defendant, through counsel, filed a 
motion for dismissal of the indictment pursuant to Mass. R. 
Crim. P. 25 (b) (2), as amended, 420 Mass. 1502 (1995), or in 
the alternative for a new trial pursuant to Mass. R. Crim. P. 
30 (b), as appearing in 435 Mass. 1501 (2001).  The defendant 
argued in his motion that he was denied his right to counsel 
under the Sixth Amendment and art. 12 when he made no knowing 
and intelligent waiver of his right to a court-appointed lawyer 
approved to try murder cases.2  On September 29, 2016, a judge in 
                                                 
 
2 The other arguments raised by the defendant -- i.e., that 
the Commonwealth withheld exculpatory evidence; that the 
defendant was convicted with inadmissible and prejudicial 
testimony admitted solely for the purpose of impeachment; that 
the trial judge failed to give proper jury instructions related 
to the reliability of eyewitness identifications; and that the 
 
11 
the Superior Court (motion judge)3 allowed the defendant's 
request for an evidentiary hearing on the motion.  The hearing 
was held in January 2018. 
 
At the evidentiary hearing, Attorney Hrones testified that 
the substance of the sidebar discussion with the arraignment 
judge in 1982 was never shared with the defendant.  Hrones 
testified that he did not remember whether he discussed with the 
defendant that Hrones was not court appointed.  However, Hrones 
also testified that he did not want the defendant to know he was 
trying the case for free because he did not want the defendant 
to fire him.  Hrones testified that it was his practice to find 
arraignments in cases of murder in the first degree so that he 
could offer his services as counsel to defendants. 
 
The defendant also testified at the evidentiary hearing.  
He testified that he first met Hrones at the arraignment, and it 
was his understanding that Hrones was court appointed.  The 
defendant testified that he would not have agreed to proceed to 
trial with Hrones if he had known that Hrones was not getting 
paid and was not on the list of counsel qualified for 
appointment in murder cases.  The defendant explained: 
                                                 
prosecutor improperly vouched for the innocence of the victim's 
boyfriend -- were rejected by the motion judge and are not the 
subject of this appeal. 
 
 
3 The motion judge was not the trial judge, who had long 
since retired. 
 
12 
"I wanted to win . . . I woulda took the paid attorney.  
It's just . . . to me, it just makes sense.  I just think 
he would -- no disrespect to anybody, but I just think he 
probably would have been more qualified." 
 
The defendant also testified that he did not know about the 
sidebar discussion with the arraignment judge -- nor had he been 
present for it.  The defendant further testified that he first 
understood what pro bono representation means after his current 
counsel explained it to him over a decade after the defendant's 
pro se motion for a new trial had been denied, and years after 
the defendant responded that his attorney had been "Court 
appointed" in his 1999 letter to CPCS. 
 
Following the evidentiary hearing, the motion judge denied 
the defendant's motion on February 22, 2018, finding "no 
constitutional right to court appointed counsel that the 
defendant has unwittingly waived."  The defendant then filed an 
application for leave to appeal from this ruling under G. L. 
c. 278, § 33E.  Following a hearing on the matter before a 
single justice, the matter was remanded to the motion judge for 
certain factual findings.  The questions to be resolved on 
remand were the following: 
"1.  On or about January 8, 1982, when Mr. Hrones filed an 
appearance to represent the defendant as his private 
attorney, had he been retained by the defendant or any 
member of his family? 
 
"2.  Did the defendant believe at the time of the 
arraignment that the court had appointed Mr. Hrones to 
represent him as his attorney?  If so, when and how did the 
 
13 
defendant learn that the court had not appointed Mr. 
Hrones? 
 
"3.  Did the defendant believe at the time of arraignment 
that Mr. Hrones was being paid by the court to represent 
him?  If so, when and how did the defendant learn that Mr. 
Hrones was representing him pro bono?" 
 
After remand, the motion judge offered both parties the option 
of another evidentiary hearing to put forward additional 
evidence on the questions of fact presented by the single 
justice, but both parties declined the opportunity.  The judge 
found in response to the first question that "at or about the 
time that Mr. Hrones filed his notice of appearance in this case 
he had not been retained by the defendant or a member of his 
family."  The judge credited Hrones's testimony at the January 
2018 hearing that "it was his practice to be on the look-out for 
arraignments in first degree murder cases so that he could offer 
his services as counsel to the accused."  The judge concluded 
that there was "no discussion with the defendant in which either 
the defendant or his family 'retained' Mr. Hrones as the 
defendant's attorney in this case." 
In response to the second and third questions, the motion 
judge found that "the defendant [had] not proved that, at or 
about the time of his arraignment, he was unaware that the court 
had not appointed Mr. Hrones to represent him or that Mr. Hrones 
was not being paid by the Commonwealth."  The judge stated that 
Hrones's concession that he did not remember whether he had ever 
 
14 
told the defendant that he had not been appointed by the court 
was "inadequate to meet the defendant's burden of proof" on his 
second motion for a new trial.  The judge did not credit the 
defendant's testimony that "he did not know that Mr. Hrones was 
representing him pro bono as opposed to as court appointed 
counsel until relatively recently and had never discussed it 
with [Hrones]."  The judge did not find that the defendant was 
intentionally misrepresenting what he remembered; rather, the 
judge did not credit the defendant's testimony because he found 
that "this issue would not have been a noteworthy matter to the 
defendant in 1982."  That is because, the judge explained, "the 
defendant was totally unaware of the significance of the 
distinction between being represented by a court appointed 
lawyer or a private attorney appearing pro bono, until his 
present post-conviction counsel developed the Sixth Amendment 
argument presented in the pending motion and explained it to 
him."  The defendant thus would not have found the sidebar 
exchange between the arraignment judge and Hrones significant, 
which is why, the motion judge reasoned, he failed to mention it 
in his first motion for a new trial. 
Following remand, the single justice granted the 
defendant's application for leave to appeal from the denial of 
his second motion for a new trial, concluding that the issues 
 
15 
raised in the defendant's application were both new and 
substantial within the meaning of G. L. c. 278, § 33E. 
 
2.  Discussion.  a.  Standard of review.  "We review the 
disposition of a motion for a new trial for a significant error 
of law or other abuse of discretion" (quotation and citation 
omitted).  Commonwealth v. Robinson, 480 Mass. 146, 149 (2018).  
"When . . . the motion judge did not preside at trial, we defer 
to that judge's assessment of the credibility of witnesses at 
the [evidentiary] hearing on the new trial motion, but we regard 
ourselves in as good a position as the motion judge to assess 
the trial record" (citation omitted).  Commonwealth v. Drayton, 
479 Mass. 479, 486 (2018).  Furthermore, "we make an independent 
determination as to the correctness of the judge's application 
of constitutional principles to the facts as found" (quotation 
and citation omitted).  Id. 
 
b.  The right to counsel and the right to choose counsel.  
The Sixth Amendment provides that, "[i]n all criminal 
prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to have 
the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."  The United States 
Supreme Court has interpreted the Sixth Amendment to mean that 
"counsel must be provided for defendants unable to employ 
 
16 
counsel unless the right is competently and intelligently 
waived."  Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 339-340 (1963).4 
 
The Sixth Amendment right to counsel also encompasses the 
right to private counsel of one's choice, subject to certain 
restrictions.  See United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. 
140, 144 (2006); Caplin & Drysdale, Chartered v. United States, 
491 U.S. 617, 625-626 (1989) (Caplin & Drysdale); Wheat v. 
United States, 486 U.S. 153, 162-164 (1988).  In Gonzalez-Lopez, 
supra at 142, the defendant hired a California attorney to 
represent him on a Federal drug charge in Missouri.  The 
District Court twice denied the California attorney's 
application for admission pro hac vice.  Id. at 142-143.  The 
defendant appealed from his conviction, arguing that denial of 
his attorney's pro hac vice motions was erroneous and violated 
his Sixth Amendment right to paid counsel of his choosing.  Id. 
at 143-144.  The Court agreed.  It began by rejecting the 
government's argument that the defendant's right to choose 
                                                 
 
4 The court may not "forc[e] a lawyer upon an unwilling 
defendant," as this would be "contrary to his basic right to 
defend himself if he truly wants to do so."  Faretta v. 
California, 422 U.S. 806, 817 (1975).  As such, the Sixth 
Amendment right to counsel can be waived, but such waiver must 
be knowing and intelligent:  "Although a defendant need not 
himself have the skill and experience of a lawyer in order 
competently and intelligently to choose self-representation, he 
should be made aware of the dangers and disadvantages of self-
representation, so that the record will establish that he knows 
what he is doing and his choice is made with eyes open" 
(quotation and citation omitted).  Id. at 835. 
 
17 
counsel was satisfied so long as the counsel with whom he was 
left was competent and the over-all trial was fair.  The Court 
held that the Sixth Amendment "commands, not that a trial be 
fair, but that a particular guarantee of fairness be provided -- 
to wit, that the accused be defended by counsel he believes to 
be best."  Id. at 146.  As a result, "[d]eprivation of the right 
[to private counsel of one's choice] is 'complete' when the 
defendant is erroneously prevented from being represented by the 
lawyer he wants, regardless of the quality of the representation 
he received."  Id. at 148.  Arguing otherwise "confuse[s] the 
right to counsel of choice -- which is the right to a particular 
lawyer regardless of comparative effectiveness -- with the right 
to effective counsel -- which imposes a baseline requirement of 
competence on whatever lawyer is chosen or appointed."  Id.  As 
such, "[a] choice-of-counsel violation occurs whenever the 
defendant's choice is wrongfully denied."  Id. at 150.5 
                                                 
 
5 In a dissent joined by three other justices, Justice Alito 
wrote:  "I would hold that the erroneous disqualification of 
counsel does not violate the Sixth Amendment unless the ruling 
diminishes the quality of assistance that the defendant would 
have otherwise received."  United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 
U.S. 140, 155 (2006) (Alito, J., dissenting).  This would 
require the defendant to "show an identifiable difference in the 
quality of representation," and also prejudice resulting from 
the disqualification, even in cases involving the erroneous 
interference with choice of counsel (quotation omitted).  Id. at 
156.  See Wheat v. United States, 486 U.S. 153, 159 (1988) 
("Thus, while the right to select and be represented by one's 
preferred attorney is comprehended by the Sixth Amendment, the 
essential aim of the Amendment is to guarantee an effective 
 
18 
 
The Court did, however, stress that the right to choose 
one's counsel is not absolute:  for example, it "does not extend 
to defendants who require counsel to be appointed for them.  Nor 
may a defendant insist on representation by a person who is not 
a member of the bar, or demand that a court honor his waiver of 
conflict-free representation" (citations omitted).  Id. at 151-
152.  See Wheat, 486 U.S. at 162-164.  The court need not unduly 
delay trial to provide the defendant with counsel of his choice.  
See Burton v. Renico, 391 F.3d 764, 771 (6th Cir. 2004), cert. 
denied, 546 U.S. 821 (2005). 
 
