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Parties Involved:
Lewis D. Allen
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

PUBLISH 

FILED 

Uoict,d St'titt\: -Ci,un of AppeaL 

'f'emh Cirr:ui: 

FEB G 1990 

ROBERT L I10.ECYJjR 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Clerk 

TENTH CIRCUIT 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ) 

) 

Plaintiff-Appellee, ) 

) 

v. ) No. 88-2486 

) 

LEWIS D. ALLEN, ) 

) 

Defendant-Appellant. ) 

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Kansas 

(D.C. No. 88-20044-01) 

David J. Phillips, Assistant Federal Public Defender (Charles D. 

Anderson, Federal Public Defender, with him ·on the brief), 

District of Kansas, Kansas City, Kansas, for Defendant-Appellant. 

Robert S. Streepy, Assistant U.S. Attorney (Benjamin L. Burgess, 

Jr., United States Attorney, with him on the brief), District of 

Kansas, Kansas City, Kansas, for Plaintiff-Appellee. 

Before LOGAN, TACHA, and BRORBY, Circuit Judges. 

LOGAN, Circuit Judge. 

Appellate Case: 88-2486 Document: 010110155323 Date Filed: 02/06/1990 Page: 1 
Lewis D. Allen appeals his conviction on charges of tax. 

evasion and fraudulent misuse of a social security number not 

belonging to him. We hold that the district court violated 

Allen's Sixth Amendment right to assistance of counsel for his 

defense. Accordingly we reverse the conviction and remand the 

case for a new trial. 

I 

Allen was indicted on three charges of tax evasion, in 

violation of 26 u.s.c. § 7201, and five counts of use of a social 

security number not assigned to him for the purpose of concealing 

his income from the United States government, in violation of 42 

u.s.c. § 408(g)(2). At each of his appearances before the 

magistrate an_d, later, before the district judge, Allen appeared 

without counsel. He rejected appointed counsel, expressing a 

desire to find someone to help him on his own; but he never 

retained an attorney. Ultimately the magistrate appointed a 

member of the federal public defender's office as standby counsel. 

The district court denied Allen's prose motions for a continuance 

to permit him to retain an attorney. 

The court determined that Allen's appearance at trial 

"without counsel [was] at his own choosing," IV R. at 19; see also 

id. at 38, 67, 192, and ordered the trial to proceed with Allen 

entered as appearing~ se. Allen did not participate in the 

trial except to object that his Sixth Amendment rights were being 

violated each time the judge invited him to participate. The 

government presented its case; the defense presented nothing; and 

the jury returned a guilty verdict on each of the eight counts in 

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Appellate Case: 88-2486 Document: 010110155323 Date Filed: 02/06/1990 Page: 2 
the indictment. Allen was sentenced to the maximum term of five 

years in prison on .each count, all sentences to run concurrently. 

II 

The district court apparently thought that Allen's refusal to 

accept appointed counsel, and his failure to hire his own, were 

part of a ploy to indefinitely postpone his trial. We, therefore, 

treat the court's comment that Allen was without counsel "at his 

own choosing" as a finding that Allen's course of conduct amounted 

to waiver of his Sixth Amendment right to assistance of counsel. 

There is no question that a defendant may waive the right to 

counsel and defend against criminal charges E.£Q se. To be valid, 

however, the waiver of this fundamental constitutional guarantee 

must be voluntary, knowing and intelligent. See,~, Sanchez v. 

Mondragon, 858 F.2d 1462, 1465 (10th Cir. 1988). Indeed, before 

allowing a defendant to proceed E.£Q se, the district judge must 

~nsure and establish on the record that defendant ''knows what he 

is doing and [that] his choice is made with eyes open.'' Faretta 

v. California, 422 U.S. 806, 835 (quoting Adams v. United States 

ex rel. Mccann, 317 U.S. 269, 279 (1942)). As we stated in United 

States v. Padilla, 819 F.2d 952 (10th Cir. 1987): 

"Faretta requires a showing on the record that the 

defendant who elects to conduct his own defense had some 

sense of the magnitude of the undertaking and the 

hazards inherent in self-representation when he made the 

election. The task of ensuring that defendant possesses 

the requisite understanding initially falls on the trial 

judge, who must bear in mind the strong presumption 

against waiver. Von Moltke v. Gillies, 332 U.S. 708, 

723, 68 S. Ct. 316, 323, 92 L.Ed. 309 (1948)[.] 