We have similarly defined and limited the right to choice 
of counsel under art. 12.  Article 12 provides that, in criminal 
proceedings, "every subject shall have a right . . . to be fully 
heard in his defense by himself, or his council at his 
election."  This court has held that, "as a general rule, a 
defendant should be afforded a fair opportunity to secure 
counsel of his own choice" (quotation and citation omitted).  
                                                 
advocate for each criminal defendant rather than to ensure that 
a defendant will inexorably be represented by the lawyer whom he 
prefers").  Justice Alito also concurred in a later structural 
error case involving the right to public trial to further 
emphasize that prejudice is ordinarily "based on the reliability 
of the underlying proceeding," and that challenging a conviction 
"means that the defendant must show a reasonable probability 
that, absent the errors, the factfinder would have had a 
reasonable doubt respecting guilt" (quotation and citation 
omitted).  Weaver v. Massachusetts, 137 S. Ct. 1899, 1915 (2017) 
(Alito, J., concurring). 
 
19 
Commonwealth v. Pena, 462 Mass. 183, 191 (2012).  However, this 
right "is not an absolute right, and in some circumstances, it 
may be subordinate to the proper administration of justice," 
and, "[w]ith regard to an indigent defendant, the right to an 
attorney does not guarantee the right to any particular court-
appointed counsel" (quotations and citations omitted).  Id. 
 
Although indigent defendants do not have the right to 
choose who is appointed for them, they nevertheless have "the 
right to be represented by an otherwise qualified attorney whom 
that defendant can afford to hire, or who is willing to 
represent the defendant even though he is without funds." 
Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. at 144, quoting Caplin & Drysdale, 491 
U.S. at 624-625.  This establishes a choice, even for an 
indigent defendant:  the defendant can choose between appointed 
counsel and one who offers his or her services for free at the 
time counsel must be selected, or at least for an amount that 
the defendant can afford.  See Gonzalez-Lopez, supra; Caplin & 
Drysdale, supra. 
 
Here, the defendant was indigent, and thus qualified for 
court-appointed counsel at the time of his arraignment.  
Although the defendant did not have the right to choose between 
court-appointed attorneys, he did have the right to choose 
between an appointed attorney and counsel who had offered his 
services for free.  In making this selection, the defendant 
 
20 
could have weighed which attorney he believed was best qualified 
to represent him.  See Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. at 140.  In this 
instance, the defendant was entitled to be informed of and to 
consider his choice between a court-appointed attorney -- who 
would have to have been approved by the court to represent 
indigent defendants in murder cases, and would have been 
compensated for his or her work, see Rule 53 of the Rules of the 
Superior Court6 -- and Hrones, who volunteered his services for 
free, but was not on the list of approved counsel. 
 
The defendant did not hire Hrones as private counsel.  He 
was not given the opportunity to exercise his choice between 
appointed counsel and Hrones, the attorney offering services for 
free.  Instead, the arraignment judge, without consulting the 
defendant, essentially appointed Hrones as the defendant's 
"private" counsel without pay.  The judge's decision to "allow[] 
[Hrones] to represent the defendant privately" without inquiring 
whether the defendant approved of the arrangement, or understood 
that he was entitled to court-approved, court-appointed counsel 
at no cost, interfered with the defendant's Sixth Amendment and 
art. 12 rights to choose private counsel.  The selection of 
                                                 
 
6 This rule no longer governs how counsel is assigned to 
indigent defendants.  Instead, the Committee for Public Counsel 
Services has established and currently supervises and maintains 
"a system for the appointment or assignment of counsel at any 
stage of a proceeding, either criminal or noncriminal in 
nature."  G. L. c. 211D, § 5. 
 
21 
private counsel is for the defendant, not the court.  The court 
cannot appoint private counsel, and that is what the court did 
here. 
At a minimum, in these circumstances, the arraignment judge 
should have conducted a colloquy with the defendant explaining 
that he had a right to appointed counsel from a list of 
qualified attorneys who would be paid for their services, or the 
right to choose Hrones as his private counsel, who was offering 
his services for free.  Such a colloquy would have ensured that 
the defendant made an informed exercise of his constitutional 
rights regarding counsel.  The judge did not, however, educate 
the defendant regarding this choice, and thus deprived the 
defendant of his rights under the Sixth Amendment and art. 12.7 
                                                 
 
7 Such a colloquy occurred in 1974 in another case where 
Hrones represented a defendant charged with murder in the first 
degree.  In Commonwealth vs. Lacy, Mass. Super. Ct., No. 
7484CR79994 (Suffolk County), a transcript of an evidentiary 
hearing shows that the judge conducted a colloquy with the 
defendant, Leonard Lacy, who forwent appointed public counsel to 
be represented by Hrones.  The court ensured that Lacy 
understood his right to appointed public counsel:  "Nor, do I 
say . . . that you cannot have counsel of your own choosing and 
if Mr. Hrones is counsel of your own choosing, you certainly can 
have him, provided, of course, that . . . Mr. Hrones as 
counsel . . . is thoroughly aware that he will defend you with 
the complete understanding that this Court is not appointing him 
as counsel under the terms of Rule 53.  Therefore, he will not 
be compensated by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. . . .  
[S]ince you indicate to me that you are indigent, . . . you are 
entitled, therefore, to have competent counsel appointed for 
you."  We also note that this court now has rules requiring a 
judge to inform an indigent party that he has the right to be 
represented by counsel at public expense.  S.J.C. Rule 3:10, 
 
22 
 
c.  Right to be present.  Rule 18 of the Massachusetts 
Rules of Criminal Procedure, 378 Mass. 887 (1979), provides that 
criminal defendants shall have the right to be present "at all 
critical stages of [court] proceedings."  "This right to be 
present derives from the confrontation clause of the Sixth 
Amendment . . . , the due process clause of the Fourteenth 
Amendment to the United States Constitution, and art. 12 
. . . ."  Robinson v. Commonwealth, 445 Mass. 280, 285 (2005).  
Although rule 18 does not identify what stages of court 
proceedings are "critical," "fairness demands that the defendant 
be present when his substantial rights are at stake."  Id., 
quoting Reporters' Notes to Mass. R. Crim. P. 18 (a), Mass. Ann. 
Laws Court Rules, Rules of Criminal Procedure, at 1429 
(LexisNexis 2005). 
 
As we have recently held, "[c]ounsel's presence at sidebar 
and intention to relay information to a defendant does not 
substitute for the defendant's presence" during a critical stage 
of the proceedings.  Commonwealth v. Colon, 482 Mass. 162, 172-
173 (2019).  This holding is on all fours with the present case, 
where excluding the defendant from the sidebar discussion among 
                                                 
§ 2, as appearing in 475 Mass. 1301 (2016) ("If any party to a 
proceeding appears in court without counsel where the party has 
a right to be represented by counsel under the law of the 
Commonwealth, the judge shall advise the party . . . that . . . 
the party may be entitled to the appointment of counsel at 
public expense . . ."). 
 
23 
the judge, Hrones, and the prosecutor at the arraignment denied 
the defendant his right to be present at a critical stage of the 
proceeding, and effectively usurped his constitutional right to 
choose which counsel he believed would be best suited to 
represent him.  Moreover, his presence was particularly 
important where Hrones later admitted at the evidentiary hearing 
in 2018 his reticence in telling the defendant he was not court 
appointed in 1982 because he did not want the defendant to fire 
him, and therefore had no intention or incentive to relay full 
and accurate information to the defendant. 
 
As discussed supra, because Hrones, who was not on the list 
of approved counsel for murder cases, had volunteered to 
represent the defendant without pay in his murder case, the 
defendant had a choice of counsel.  Where a defendant has such a 
choice of counsel, it is critical that the defendant be present 
and informed of that choice.  The defendant's rule 18 and 
constitutional rights to be present were therefore violated when 
he was excluded from the sidebar discussion and no subsequent 
colloquy was conducted explaining his rights. 
 
d.  Structural error.  Because we hold that the defendant's 
constitutional right to choice of counsel and to be present at a 
critical stage in the proceeding were violated, we must next 
assess whether these constitutional violations amount to 
structural error warranting automatic reversal absent waiver. 
 
24 
 
Generally, there are "two classes" of constitutional error.  
First, there are "trial errors," which can be "quantitatively 
assessed in the context of other evidence," and which comprise 
"most constitutional errors."  Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. at 148, 
quoting Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 306-308 (1991).  
These errors are assessed for whether they are harmless beyond a 
reasonable doubt.  Gonzalez-Lopez, supra. 
 
Second, there is a "very limited class of cases" presenting 
structural errors that require automatic reversal absent waiver 
(citation omitted).  Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1, 8 
(1999).  See Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. at 148-149.  Such errors 
include the denial of counsel or the right to public trial, the 
omission of an instruction on the standard of beyond a 
reasonable doubt, racial discrimination in the selection of a 
jury, or trial before a biased judge.  See Gonzalez- Lopez, 
supra at 149; Neder, supra.  These errors contain a "defect 
affecting the framework within which the trial proceeds, rather 
than simply an error in the trial process itself."  Neder, 
supra, quoting Fulminante, 499 U.S. at 310.  They are 
"constitutional error[s] of the first magnitude."  See 
Commonwealth v. Valentin, 470 Mass. 186, 196 (2014), quoting 
United States v. Cronic, 466 U.S. 648, 659 (1984). 
 
Most structural errors "deprive defendants of 'basic 
protections'" that are essential for a criminal trial to 
 
25 
"reliably serve its function as a vehicle for determination of 
guilt or innocence" and ensure that a "criminal punishment may 
be regarded as fundamentally fair."  Neder, 527 U.S. at 8-9, 
quoting Rose v. Clark, 478 U.S. 570, 577-578 (1986).  See 
Valentin, 470 Mass. at 196.  There are, however, structural 
errors with more subtle effects.  In these, the structural 
problem is fundamental, but the effect on the trial is much more 
difficult to evaluate.  Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. at 149 n.4.  
The Supreme Court has emphasized that this is true in choice-of-
counsel cases.  See Weaver v. Massachusetts, 137 S. Ct. 1899, 
1908 (2017); Gonzalez-Lopez, supra at 150.  Regardless, 
structural errors tend to pervade "the entire trial process" and 
thus "defy analysis by 'harmless-error' standards" (citations 
omitted).  Neder, supra at 7-8.  Reversal may therefore be 
required even when there is overwhelming evidence of the 
defendant's guilt.  Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U.S. 510, 535 (1927) ("No 
matter what the evidence was against [the defendant], he had the 
right to have an impartial judge"). 
 
We conclude that the violations of the defendant's Sixth 
Amendment and art. 12 rights here constitute structural error.  
For guidance we turn first to Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. at 152, 
where the Supreme Court concluded that depriving a defendant of 
his or her choice of private counsel is structural error 
requiring reversal.  In that case, counsel was fully qualified, 
 
26 
but the court declined to admit him pro hac vice and failed to 
give any explanation as to why.  Id. at 142.  The court also 
declined to allow him to be present at counsel's table during 
the trial or contact the defendant during the proceedings.  Id. 
at 143. 
The Supreme Court ruled that "erroneous denial of [private] 
counsel [of choice] bears directly on the 'framework within 
which the trial proceeds.'"  Id. at 150, quoting Fulminante, 499 
U.S. at 310.  For no reason whatsoever, the defendant was 
deprived of the lawyer he chose to pay to represent him.  The 
person he felt would best protect him was prevented in an 
arbitrary fashion from doing so.  See id. at 146, 149.  As the 
court in Gonzalez-Lopez further explained: 
"We have little trouble concluding that erroneous 
deprivation of the right to counsel of choice, with 
consequences that are necessarily unquantifiable and 
indeterminate, unquestionably qualifies as 'structural 
error.'  Different attorneys will pursue different 
strategies with regard to investigation and discovery, 
development of the theory of defense, selection of the 
jury, presentation of the witnesses, and style of witness 
examination and jury argument.  And the choice of attorney 
will affect whether and on what terms the defendant 
cooperates with the prosecution, plea bargains, or decides 
instead to go to trial.  In light of these myriad aspects 
of representation, the erroneous denial of [private] 
counsel [of choice] bears directly on the framework within 
which the trial proceeds -- or indeed on whether it 
proceeds at all.  It is impossible to know what different 
choices the rejected counsel would have made, and then to 
quantify the impact of those different choices on the 
outcome of the proceedings. . . .  Harmless-error analysis 
in such a context would be a speculative inquiry into what 
 
27 
might have occurred in an alternate universe."  (Quotations 
and citations omitted.) 
 
Id. at 150. 
 
We recognize that this is not a classic private counsel 
case like Gonzalez-Lopez, where the defendant was improperly and 
arbitrarily denied the right to the private counsel he had 
chosen.  As explained supra, the defendant was indigent.  Had 
Hrones not volunteered, the defendant would have had no choice 
of counsel.  However, once Hrones did volunteer, the defendant 
did have a choice, albeit a limited one.  See Gonzalez-Lopez, 
548 U.S. at 150 ("A choice-of-counsel violation occurs whenever 
the defendant's choice is wrongfully denied").  Because the 
defendant had "the right to be represented by an otherwise 
qualified attorney whom [the] defendant [could] afford to hire, 
or who [was] willing to represent the defendant even though he 
[was] without funds," id. at 144, quoting Caplin & Drysdale, 491 
U.S. at 624-625, the defendant could have picked Hrones as his 
private counsel, or have had the court appoint a lawyer from the 
list of counsel qualified to defend defendants in murder cases.  
When the court, in collaboration with Hrones, removed that 
choice and appointed Hrones as private counsel without the 
defendant's knowledge or consent, it committed constitutional 
error that affected the framework of the trial. 
 
28 
Although the error here affected the framework within which 
the trial proceeds, and was therefore structural, it was not one 
of those structural errors that "necessarily render[ed] [the] 
trial . . . an unreliable vehicle for determining guilt or 
innocence."  Neder, 527 U.S. at 9.  See Valentin, 470 Mass. at 
196.  Indeed, as explained infra, Hrones was competent counsel, 
and there is no argument to the effect that his representation 
at trial was ineffective.  Rather, the error here fell into the 
category of structural error with subtle, widespread effects.  
It is thus structural for the reasons quoted at length supra in 
Gonzalez-Lopez.  Any comparison of Hrones's performance and that 
of counsel on the list qualified to try murder cases would be 
speculative.  See Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. at 151.  Compare 
Valentin, supra at 188, 197 (no structural error where 
substitute counsel, who was law partner of counsel, only served 
for short period of time during jury deliberations and preserved 
all prior objections to jury instructions, thus providing firm 
basis for determining that brief substitution would have made no 
difference in representation).  As Hrones represented the 
defendant at every step of the trial and on his direct appeal, 
his improper appointment had a pervasive effect.  See Neder, 
supra at 7-8. 
We therefore conclude that the constitutional error here 
was the type of structural error identified in Gonzalez-Lopez, 
 
29 
even though it did not render the trial itself an unreliable 
vehicle for determining guilt or innocence.  It therefore 
constituted a structural error in violation of the Sixth 
Amendment and art. 12.8 
 
e.  Waiver of the right to choose counsel.  Even though the 
error here was structural, we must determine whether it was 
waived and, if so, whether the error created a substantial risk 
of a miscarriage of justice.  Robinson, 480 Mass. at 154-155.  
Commonwealth v. Randolph, 438 Mass. 290, 296 (2002).  See 
Commonwealth v. Smith, 460 Mass. 385, 396 (2011) ("An error 
creates a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice unless we 
are persuaded that it did not materially influence[] the guilty 
                                                 
 
8 We note that Gonzalez-Lopez was a five-to-four decision 
with a vigorous dissent.  That being said, we interpret art. 12 
to provide protection just as great as, if not greater than, the 
Sixth Amendment.  See Commonwealth v. Amirault, 424 Mass. 618, 
624 (1997).  Should the Supreme Court standard change, and we 
make no projections whatsoever in that regard, as that is not 
our prerogative, see Bosse v. Oklahoma, 137 S. Ct. 1, 2 (2016) 
(per curiam) ("[I]t is [the Supreme] Court's prerogative alone 
to overrule one of its precedents"), we would still interpret 
art. 12 as providing a separate, adequate, and independent basis 
for determining that the arraignment judge's improper blurring 
and crossing of the lines between public and private counsel -- 
which resulted in his denial of the defendant's right to 
qualified appointed counsel and instead his selection of a 
lawyer for the defendant as private counsel, all without the 
defendant's knowledge or consent -- is structural error.  Cf. 
Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 1041 (1983) ("If the state 
court decision indicates clearly and expressly that it is 
alternatively based on bona fide separate, adequate, and 
independent grounds, we, of course, will not undertake to review 
the decision"). 
 
30 
verdict" [quotation and citation omitted]).  We conclude that 
the defendant waived his right to counsel of choice by failing 
to raise this right until thirty-three years after the violation 
took place.  See Robinson, supra at 152; Commonwealth v. 
Jackson, 471 Mass. 262, 268-269 (2015), cert. denied, 136 S. Ct. 
1158 (2016).  See also Weaver, 137 S. Ct. at 1911-1912.  We also 
conclude that there was no substantial risk of a miscarriage of 
justice arising out of the waiver, as the defendant was 
competently represented by experienced counsel:  no errors 
arising out of Hrones's representation have been claimed here 
apart from the appointment itself or identified in the court's 
previous G. L. c. 278, § 33E, review.  See Robinson, supra; 
Randolph, supra at 294-295. 
We do not fault the defendant for failing to raise the 
issue at the arraignment -– where he was excluded from the 
sidebar discussion -- or in his direct appeal, because Hrones 
was representing the defendant at the time and appears, based on 
his testimony and the motion judge's supplementary findings, to 
have kept the defendant in the dark.  This issue could and 
should have been raised and resolved with the defendant at 
trial, but the fault here was defense counsel's and the court's, 
and not the defendant's. 
We do consider, however, that the defendant did not raise 
this issue in his first motion for a new trial even though he 
 
31 
could have done so, as he had the transcript documenting the 
constitutional violation.  As the motion judge found, 
"[c]ertainly, in or about 1989, when the defendant reviewed a 
copy of the transcript of the proceedings in the Superior Court 
in connection with his pro se motion for a new trial, he would 
have read the transcript of the sidebar colloquy in which the 
court specifically stated that Mr. Hrones could represent the 
defendant pro bono but would not be appointed and could not 
apply for funds."9  The transcript would have also indicated to 
the defendant that Hrones was not on the list of counsel 
approved to be appointed to try murder cases, but had still been 
allowed to represent the defendant in such a case. 
We also consider that public counsel screened this case in 
1992-1993 and 2000 without bringing a motion for a new trial, 
and did not bring such a motion until 2015.  All throughout this 
time period, the transcript was available.  As the motion judge 
found, the transcript was also in the defendant's possession, 
and it was available to CPCS. 
Although it may not have been clear in 1991 that this was 
structural error, as Gonzalez-Lopez was not decided until 2006, 
it was obvious that it was error.  It was an abuse of the 
                                                 
 
9 However, the motion judge also found that "this issue 
would not have been a noteworthy matter to the defendant in 
1982" because he did not understand the difference between pro 
bono private counsel and appointed public counsel. 
 
32 
appointment process because Hrones was not on the list of 
approved counsel.  See Rule 53(1) of the Rules of the Superior 
Court.  It was a violation of the defendant's right to choose 
between appointed counsel and a lawyer who had offered his 
services for free, Caplin & Drysdale, 491 U.S. at 624-625; 
Wheat, 486 U.S. at 162-164, and a violation of the defendant's 
right to be informed of his choice.  One need not have been 
clairvoyant in 1991, as Justice Lenk's opinion concurring in 
part and dissenting in part suggests, to recognize this was 
error.10  It may not have been obvious that it was structural 
error, but it was obviously improper.  At a minimum, the 
transcript should have raised questions for public counsel 
regarding how Hrones could have been appointed when he had not 
been on the list of attorneys approved to be appointed in murder 
cases, without at least a colloquy with the defendant.11 
"[I]n the case of a structural error where there is an 
objection at trial and the issue is raised on direct appeal, the 
                                                 
10 As we discuss infra, this case does not warrant 
application of the clairvoyance exception, as the error here was 
identifiable, and the right to choose counsel one believes to be 
best was already established when the defendant reviewed his 
arraignment transcript and filed his first motion for a new 
trial in 1991.  See, e.g., Caplin & Drysdale, Chartered v. 
United States, 491 U.S. 617, 624-625 (1989) (Caplin & Drysdale). 
 
 
11 As noted supra, such colloquy occurred in 1974 when 
Hrones did the same thing in another case, Commonwealth vs. 
Lacy.  The judge in that case clearly and correctly identified 
the problem. 
 