'To be valid such waiver must be made with an 

apprehension of the nature of the charges, the 

statutory offenses included within them, the range 

of all?wable punishments thereunder, possible 

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Appellate Case: 88-2486 Document: 010110155323 Date Filed: 02/06/1990 Page: 3 
defenses to the charges and circumstances in 

mitigation thereof, and all other facts essential 

to a broad understanding of the whole matter. A 

judge can make certain that an accused's professed 

waiver of counsel is understandingly and wisely 

made only from a penetrating and comprehensive 

examination of all the circumstances under which 

such a plea is tendered.' 

Von Moltke, 332 U.S. at 723-24, 68 S. Ct. at 323. This 

court has reiterated that the factors articulated must 

be conveyed to the defendant by the trial judge and must 

appear on the record so that our review may be conducted 

without speculation." 

Id. at 956-57 (emphasis in original) (citations omitted). The 

inquiry mandated by Padilla must occur at a ~trial hearing, so 

that if the defendant decides not to waive his right to counsel, 

he will have a meaningful opportunity to exercise it. 

The right to make a knowing and intelligent waiver of the 

right to counsel does not grant the defendant license "to play a 

'cat and mouse' game with the court, or by ruse or stratagem 

fraudulently seek to have the trial judge placed in a position 

where, in moving along the business of the court, the judge 

appears to be arbitrarily depriving the defendant of counsel." 

United States v. McMann, 386 F.2d 611, 618-19 (2d Cir. 1968). Of 

course, such a "ruse or stratagem" may be, and often will be, the 

result of the defendant's ignorance concerning the crucial role of 

counsel in criminal cases. 

We assume, without deciding, that the district court here 

correctly viewed Allen's conduct as amounting to a voluntary 

waiver of his right to counsel, because it is undisputed that the 

court engaged in no inquiry to determine whether the waiver was 

knowing and intelligent. A court is under no less obligation to 

ensure that waiver is knowing and intelligent when voluntariness 

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Appellate Case: 88-2486 Document: 010110155323 Date Filed: 02/06/1990 Page: 4 
is deduced from conduct than when it is asserted expressly. See, 

~, United States v. Welty, 674 F.2d 185, 189 (3d Cir. 1982) 

("While we can understand, and perhaps even sympathize, with the 

frustration and exasperation of the district court judge, even 

well-founded suspicions of intentional delay and manipulative 

tactics can provide no substitute for the inquiries necessary to 

protect a defendant's constitutional rights."). The district 

court's failure to examine Allen in accordance with our holding in 

Padilla renders Allen's purported waiver invalid. Thus, the trial 

below was conducted in violation of his Sixth Amendment right to 

counsel. 

III 

Before reversing Allen's convictions, our precedent requires 

that we consider whether the district court's violation of his 

Sixth Amendment rights should be deemed harmless beyond a 

reasonable doubt. See Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 (1967). 

In United States v. Dawes, 874 F.2d 746 (10th Cir.), cert. 

denied, 110 S. Ct. 284 (1989), a case factually similar to the one 

at bar, this court affirmed convictions obtained after the trial 

court allowed defendants to proceed~ se without ensuring their 

knowledge and understanding of the dangers of self-representation 

as required by Padilla. We reasoned that, because "[o]ur 

examination of the record convinces us there is no reasonable 

possibility defendants would have been found not guilty had they 

been represented by counsel[,] noncompliance with the 

requirements of Padilla was harmless error, and, based on the 

evidence, harmless beyond a reascinable doubt." Id. at 749. See 

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also United States v. Gipson, 693 F.2d 109, 112 (10th Cir.), cert. 

denied, 459 U.S. 1216 (1983). We applied the same standard to a 

constitutionally invalid waiver in a state habeas corpus case in 

Sanchez v. Mondragon, 858 F.2d 1462, 1464-65 (10th Cir. 1988), 

concluding that "the same waiver standard applies to Faretta 

issues on direct appeal and habeas corpus." 