33 
defendant generally is entitled to 'automatic reversal' 
regardless of the error's actual 'effect on the outcome.'"  
Weaver, 137 S. Ct. at 1910, quoting Neder, 527 U.S. at 7.  
Notwithstanding the importance of the rights preserved, however, 
structural rights can be procedurally waived.  Robinson, 480 
Mass. at 150; Jackson, 471 Mass. at 269; Commonwealth v. Wall, 
469 Mass. 652, 673 (2014). 
In a series of structural error cases involving public 
trial violations, we have found that those errors were waived 
when the issue was not raised at trial, on direct appeal, or in 
the first motion for a new trial.  See Robinson, 480 Mass. at 
150; Commonwealth v. Celester, 473 Mass. 553, 577-578 (2016); 
Jackson, 471 Mass. at 269; Wall, 469 Mass. at 673.  See also 
Weaver, 137 S. Ct. at 1907, 1913 (no reversal despite structural 
error later raised in motion for new trial claiming ineffective 
assistance of counsel, where defendant failed to demonstrate 
prejudice).  We stressed the importance of the passage of time 
in these cases.  See Robinson, supra at 152 ("Cases noting that 
a defendant . . . failed to raise the claim in his or her first 
motion for a new trial or on direct appeal only serve to 
emphasize the egregiousness of the defendant's delay in raising 
the claim -- like here, where the defendant first raised the 
issue approximately thirteen years after his convictions").  See 
also Weaver, supra at 1912 ("if a new trial is ordered on direct 
 
34 
review, there may be a reasonable chance that not too much time 
will have elapsed for witness memories still to be accurate").  
We have also found these errors waived even where the defendant 
was not aware of the violation at trial.  See Robinson, supra at 
152-153; Jackson, supra at 269; Wall, supra at 672-673. 
In the instant case, we conclude that there was a waiver.  
Between 1982, when the case was tried, and 2015, when the second 
motion for a new trial was filed, this issue was not raised by 
the defendant or defense counsel despite the available 
transcript.  As demonstrated by the fine work done on the second 
motion for a new trial in 2015, the issue could and should have 
been identified and raised more than two or three decades 
earlier.  As demonstrated by a 1974 arraignment in another case 
-- Commonwealth vs. Lacy, see note 7, supra -- the need at least 
for a colloquy in these circumstances was clear in that era as 
well as ours. 
This great passage of time has huge consequences.  Even if 
witnesses have not died or disappeared, their memories have 
certainly dissipated.  See Weaver, 137 S. Ct. at 1912 (when 
appellate courts adjudicate preserved errors raised on direct 
appeal, "the systemic costs of remedying the error are 
diminished to some extent . . . because, if a new trial is 
ordered on direct review, there may be a reasonable chance that 
not too much time will have elapsed for witness memories still 
 
35 
to be accurate and physical evidence not to be lost").  When the 
documentation for challenging a conviction is in the hands of 
the defendant or the defense team for decades, but no claim is 
brought, important concerns about judicial efficiency, the 
finality of judgments, public confidence in the judicial system, 
and the renewal of trauma for victims are implicated.  See 
Commonwealth v. Morganti, 467 Mass. 96, 102-103, cert. denied, 
574 U.S. 933 (2014).  "To conclude otherwise would tear the 
fabric of our well-established waiver jurisprudence that 'a 
defendant must raise a claim of error at the first available 
opportunity.'"  Id., quoting Randolph, 438 Mass. at 294.  See 
Commonwealth v. LaChance, 469 Mass. 854, 858 (2014), cert. 
denied, 136 S. Ct. 317 (2015) (discussing need to raise claims 
as soon as possible to serve "the core purposes of the waiver 
doctrine:  to protect society's interest in the finality of its 
judicial decisions, and to promote judicial efficiency").  In 
sum, in these circumstances, the defendant waived his right to 
raise these claims.  The claim of error here was certainly not 
raised at the first available opportunity. 
Given this waiver, we review the defendant's constitutional 
claims for a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice.  See 
Robinson, 480 Mass. at 147 & n.3.  We have interpreted this 
standard, as we must, to be no less protective than the United 
States Supreme Court standard of review in Weaver.  See 
 
36 
Robinson, supra at 147 n.3.  See also Weaver, 137 S. Ct. at 1913 
("In sum, petitioner has not shown a reasonable probability of a 
different outcome but for counsel's failure to object, and he 
has not shown that counsel's shortcomings led to a fundamentally 
unfair trial"); Smith, 460 Mass. at 396 (in determining whether 
there is substantial risk of miscarriage of justice, "we 
consider the strength of the Commonwealth's case against the 
defendant . . . , the nature of the error, [and] whether the 
error is sufficiently significant in the context of the trial to 
make plausible an inference that the [jury's] result might have 
been otherwise but for the error" [quotation and citation 
omitted]); Randolph, 438 Mass. at 297-298 ("In analyzing a claim 
under the substantial risk standard, '[w]e review the evidence 
and the case as a whole,' and ask a series of four questions:  
[1] Was there error?  [2] Was the defendant prejudiced by the 
error?  [3] Considering the error in the context of the entire 
trial, would it be reasonable to conclude that the error 
materially influenced the verdict?  [4] May we infer from the 
record that counsel's failure to object or raise a claim of 
error at an earlier date was not a reasonable tactical decision?  
Only if the answer to all four questions is 'yes' may we grant 
relief" [citations omitted]). 
 
In the instant case, it was not reasonable to conclude that 
the error materially influenced the verdict or that a 
 
37 
fundamentally unfair trial took place.  See Weaver, 137 S. Ct. 
at 1913; Randolph, 438 Mass. at 297-298.  Hrones, an experienced 
criminal defense lawyer who had previously tried four or five 
cases of murder in the first degree pro bono, performed capably:  
no issue of ineffective assistance of counsel has been raised in 
this appeal, and none has previously been identified by this 
court pursuant to its original G. L. c. 278, § 33E, review.  
Most importantly, as this court stated in 1984, "[t]he 
identification by the eyewitness Smith of the defendant as the 
victim's pursuer, when coupled with the evidence of the 
defendant's and the victim's prior relationship, its subsequent 
dissolution, and the threats made by the defendant to the victim 
prior to her death, amply supports the jury's conclusion that 
the defendant was guilty of murder in the first degree."  
Francis, 391 Mass. at 375-376.  We therefore discern no 
substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice under our case law, 
nor a probability of a different outcome or fundamental 
unfairness as defined by the Supreme Court. 
 
f.  Issues raised in the opinions concurring in part and 
dissenting in part.  Chief Justice Gants's opinion concurring in 
part and dissenting in part mistakenly concludes that the issue 
is not waived here.  To do so, it mischaracterizes the motion 
judge's findings and this court's analysis; ignores this court's 
landmark decision in Randolph, 438 Mass. 290, which clarifies 
 
38 
that a waiver is not an all-or-nothing proposition, but rather 
one that shifts the focus to a substantial risk of a miscarriage 
of justice; and turns the logic of our public trial cases on its 
head, including our most recent pronouncement of the law in 
Robinson, 480 Mass. 146. 
 
Similarly, the opinion by Justice Lenk mistakenly reasons 
that the "clairvoyance exception" applies, thus foreclosing 
waiver of the defendant's structural error claim.  The error 
here was obvious at the time of the defendant's arraignment, 
even if it was not clear that the error was structural until the 
Supreme Court issued its opinion in Gonzalez-Lopez.12  Her 
opinion also ignores clear precedent establishing that 
structural errors can be procedurally waived just like any other 
constitutional error, and that "the term 'structural error' 
                                                 
 
12 The opinion by Justice Lenk also claims that there is no 
case law that identifies a choice of counsel for indigent 
defendants, or that even identified the right to counsel of 
choice as a constitutional right before the Supreme Court's 
opinion in Gonzalez-Lopez.  However, the Court in Gonzalez-Lopez 
drew upon prior case law that identified such a right, even if 
that right has been circumscribed.  See Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. 
at 144; Caplin & Drysdale, 491 U.S. at 624-625; Wheat, 486 U.S. 
at 159.  Further, the Court in Caplin & Drysdale identified the 
defendant's right to counsel he can afford to hire, including 
pro bono counsel offering services for free, clearly 
establishing a defendant's right to choice of counsel before the 
defendant filed his first motion for a new trial in 1991.  See 
Caplin & Drysdale, supra ("the Sixth Amendment guarantees a 
defendant the right to be represented by an otherwise qualified 
attorney whom that defendant can afford to hire, or who is 
willing to represent the defendant even though he is without 
funds"). 
 
39 
carries with it no talismanic significance as a doctrinal 
matter."  Weaver, 137 S. Ct. at 1910.  By so doing, her opinion 
collapses the categories of structural error identified in 
Weaver, and assumes there will always be a presumption of 
prejudice when a structural error is raised, even when 
subsequent motions have failed to raise the issue over the 
course of more than thirty years since the error took place. 
We will address these errors in turn.  The first is the 
argument that the judge exercised his discretion to resurrect 
the waived argument, which is flawed factually and legally.  To 
begin with, it relies on cases predating Randolph.  Before 
Randolph, there was a great need to resurrect waived claims to 
avoid a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice, as waived 
claims were essentially unappealable.  Commonwealth v. Layne, 
386 Mass. 291, 297 (1982) (by declining to permit defendant to 
assert waived claims, judge "effectively den[ies] the defendant 
appellate review of the merits of those claims").  Thus, to 
avoid a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice, a motion 
judge would need to resurrect the claim.  Id.  In Randolph, 
however, we made clear that we always review even waived claims 
for a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice.  See 
Randolph, 438 Mass. at 294-295.  See also Robinson, 480 Mass. at 
147. 
 
40 
Even without this necessary context, Chief Justice Gants's 
analysis of pre-Randolph resurrection law is incorrectly applied 
here.  The conclusion that the motion judge resurrected the 
claim is wrong both as a matter of fact and law.  For a judge to 
permit a waived claim in a subsequent motion, he or she must 
"indicate in some affirmative manner that [he or she] is 
permitting the argument to be raised."  Layne, 386 Mass. at 297 
(finding judge below did not permit waived argument to be raised 
even though he listened and responded to argument on merits at 
motion hearing).  There was, however, no affirmative indication 
by the motion judge that he was permitting the waived argument 
to be resurrected in this case. 
 
Instead, the motion judge found that the defendant did not 
have any constitutional right to waive in the first place.  More 
specifically, the judge stated:  "the court does not find that a 
failure to conduct . . . a colloquy results in some manner of 
structural error as the defendant suggests, since the court 
finds no constitutional right to court appointed counsel that 
the defendant has unwittingly waived" (emphasis added).  If the 
judge made any finding whatsoever about waiver, it was that 
there was an unwitting waiver.  He certainly did not 
affirmatively state that he was resurrecting a waived claim. 
 
Even more confusing is the Chief Justice's analysis of our 
decision and our more recent case law.  This case law has, as 
 
41 
explained supra, emphasized the purpose and importance of 
raising a claim as soon as possible in any context so it can be 
corrected at the earliest possible moment.  See Robinson, 480 
Mass. at 150-151.  See also LaChance, 469 Mass. at 856-858 
(holding defendant procedurally waived his Sixth Amendment 
public trial claim by not raising it at trial, but reviewing 
error in postconviction context of claim of ineffective 
assistance of counsel); Wall, 469 Mass. at 672-673 (upholding 
finding of waiver where defendant first raised violation of 
right to public trial in second motion for new trial); Randolph, 
438 Mass. at 294 (requirement for defendant to raise claim of 
error at first available opportunity "serves a dual purpose:  it 
protects society's interest in the finality of its judicial 
decisions, and promotes judicial efficiency" [citations 
omitted]). 
 
The passage of time necessarily affects this interest, 
particularly when the result would be a new trial requiring 
accurate witness memories and intact physical evidence.  See 
Weaver, 137 S. Ct. at 1912; Robinson, 480 Mass. at 151-152.  We 
have stressed the importance of contemporaneous objections in 
the public trial cases discussed supra, even as we recognize 
that the defendant and counsel may not be at fault or have even 
known the error took place at all, but have nevertheless waived 
their claims.  See, e.g., Robinson, supra at 146-147; Jackson, 
 
42 
471 Mass. at 268-269.  In these cases, we found waiver absent a 
contemporaneous objection at trial, even when court personnel 
were at fault and the defendant and defense counsel were unaware 
of the closure. 
In this case, the defendant had the opportunity to review 
the arraignment transcripts -- yet did not raise the present 
issue in his first motion for a new trial.  It was at that point 
that the error could and should have been first raised so that 
it could have been quickly addressed and corrected if the 
defendant had wanted different counsel.  As the issue would not 
have been waived at this point, it likely would have culminated 
in a relatively timely new trial.  Even if we spare the 
defendant the rigors of the requirements of the case law that 
hold him to the same standards as counsel, see Maza v. 
Commonwealth, 423 Mass. 1006, 1006 (1996); Mmoe v. Commonwealth, 
393 Mass. 617, 620 (1985), his failure to raise the issue in his 
first motion for a new trial is important to consider in our 
waiver analysis, and is not irrelevant, as it resulted in the 
passage of more time and made retrial more difficult.  We have 
made that point repeatedly in the public trial context, even 
where the waivers occur inadvertently. 
Of course, we do not rely on the defendant's conduct alone 
in finding a waiver.  We also consider the case's long history 
with CPCS, and the availability of the transcript revealing the 
 
43 
problem with Hrones's appointment for decades.  This is not, we 
emphasize, a case where the prosecution concealed evidence from 
the defendant, see Commonwealth v. Healy, 438 Mass. 672, 677-678 
(2003) (relied on by Chief Justice Gants's opinion, post 
at    ), or where the evidence was unavailable.  The evidence 
establishing the constitutional violation was in the hands of 
the defendant and available to defense counsel for decades. 
Although CPCS screening is different from CPCS review once 
CPCS has accepted a case, it is not irrelevant or unreasonable 
to consider those screenings in the over-all calculation whether 
a waiver has occurred, as the opinions concurring in part and 
dissenting in part suggest.  CPCS is not the equivalent of 
private counsel.  Rather, it alone controls the public counsel 
appointment process, and ultimately decides whether a case will 
be taken and, as a result, whether an issue will then be raised 
for the court.  Deputy Chief Counsel for the Pub. Defender Div. 
of the Comm. for Pub. Counsel Servs. v. Acting First Justice of 
the Lowell Div. of the Dist. Court Dep't, 477 Mass. 178, 179 
(2017) ("CPCS has the sole authority under G. L. c. 211D for the 
assignment of counsel to indigent criminal defendants . . .").  
This is a significant responsibility that entails the 
identification of legal issues during the screening process, and 
is not comparable to private counsel's decision to take a case.  
Additionally, CPCS screening contributes to delay, and delay is 
 
44 
a significant factor as it makes it more and more difficult to 
retry the case with each passing year.  As explained supra, CPCS 
did not raise the present claim until 2015.  Given the existence 
and availability of the transcript throughout the time period at 
issue of more than thirty years, and the failure of the 
defendant or CPCS to raise the issue at any point in that time, 
we consider it appropriate to conclude that the choice-of-
counsel issue has been waived.  It was certainly not raised at 
the first available opportunity as our cases emphasize and 
require.  Morganti, 467 Mass. at 102-103. 
 
Our public trial waiver case law clearly compels that 
result.  The attempts by Chief Justice Gants and Justice Lenk to 
distinguish that case law are unavailing.  They ignore the core 
logic of a long line of our decisions stressing the importance 
of bringing an error to the attention of the court as soon as 
possible to correct the problem.  See, e.g., Robinson, 480 Mass. 
at 150-151; LaChance, 469 Mass. at 858; Morganti, 467 Mass. at 
102-103.  They also turn the logic of our public trial 
jurisprudence on its head.  There, as discussed supra, we 
stressed the need for a contemporaneous objection, even when the 
fault is the court's alone, and not the fault of the defendant 
or defense counsel, who were unaware of the violation.  Chief 
Justice Gants's and Justice Lenk's opinions both rest on the 
assumption that the current situation is different and that 
 
45 
these cases are completely inapplicable because the defendant 
was unaware of the violation at arraignment and could not have 
made a contemporaneous objection.  In both this context and in 
our public trial cases, we still apply our waiver analysis and 
emphasize the need to raise the issue as soon as possible, even 
where the defendant was unaware of the problem at trial and not 
at fault.  See, e.g., Robinson, supra at 146-147; Jackson, 471 
Mass. at 268-269. 
 
Recognizing the stringency of that case law, in the instant 
case, we have not relied simply on the defendant's failure to 
raise the issue at trial or in his first motion for a new trial, 
but have also considered the multiple opportunities counsel had 
to correct the problem before deciding there was a waiver.  We 
have relied in particular on the availability of the evidence to 
the defendant and defense counsel for decades prior to any 
motion being filed to correct the error. 
 
Nor is the defendant saved by the clairvoyance exception to 
our waiver doctrine.  Under the clairvoyance exception, if a 
constitutional theory on which the defendant relies was not 
sufficiently developed at the time the defendant should have 
raised it at trial or on appeal, the defendant did not have a 
genuine opportunity to raise the claim, and the reviewing court 
must treat that claim as if it has been properly preserved.  See 
Randolph, 438 Mass. at 295; Commonwealth v. Rembiszewski, 391 
 
46 
Mass. 123, 126 (1984).  However, this theory applies in cases 
where constitutional rights have not yet been defined or 
clarified.  See, e.g., Rembiszewski, supra at 126-128 (allowing 
challenge to reasonable doubt instruction where case was argued 
at time when there was no foreshadowing of governing rule 
prohibiting examples of events from jurors' lives); DeJoinville 
v. Commonwealth, 381 Mass. 246, 247, 248-251 (1980) (jury 
instruction that every man is presumed to have intended natural 
or probable consequences of his voluntary acts and in absence of 
evidence to contrary he intended such consequences was not yet 
deemed unconstitutional at time it had been given, and could be 
reviewed on appeal as if properly preserved). 
 
The case before us does not warrant application of the 
clairvoyance exception.  In 1991, there was no unsettled law 
that later created or clarified a new constitutional right for 
the defendant; instead, the error here was identifiable and 
could have been brought at least as a matter of ineffective 
assistance.  Supreme Court precedent identified a right to 
choose counsel well before the Court issued Gonzalez-Lopez, and 
the Court drew upon that precedent when characterizing a 
violation of the right to choose counsel as a structural error 
in Gonzalez-Lopez.  In Wheat, 486 U.S. 153, the Supreme Court 
emphasized the Sixth Amendment presumption in favor of counsel 
of choice that may only be overcome by a showing of a serious 
 
47 
potential for a conflict of interest.  Id. at 164 (concluding 
there was serious potential for conflict of interest that 
rebutted presumption in favor of counsel of choice).  In Caplin 
& Drysdale, 491 U.S. 617, the Supreme Court emphasized that, 
pursuant to the Sixth Amendment, the defendant has the right to 
be represented by an attorney he or she can afford to hire, 
including counsel, like Hrones, offering his services for free, 
thus establishing the right of the defendant to choose the 
counsel he considers best.  Id. at 624-625.  See Gonzalez-Lopez, 
548 U.S. at 144, 146.  Both of these cases were decided before 
1991. 
 
Even without this governing case law, the inequity of the 
court's error here was obvious to anyone who reviewed the 
arraignment transcript.  The defendant himself testified that he 
would not have agreed to proceed to trial with Hrones if he had 
known Hrones was not getting paid and was not on the list of 
counsel qualified to be court-appointed attorneys in murder 
cases.  This is not the type of unclear error that implicates 
the clairvoyance exception, as Justice Lenk argues in her 
opinion, but is one that could have reasonably been uncovered 
upon a review of the arraignment transcript.13  Just because the 
                                                 
 
13 A review of the arraignment transcript would also have at 
least alerted the reader to the fact that the defendant was not 
privy to important information concerning his case, which 
violated his well-established right to be present during 
 
48 
consequences of the particular error were not clear, i.e., that 
it automatically warranted a new trial because it was structural 
error, does not mean that the error itself was too obscure to 
recognize and raise in a motion for a new trial in a timely 
fashion. 
 
Further, the opinion authored by Justice Lenk ignores that 
structural errors can be procedurally waived just like any other 
constitutional error.  It confuses the Court's holding in 
Weaver, which appreciated the difficulty of gauging the effects 
of structural errors while also stating that, once waived, only 
a structural error that results in fundamental unfairness will 
create a presumption of prejudice if brought as an ineffective 
assistance of counsel claim.  Weaver, 137 S. Ct. at 1908-1910.  
Justice Lenk's opinion ignores Weaver's holding that only a 
structural error that results in fundamental unfairness creates 
a presumption of prejudice, and instead essentially adopts the 
approach set out in Justice Breyer's dissenting opinion in 
Weaver.  See id. at 1917 (Breyer, J., dissenting). 
                                                 
critical stages of the proceedings.  See Commonwealth v. Colon, 
482 Mass. 162, 172-173 (2019) ("[c]ounsel's presence at sidebar 
and intention to relay information to a defendant does not 
substitute for the defendant's presence" during critical stage 
of proceedings); Commonwealth v. Robichaud, 358 Mass. 300, 303 
(1970) (presence of counsel insufficient to remedy absence of 
defendant during critical stage of proceedings).  This issue was 
not raised until the defendant filed his second motion for a new 
trial. 
 
49 
 
The majority in Weaver clearly rejected this approach.  Id. 
at 1910-1913 (distinguishing between different types of 
structural errors and recognizing that there is category of 
structural error that, once waived, is not presumed to be 
prejudicial and requires "show[ing] a reasonable probability of 
a different outcome but for" error or that error "led to a 
fundamentally unfair trial"). 
 
In sum, in deciding that there is waiver here, we cannot 
ignore that the defendant had the transcript depicting the error 
and that the issue was not raised for more than thirty years.  
We recognize, as does the Supreme Court, that the passage of 
time, particularly the great passage of time, matters.  See 
Weaver, 137 S. Ct. at 1912; Robinson, 480 Mass. at 152.  Of 
course, we still review to determine whether there is a 
substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice, but there is none 
in the instant case.  The defendant was capably represented at 
trial with no error being identified apart from the appointment 
of Hrones himself.  This kind of structural error, as explained 
supra, is a peculiar type with subtle effects.  Those subtle 
effects, as we have explained, do not amount to a substantial 
risk of a miscarriage of justice, and they certainly do not 
require the retrial and release of this defendant where the 
evidence, as this court previously found, proved beyond a 
 
50 
reasonable doubt that he chased down and killed his ex-
girlfriend in a premeditated act of vengeance. 
 
3.  Conclusion.  The trial court violated the defendant's 
right to choice of counsel and to be present for a critical 
stage in his proceeding.  However, these errors, although 
structural, were waived by the defendant in this case.  In 
reviewing the waived claims, we also discern neither a 
substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice nor a probability 
of a different outcome or fundamental unfairness.  The denial of 
the second motion for a new trial is therefore affirmed. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
So ordered. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
GANTS, C.J. (concurring in part and dissenting in part, 
with whom Budd, J., joins).  I agree with the court that "the 
defendant's right to choice of private counsel and right to be 
present during a critical stage of the proceedings under both 
the Federal and State Constitutions were violated," in this 
case, and that "these violations of his constitutional rights 
are structural errors requiring automatic reversal absent 
waiver."  Ante at    .  I dissent because, in my view, the court 
errs in holding that the defendant waived the violations of 
these essential rights by not presenting them sooner than he 
did. 
 
The court refers on multiple occasions to the passage of a 
significant amount of time from the defendant's arraignment in 
January 1982, when attorney Stephen Hrones began representing 
him, until September 2015 when, in a motion for a new trial, the 
defendant first raised his challenge to Hrones's representation.  
The passage of so much time appears to be a primary concern for 
the court and its principal reason for finding a waiver.  The 
mere passage of time, however, even a lengthy period of time, 
does not amount to a waiver.  As the court noted in Commonwealth 
v. Francis, 411 Mass. 579, 585 (1992), where the defendant 
brought a motion for a new trial twenty years after we affirmed 
his conviction of murder in the first degree, Mass. R. Crim. P. 
30 (b), as appearing in 435 Mass. 1501 (2001), "provides that a 
2 
 
trial judge may grant a defendant's postconviction motion for a 
new trial 'at any time.'"  The court added: 
"Furthermore, the history of rule 30 (b) also suggests that 
delay does not constitute a waiver of the right to bring a 
new trial motion.  Rule 30 (b) is derived directly from the 
former G. L. c. 278, § 29.  Prior to 1964, G. L. c. 278, 
§ 29, expressly imposed a one year time limitation after 
which a Superior Court judge could not grant a defendant's 
request for a new trial.  In 1964, the Legislature repealed 
this time limitation, amending § 29 to allow new trial 
motions to be granted 'at any time, upon motion in writing 
of the defendant.'"  (Citations omitted.) 
 
Id. at 585-586.  The court definitively declared, "[i]n light of 
the history and language of rule 30 (a), (b), we conclude that a 
defendant's delay in bringing a rule 30 motion does not in 
itself constitute waiver."  Id. at 586. 
 
Here, as in Francis, supra, there is no evidence that the 
defendant intentionally delayed in bringing his claim in order 
to gain some strategic advantage, so we need not consider what 
would happen if that were so; indeed, the Commonwealth does not 
even press such an argument here. 
 
I agree, of course, that a defendant can waive a claim, 
even a claim of structural error, if he fails to object to the 
error at or before trial despite having an opportunity to do so, 
or by not including the claim in a motion for a new trial when, 
at the time he files his motion, the claim is reasonably 
available to him.  I therefore turn to these specific points to 
examine whether a waiver occurred on the facts of this case. 
3 
 
 
The court acknowledges that the defendant did not waive the 
structural errors in this case by failing to object to Hrones's 
representation of him at the time of arraignment or before 
trial.  See ante at    .  I agree.  As the court notes, the 
defendant was not present at the sidebar discussion where the 
arraignment judge allowed Hrones to represent him pro bono 
without his knowledge or consent.  Moreover, Hrones represented 
the defendant throughout the trial, so it would not be realistic 
to expect Hrones, on the defendant's behalf, to object at trial 
to his own conduct.  Therefore, this is not among the type of 
cases where we have found that a defendant waived a structural 
error by failing to make a contemporaneous objection when the 
error occurred, thereby depriving the judge of an opportunity to 
correct the error or to explain the judge's reasons for so 
ruling.  See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Robinson, 480 Mass. 146, 151 
(2018), quoting Weaver v. Massachusetts, 137 S. Ct. 1899, 1912 
(2017) ("A contemporaneous objection [to closure of a court 
room] is indispensable for purposes of preserving the claimed 
error on appeal because when the alleged error is raised 
contemporaneously with the closure, 'the trial court can either 
order the court room opened or explain the reasons for keeping 
it closed'"). 
 
The court also correctly recognizes that the defendant did 
not waive these structural errors by failing to raise them in 
4 
 
his direct appeal, because, again, Hrones was his attorney for 
the appeal.  It is not reasonable to expect Hrones to have 
argued on appeal that his own conduct was error, especially 
automatically reversible structural error.  Compare Commonwealth 
v. Azar, 435 Mass. 675, 686 (2002) ("In cases like this, where 
the same attorney represents a defendant both at trial and on 
appeal, a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel is not 
waived when it is raised for the first time in a postappeal new 
trial motion"); Commonwealth v. Lanoue, 409 Mass. 1, 3-4 (1990) 
("It would be unrealistic to expect Lanoue's first attorney to 
have raised a claim calling his own competence into question"). 
 
I disagree with the court that the defendant waived his 
claim of structural error when staff attorneys at the Committee 
for Public Counsel Services (CPCS), in deciding whether to 
assign counsel to represent him to seek a new trial in 1992-1993 
and 2000, apparently failed to identify this issue and did not 
cause CPCS to file an appearance on his behalf at those times.  
This clearly cannot constitute a basis to find waiver.  CPCS 
staff counsel, when screening the defendant's case in 1992-1993 
and 2000, were deciding whether CPCS would represent him; they 
did not represent him at the time they conducted the screening, 
and their failure to spot and raise this issue cannot reasonably 
be held against him.  It would be unreasonable to have, and 
highly impractical to administer, a rule saying that a defendant 
5 
 
waives a claim because an attorney reviewed the file in his case 
but ultimately decided not to represent him.  It would be 
equally unreasonable and impractical to, as the court suggests, 
invent a new and distinct ground for waiver applicable to CPCS 
alone.  By concluding that CPCS's failure to spot a 
constitutional issue during its screening process may result in 
a waiver of that constitutional issue, the court imposes on CPCS 
an unjustified and profound dilemma in deploying its limited 
screening resources -- either conduct a comprehensive screening 
review or risk waiver of an issue its screeners failed to spot.  
And this case illustrates just how comprehensive that screening 
review would need to be, because this error would not have been 
spotted even if the screeners read every page of the trial 
transcript.  It would be spotted only if they read the 
transcript of the arraignment.1  In short, we have never rested a 
finding of waiver on this ground, the court cites no authority 
for doing so, and it would be wholly unreasonable to do so here. 
                                                 
 
1 Moreover, the court's holding that the defendant's rights 
under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution were 
violated here leans heavily on United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez, 
548 U.S. 140, 148 (2006), where the Supreme Court declared that 
"[d]eprivation of the right [to private counsel of one's choice] 
is 'complete' when the defendant is erroneously prevented from 
being represented by the lawyer he wants, regardless of the 
quality of the representation he received."  The constitutional 
error found here might not have been as obvious before the 
decision in Gonzalez-Lopez. 
6 
 
 
Finally, I consider the defendant's failure to raise his 
claim of structural error in the first motion for a new trial 
that he filed pro se in 1991.  The court attributes significance 
to this failure, but after careful analysis, I conclude that a 
finding of waiver on this ground would be unwarranted and unjust 
given the second motion judge's decision in 2018 not to find 
waiver and the facts of this case as found by that motion judge. 
 
Rule 30 (c) (2) of the Massachusetts Rules of Criminal 
Procedure, as appearing in 435 Mass. 1501 (2001), provides that 
a defendant must assert all grounds for relief in the "original 
or amended motion" that he files under rule 30 (b).  "Any 
grounds not so raised are waived unless the judge in the 
exercise of discretion permits them to be raised in a subsequent 
motion, or unless such grounds could not reasonably have been 
raised in the original or amended motion."  Id.  Here, both of 
the "unless" alternatives are satisfied. 
 
The judge who decided the defendant's second motion for a 
new trial found that four of the defendant's claims had been 
waived under rule 30 (c) (2) because "all of these claims could 
and should have been raised on direct appeal to the Supreme 
Judicial Court, or in his previous motion for post-conviction 
relief."  Significantly, the judge did not find that the 
defendant's claim of structural error, at issue in this appeal, 
had been waived.  Instead, the judge conducted an evidentiary 
7 
 
hearing regarding this claim and decided it on the merits, with 
written findings of fact and rulings of law.  Therefore, in the 
exercise of discretion, he permitted the structural error claim 
to be raised in the defendant's second motion for a new trial. 
 
Moreover, the second motion judge's findings demonstrate 
that the defendant could not reasonably have been expected to 
raise these issues in his first motion for a new trial.  See, 
e.g., Commonwealth v. Healy, 438 Mass. 672, 677-678 (2003) (no 
waiver where issue was not known at time of appeal or prior 
motions for new trial); Commonwealth v. Wooldridge, 19 Mass. 
App. Ct. 162, 169-170 (1985) (no waiver where issue could not 
reasonably have been raised in first motion).  When the 
defendant brought his first motion for a new trial in 1991, he 
had no right to have counsel appointed to assist him, because 
his direct appeal had already been decided and his conviction 
had been affirmed by this court.  See Commonwealth v. Conceicao, 
388 Mass. 255, 261-264 (1983).  He therefore filed and pursued 
this first motion pro se. 
 
The motion judge on the second motion for a new trial found 
that the defendant had received a transcript of the proceedings 
in the Superior Court in or about 1989, which included the 
sidebar discussion between the arraignment judge and Hrones (but 
not the defendant) where the arraignment judge allowed Hrones to 
represent the defendant pro bono.  The motion judge found, 
8 
 
however, that the defendant would not have attached any 
significance to the sidebar discussion between the arraignment 
judge and Hrones, because "the defendant was totally unaware of 
the significance of the distinction between being represented by 
a court appointed lawyer or a private attorney appearing pro 
bono, until his present post-conviction counsel developed the 
Sixth Amendment argument presented in the pending motion and 
explained it to him." 
 
Given these findings, it was neither an abuse of discretion 
nor an error of law for the second motion judge to conclude that 
the defendant did not waive his claim of structural error by 
failing to recognize and assert this novel, fairly subtle 
constitutional issue in his first motion for a new trial.  
Indeed, it is perfectly understandable and reasonable to 
conclude that the defendant, without the benefit of counsel and 
with no apparent legal training, could not at that time have 
perceived, much less appreciated the significance of, an issue 
such as this that eluded the trained attorneys at CPCS who later 
reviewed the case and who initially decided not to assign CPCS 
counsel to represent the defendant.  I therefore agree with the 
motion judge that any waiver in failing to raise the issue in 
the first motion for a new trial should be excused.2 
                                                 
 
2 The court contends that this analysis rests on the now-
abandoned analysis of resurrection of a waived claim.  It does 
9 
 
 
The court appears to rest its finding of waiver on the 
numerous cases where we concluded that a defendant waived a 
structural error arising from the closure of a trial court room 
during jury selection by failing to object, even where the 
defendant and his counsel were not aware of the court room 
closure.  See, e.g., Robinson, 480 Mass. at 153 ("[A] defendant 
procedurally waives a court room closure claim by failing to 
contemporaneously object to the closure, regardless of whether 
the defendant or counsel was factually aware that the court room 
was closed"); Commonwealth v. Jackson, 471 Mass. 262, 269 
(2015), cert. denied, 136 S. Ct. 1158 (2016) (waiver occurs 
regardless of defendant's or counsel's knowledge of court room 
closure); Commonwealth v. Wall, 469 Mass. 652, 672-673 (2014) 
(waiver can occur even where failure to timely object is 
inadvertent).  Some of these cases noted that the defendants had 
failed in their earlier motions for a new trial to raise the 
claim that they were denied their right to public trial.  See, 
e.g., Commonwealth v. Celester, 473 Mass. 553, 577 (2016) ("In 
his second motion for a new trial, the defendant argued for the 
                                                 
not.  Rather, it rests on the current language of Mass. R. Crim. 
P. 30 (c) (2), as appearing in 435 Mass. 1501 (2001), which 
declares that any grounds for relief not raised in the original 
or amended motion for a new trial "are waived unless the judge 
in the exercise of discretion permits them to be raised in a 
subsequent motion, or unless such grounds could not reasonably 
have been raised in the original or amended motion."  As noted 
supra, both these grounds were satisfied in this case. 
10 
 
first time that his Sixth Amendment right to a public trial was 
violated . . ."); Jackson, supra ("The issue also was not raised 
in his first motion for a new trial that preceded sentencing"); 
Wall, supra at 673 ("[T]he defendant failed to raise the claim 
in his first motion for new trial"). 
 
We made clear in the closed court room cases that the 
determination whether a claim of structural error is preserved 
or waived depends solely on whether the defendant raised a 
contemporaneous objection at trial.  See Robinson, 480 Mass. at 
151 ("[O]nly where a defendant raises a contemporaneous 
objection to an improper court room closure at trial has this 
court held that the defendant's claimed Sixth Amendment public 
trial violation was preserved").  The importance of 
contemporaneous objection, the court posited, is that it allows 
for "the trial court . . . [to] either order the court room 
opened or explain the reasons for keeping it closed."  Id., 
quoting Weaver, 137 S. Ct. at 1912. 
 
"Absent a contemporaneous objection, it is immaterial when 
or in what form the defendant later raises the claim in 
postconviction proceedings."  Robinson, 480 Mass. at 152.  See 
Commonwealth v. Kolenovic, 478 Mass. 189, 203 n.13 (2017) 
("[T]he important distinction is not whether the claim was made 
in the direct appeal or in the motion for new trial, but rather 
whether the court room closure issue was preserved at trial").  
11 
 
As we explained in Robinson, supra, "[c]ases noting that a 
defendant also failed to raise the claim in his or her first 
motion for a new trial or on direct appeal only serve to 
emphasize the egregiousness of the defendant's delay in raising 
the claim."  Where, as here, the court accepts that the 
defendant's failure contemporaneously to object at the 
arraignment or at trial does not permit a finding of waiver, 
these precedents do not compel a finding of waiver. 
 
"The purpose of the structural error doctrine is to ensure 
insistence on certain basic, constitutional guarantees that 
should define the framework of any criminal trial."  Weaver, 137 
S. Ct. at 1907.  A finding of structural error is highly 
significant and has great consequence; it means that "the 
government is not entitled to deprive the defendant of a new 
trial by showing that the error was 'harmless beyond a 
reasonable doubt.'"  Id. at 1910, quoting Chapman v. California, 
386 U.S. 18, 24 (1967).  Where we apply our waiver doctrine to 
avoid that consequence, we must do so judiciously, lest we 
undercut the very purpose of the structural error doctrine. 
 
It is appropriate to find waiver where a defendant failed 
to make a contemporaneous objection at trial that could have 
prevented the error.  But in my view, it is not appropriate to 
find waiver, as the court does here, where the defendant could 
not have prevented the error at the arraignment, at trial, or in 
12 
 
his direct appeal; where the defendant, without the right to or 
benefit of counsel, failed to recognize this rather unique 
constitutional claim, and therefore failed to raise it when he 
filed his first motion for a new trial; where the claim was, for 
all practical purposes, raised at the first opportunity, i.e., 
in the second motion for a new trial; where the second motion 
judge himself did not find a waiver, but instead addressed the 
defendant's claim at the time it was raised on the merits; and 
where the second motion judge found that "the defendant was 
totally unaware of the significance of the distinction between 
being represented by a court appointed lawyer or a private 
attorney appearing pro bono, until his present post-conviction 
counsel developed the Sixth Amendment argument presented in the 
pending motion and explained it to him."  Because I conclude 
that the motion judge did not abuse his discretion or make an 
error of law in deciding that the defendant did not waive the 
structural error in this case, and because a finding of waiver 
here would be unfair, would diminish the importance of the 
structural error doctrine, and would unjustly allow a conviction 
to stand that was tainted by structural error, I dissent. 
 
 
 
 
LENK, J. (concurring in part and dissenting in part).  I 
agree with the court that the defendant's rights to choice of 
counsel and to be present at critical stages of his trial were 
violated in this case, and that these violations constituted 
structural error.  See ante at    .  I also agree that a 
defendant may waive a claim of structural error, like any other 
claim, by failing diligently to pursue it.  I write separately 
because I disagree with the court's conclusion that this 
defendant procedurally waived his particular claims of 
structural error.  Further, the court's analysis of waived 
structural errors fails to capture the competing interests that 
must be balanced when assessing constitutional violations that 
undermine the fundamental fairness of a trial. 
 
Like the court, I do not fault the defendant for failing to 
raise his claims of structural error either at trial or on 
direct appeal.  See ante at    .  At both stages, he was 
represented by an attorney who had every incentive not to raise 
these errors or to draw a judge's attention to their existence.  
Nor is the defendant at fault for not having brought forward 
these issues in his first motion for a new trial in 1991.  
Although, ordinarily, a defendant waives a claim by failing to 
raise it at the "first available opportunity," we long have 
recognized exceptions to this general rule.  See Commonwealth v. 
Randolph, 438 Mass. 290, 294 (2002).  Relevant here is the 
2 
 
"clairvoyance exception," which "applies to errors of a 
constitutional dimension 'when the constitutional theory on 
which the defendant has relied was not sufficiently developed at 
the time of trial or direct appeal to afford the defendant a 
genuine opportunity to raise his claim at those junctures of the 
case'" (emphasis added).  Id. at 295, quoting Commonwealth v. 
Rembiszewski, 391 Mass. 123, 126 (1984).  While waiver does not 
require "a holding on an issue squarely on point," the state of 
the law must provide "sufficient guidance" that a defendant is 
"fairly on notice" that he or she has a live issue (citations 
omitted).  See Commonwealth v. Amirault, 424 Mass. 618, 643–644 
(1997). 
 
The clairvoyance exception clearly applied to the 
defendant's first, pro se motion for a new trial.  Prior to the 
court's decision today, we have never held that an indigent 
defendant has a constitutional right to choose between two 
options for appointed counsel:  pro bono counsel and counsel 
paid by the Commonwealth.  Cf. Commonwealth v. Drolet, 337 Mass. 
396, 400–401 (1958) ("The choice of counsel for an indigent 
person is to be made by the court in its discretion").  Nor, for 
that matter, has any other court of which I am aware.1  To 
                                                 
 
1 The court maintains that, at the time of the defendant's 
trial, Superior Court judges were aware that defendants had a 
constitutional right to choose between appointed and pro bono 
counsel.  In support of this assertion, the court points to 
3 
 
support the conclusion that such a right exists, the court 
relies primarily on the reasoning of a case decided by the 
United States Supreme Court fifteen years after the defendant 
filed his first motion for a new trial.  See United States v. 
Gonzalez–Lopez, 548 U.S. 140 (2006).  In that decision, the 
United States Supreme Court clarified that a defendant has a 
right to choose counsel, independent of his or her right to a 
fair trial, and that the "[d]eprivation of the right is 
'complete' when the defendant is erroneously prevented from 
being represented by the lawyer he wants, regardless of the 
quality of the representation he received."  Id. at 148.  We 
should not expect a defendant to have had the clairvoyance to 
foresee this development of the law, nor the extension of that 
logic that the court makes today. 
                                                 
Commonwealth vs. Lacy, a case in which a judge conducted a 
colloquy with a defendant about his choice to proceed with a 
specific attorney (Stephen Hrones), rather than counsel 
appointed under the then-existing rules of criminal procedure.  
See ante at note 7 &    .  Of course, the mere fact that the 
judge felt it necessary to inform that defendant of his right to 
appointed counsel under the procedural rules does not mean that 
the judge recognized the constitutional dimension of the 
defendant's rights.  A review of the transcript from that 
colloquy shows that the judge did not address the constitutional 
right we recognize today.  Rather, as the judge who ruled on the 
defendant's second motion for a new trial noted, "it is apparent 
that the judge [in Commonwealth vs. Lacy] preferred that the 
defendant accept a court appointed lawyer that the judge 
recommended rather than Mr. Hrones, and the judge wanted the 
record to be clear concerning his preferences and that Mr. 
Hrones was not appointed and would not be paid." 
4 
 
 
Rather than alerting the defendant that he had a viable 
claim, the state of the law in 1991 suggested that the defendant 
had no claim at all.  Where asserting an error at the time 
"would have been futile, . . . we review the constitutional 
error as though preserved."  Commonwealth v. Vasquez, 456 Mass. 
350, 352 (2010).  This court's decisions at that time suggested 
that indigent defendants had no say in the matter of appointed 
counsel.  See Commonwealth v. Moran, 388 Mass. 655, 659 (1983) 
("A defendant has no constitutional right to any particular 
court-appointed counsel"); Drolet, 337 Mass. at 400–401 ("The 
defendant need not accept court appointed counsel, but the 
alternative is to be represented by himself, or such attorney as 
he can hire"); Commonwealth v. Smith, 1 Mass. App. Ct. 545, 547–
548 (1973) ("an indigent defendant . . . is not entitled to his 
choice of counsel"). 
 
Moreover, contrary to the court's view, Federal decisions 
at the time were similarly discouraging.  See Caplin & Drysdale, 
Chartered v. United States, 491 U.S. 617, 626 (1989) ("Whatever 
the full extent of the . . . protection [under the Sixth 
Amendment to the United States Constitution]  of one's right to 
retain counsel of his choosing, that protection does not go 
beyond the individual's right to spend his own money to obtain 
the advice and assistance of . . . counsel"); Wheat v. United 
States, 486 U.S. 153, 159 (1988) ("a defendant may not insist on 
5 
 
representation by an attorney he cannot afford").2  Faced with 
these precedents, it is not surprising that the defendant did 
not pursue a seemingly impossible argument. 
 
The subsequent appellate history of this case further 
reflects the novelty of the constitutional right that the court 
correctly recognizes today.  As the court notes, screening 
attorneys for the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) 
did not accept the defendant's case to press this issue through 
                                                 
 
2 The court suggests that, in both Caplin & Drysdale, 
Chartered v. United States, 491 U.S. 617, 624-625 (1989), and 
Wheat v. United States, 486 U.S. 153, 159 (1988), the United 
States Supreme Court recognized the constitutional right to 
choice of counsel that underlies the defendant's claim of 
structural error.  It did not.  In Caplin & Drysdale, Chartered, 
the Court acknowledged that a defendant has a constitutional 
right to be represented by qualified counsel who volunteers his 
or her services pro bono.  See Caplin & Drysdale, Chartered, 
supra.  The Court did not, however, recognize an indigent 
defendant's right to choose between volunteer counsel and 
counsel appointed by a judge.  See id.  Cf. ante at    .  
Indeed, the Court suggested that no such right existed: 
 
"Petitioner does not, nor could it defensibly do so, assert 
that impecunious defendants have a Sixth Amendment right to 
choose their counsel.  The Amendment guarantees defendants 
in criminal cases the right to adequate representation, but 
those who do not have the means to hire their own lawyers 
have no cognizable complaint so long as they are adequately 
represented by attorneys appointed by the courts." 
 
Caplin & Drysdale, Chartered, supra at 624.  Similarly, in 
Wheat, the Court stated that a defendant has no right to an 
attorney he or she cannot afford; it said nothing about a 
defendant's right to a pro bono attorney.  Wheat, supra. 
6 
 
an appeal when they initially reviewed the defendant's case in 
1992 through 1993, and again in 2000.  See ante at    .  If, as 
the court suggests, the constitutional dimension of this error 
had been apparent, it is seemingly inexplicable that CPCS did 
not pursue this claim of automatically reversible error.  
Moreover, when denying the defendant's second motion for a new 
trial in 2018, the motion judge remarked, "the question of 
whether an indigent defendant is entitled to a court appointed, 
government compensated attorney, when a competent lawyer has 
offered to represent the defendant without compensation is 
certainly novel."  He went on to note that the defendant "cites 
no case in support of either formulation of his claim, and the 
court has not been able to find one."  As recently as 2018, 
then, an experienced jurist treated the issue before us as 
previously unexplored territory. 
 
The court claims that, by concluding there was waiver here, 
we merely would be holding the defendant to the same standards 
as an attorney.  To the contrary, we would be holding the 
defendant to a higher standard than the judge who oversaw his 
arraignment, the screening attorneys at CPCS who twice reviewed 
his case, and the Superior Court judge who denied his second 
motion for a new trial.  I would not impose this unreasonably 
high bar on any attorney, let alone a pro se defendant. 
7 
 
 
I further disagree with the court that the defendant waived 
his claim during the twenty-four years between his first and 
second motions for a new trial.  The court focuses on the 
supposed inaction of both the defendant and CPCS during that 
time to justify its conclusion that a waiver occurred.  Over 
those years, however, the defendant was not sitting idly on his 
hands; rather, he was seeking representation for his appeal.  We 
should not fault a defendant for waiting to learn if he would 
receive the assistance of counsel, rather than forging ahead pro 
se, especially after he already had attempted unsuccessfully to 
do so.  Nor can we hold the defendant responsible for CPCS's 
apparent decision not to raise this issue on appeal prior to 
2015.  CPCS was not representing the defendant before any 
court -- or indeed representing him at all -- until that time.  
In any event, it was not until the Gonzalez-Lopez decision in 
2006, six years after CPCS's second screening process took place 
in 2000, that the legal foundation for the defendant's claim was 
laid. 
 
In determining that this delay caused procedural waiver, 
the court also asserts that our "public trial waiver case law 
clearly compels that result."  See ante at    .  Those decisions 
do not control our analysis here, however, because they concern 
a fundamentally different kind of constitutional error. 
8 
 
 
When a closure of a court room occurs at trial, this error 
is both easily recognized and easily remedied.  A defendant need 
only look around and see that expected family or friends are 
absent to know that something has gone wrong.  Moreover, for 
many years, it was an open secret that certain court rooms in 
the Commonwealth at least occasionally were closed during voir 
dire, and therefore defense counsel were effectively on notice 
that violation of the public trial right could occur.  See 
Commonwealth v. Lang, 473 Mass. 1, 9 (2015) (Hines, J., 
concurring) ("experienced trial counsel was aware that the court 
room was routinely closed to spectators during the jury 
empanelment process and did not object at trial to the partial 
closure"); Commonwealth v. Alebord, 467 Mass. 106, 113, cert. 
denied, 573 U.S. 921 (2014) (accord).  At the moment such a 
violation occurs, counsel has every incentive to bring the 
closure to the judge's attention, so that the judge may correct 
the issue or may make findings on the record as to why the 
closure was warranted. 
 
Here, however, the violation of the defendant's right to 
choose counsel presents the opposite scenario.  Where a 
defendant is excluded from a sidebar conversation at which the 
court appoints counsel, the defendant has no way of knowing that 
a critical stage of his or her trial is occurring.  Neither 
counsel nor the judge, who are the architects of the error, have 
9 
 
any incentive to rectify it.  As a result, a defendant is 
unlikely to learn that his or her constitutional rights have 
been violated until after the trial has concluded.  Indeed, in 
this case, the very earliest that the defendant might have known 
that his right to choice of counsel had been violated was when 
he received the transcripts of his arraignment, while he was 
incarcerated and preparing his direct appeal. 
 
Our waiver doctrine with respect to court room closures has 
developed to take account of both the obvious nature of that 
error and the ease with which it can be rectified at trial.  It 
is for those reasons that we require defendants either to raise 
an objection contemporaneously or to waive it.  See Commonwealth 
v. Robinson, 480 Mass. 146, 152 (2018) ("Absent a 
contemporaneous objection, it is immaterial when or in what form 
the defendant later raises the claim in postconviction 
proceedings").  By applying that analysis to the radically 
different structural error we confront today, the court ignores 
the distinct characteristics of violations of public trial 
rights that led us to develop that analysis in the first place. 
 
"In the criminal justice system, the constant, indeed 
unending, duty of the judiciary is to seek and to find the 
proper balance between the necessity for fair and just trials 
and the importance of finality of judgments."  Weaver v. 
Massachusetts, 137 S. Ct. 1899, 1913 (2017).  Granting the 
10 
 
defendant a new trial thirty-eight years after his conviction 
undoubtedly would burden very significantly the "limited legal 
and judicial resources" that our waiver doctrine is designed to 
preserve.  See Commonwealth v. Pisa, 384 Mass. 362, 366 (1981).  
This long passage of time, however, although an important factor 
in our analysis, is not dispositive.  We must balance the 
interest in finality against the "full realization of a 
defendant's rights."  Amirault, 424 Mass. at 640–641.  The 
defendant's rights were not fully recognized, let alone 
realized, prior to our decision today, and the deprivation of 
those rights pervaded his entire trial.  Accordingly, I conclude 
that the defendant did not waive his claim of structural error. 
 
Moreover, even where a claim of structural error is waived, 
we still must consider whether that caused a substantial 
likelihood of a miscarriage of justice.  The court's analysis of 
prejudice stops short of assessing the full impact of the 
violation of the right to counsel on the fundamental fairness of 
the defendant's trial. 
 
The court rightly acknowledges that, when considering 
waived claims of structural error, our substantial risk of a 
miscarriage of justice standard must "be no less protective than 
the United States Supreme Court standard of review in Weaver."  
See ante at    .  Under that standard, a defendant is entitled 
to a new trial if he or she can establish "a reasonable 
11 
 
probability of a different outcome" but for the structural 
error, or that the error resulted in "a fundamentally unfair 
trial."  See Weaver, 137 S. Ct. at 1913. 
 
While recognizing the importance of the United States 
Supreme Court's decision in Weaver, the court misapprehends its 
teaching.  Although the court refers to the issue of fundamental 
unfairness, its analysis ultimately turns on the impact that the 
structural error had on the jury's verdict. 
 
The problem with this approach is two-fold.  First, by 
focusing solely on the impact of the error on the jury's 
verdict, it fails to consider the nature of the right that was 
violated.  Such "preoccupation with the outputs of criminal 
processes stands in marked contrast with criminal procedure's 
broader ethical vision, which encompasses a diverse array of 
non-truth-furthering interests" (quotation and citation 
omitted).  Murray, A Contextual Approach to Harmless Error 
Review, 130 Harv. L. Rev. 1791, 1795 (2017).  Indeed, as the 
United States Supreme Court noted in Weaver, 137 S. Ct. at 1908, 
some errors, including deprivation of the right to choice of 
counsel, are deemed structural in part because "harm is 
irrelevant to the basis underlying the right."  Id., citing 
Gonzalez–Lopez, 548 U.S. at 149 n.4. 
 
Second, the court requires the defendant to demonstrate 
that the trial he received was somehow worse than a trial with a 
12 
 
different attorney that never happened.  This kind of 
counterfactual analysis has been criticized as unworkable by the 
United States Supreme Court.  See Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. 
at 150 ("Harmless-error analysis in such a context would be a 
speculative inquiry into what might have occurred in an 
alternate universe"). 
 
Applying this analysis leads to an untenable result here.  
The court concludes that "[t]his kind of structural error, as 
explained supra, is a peculiar type with subtle effects.  Those 
subtle effects, as we have explained, do not amount to a 
substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice."  See ante at    .  
The court thereby carves out a class of structural errors which, 
for the very reason that they are considered structural, will 
never result in a new trial once waived.  This truly "flips on 
its head" the structural error doctrine, and the presumption of 
prejudice that typically attaches to it. 
 
Many structural errors could never meet the standard the 
court sets today.  The right to conduct one's own defense, for 
example, "usually increases the likelihood of a trial outcome 
unfavorable to the defendant."  See Weaver, 137 S. Ct. at 1908, 
quoting McKaskle v. Wiggins, 465 U.S. 168, 177 n.8 (1984).  
Therefore, a defendant could never show that a deprivation of 
this nonetheless essential right created a substantial risk of a 
miscarriage of justice. 
13 
 
 
To strike the proper balance that Weaver and our own 
decisions require, our analysis of waived claims of structural 
error must take into account not only the impact that the error 
had on the outcome of the trial, but also its impact on the 
administration of justice itself.  Since the decision in Weaver, 
many courts have extended this analysis to a wide range of 
structural errors.3  As those courts have discovered, giving due 
consideration to whether a trial was rendered fundamentally 
unfair does not require granting a new trial in every instance, 
or even most instances.  See note 3, supra.  Indeed, it is far 
from clear that this analysis would have required a new trial in 
this case.  One thing, however, is clear:  if we continue to ask 
                                                 
 
3 See United States v. Thomas 750 Fed. Appx. 120, 128 (3d 
Cir. 2018), cert. denied, 139 S. Ct. 1218 (2019) (freezing 
assets pretrial such that right to put on defense was 
curtailed); Pirela v. Horn, 710 Fed. Appx. 66, 82-83 (3d Cir. 
2017), cert. denied, 139 S. Ct. 107 (2018) (waiver of jury 
trial); United States vs. Resnick, U.S. Dist. Ct., No. 2:11 CR 
68 (N.D. Ind. Dec. 19, 2019) (ineffective assistance of counsel 
in connection with plea agreement); Garcia vs. Davis, U.S. Dist. 
Ct., No. 7:16-CV-632 (S.D. Tex. Nov. 9, 2018) (right to choice 
of counsel); Durden v. State, 99 N.E.3d 645, 655-656 (Ind. 2018) 
(waiver of right to jury trial); Newton v. State, 455 Md. 341, 
353-354, 361 (2017), cert. denied, 138 S. Ct. 665 (2018) 
(permitting alternate juror to attend deliberations); State v. 
Thaniel, 238 Md. App. 343, 367-368 (Ct. Spec. App. 2018), cert. 
denied, 139 S. Ct. 2027 (2019) (focusing analysis on specific 
harms that flowed from court room closure to determine whether 
they "pervade[d] the whole trial" [citation omitted]); Miller v. 
State, 548 S.W.3d 497, 500–501 (Tex. Crim. App. 2018) (noting 
effect of error on outcome not dispositive); Matter of the 
Personal Restraint of Salinas, 189 Wash. 2d 747, 763-765 (2018) 
(court room closure). 
14 
 
the wrong questions about waived claims of structural error, as 
the court does here, we inevitably will give the wrong answers. 
 
Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.