In Sanchez, however, we applied harmless error analysis with 

reluctance, noting that other circuits have questioned the 

applicability of harmless error analysis to waiver of counsel 

cases, and that the Ninth Circuit had specifically held that our 

approach in Gipson was prohibited by the Supreme Court's 

subsequent decision in Rose v. Clark, 478 U.S. 570 (1986). 

Sanchez, 858 F.2d. at 1468 (citing United States v. Balough, 820 

F.2d 1485, 1489-90 (9th Cir. 1987)). We also noted that the 

Supreme Court's recent decision in Satterwhite v. Texas, 108 

S. Ct. 1792 (1988), 

"cast considerably more doubt on the applicability of 

harmless error analysis in Faretta waiver-of-counsel 

cases [by] distinguish[ing] per se reversible 

Sixth Amendment error from that amenable to harmless 

error analysi~ by focusing on whether the error 

'affected--and contaminated--the entire criminal 

proceeding' or whether the error was 'limited to the 

erroneous admission of particular evidence.'" 

858 F.2d at 1468. We observed that waiver-of-counsel error is not 

like erroneous introduction of evidence. Rather, it results in 

the defendant proceeding through an entire trial without counsel. 

Id. Nevertheless, reluctant to infer that the Supreme Court 

implicitly overruled our precedent, we applied harmless error 

analysis to -the facts of Sanchez. Id. 

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We believe that the Supreme Court's decision in Penson v. 

Ohio, 109 S. Ct. 346 (1988), has now dispelled all doubt about the 

application of harmless error analysis to invalid waivers of 

counsel. In Penson, the petitioner, an indigent, was convicted of 

several crimes in state court. New counsel was appointed for his 

appeal but was permitted to withdraw after certifying that the 

appeal was meritless. The petitioner's request for new appointed 

counsel was denied and the court of appeals, "without the 

assistance of any advocacy for petitioner, •.• made its own 

examination of the record to determine whether petitioner received 

'a fair trial and whether any grave or prejudicial errors occurred 

therein."' Id. at 349 (citation omitted). The court found 

several arguable gounds for appeal, reversed petitioner's 

conviction and sentence on one count, and affirmed on the 

remaining counts. The court found no prejudice to defendant as a 

result of counsel's superficial examination of the record, because 

the court itself had thoroughly examined the record. 

The Supreme Court, however, found that the state appellate 

court violated the requirements of Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 

738 (1967), when it granted appellate counsel's motion to withdraw 

and that it "committed an even more serious error when it failed 

to appoint new counsel after finding that the record supported 

several arguably meritorious grounds for reversal of petitioner's 

conviction and modification of his sentence. As a result, 

petitioner was left without constitutionally adequate 

representation on appeal." Penson, 109 S. Ct. at 350. 

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In refusing -to apply harmless error analysis to the facts of 

Penson, the Court said: 

"[I]t is important to emphasize that the denial of 

counsel in this case left petitioner completely without 

representation during the appellate court's actual 

decisional process. This is quite different from a case 

in which it is claimed that counsel's performance was 

ineffective. As we stated in Strickland, the '[a]ctual 

or constructive denial of the assistance of counsel 

altogether is legally pres~med to result in prejudice.' 

466 U.S. at 692, 104 s. Ct. at 2067. Our decision in 

United States v. Cronic, likewise, makes clear that 

'[t]he presumption that counsel's assistance is 

essential requires us to conclude that a trial is unfair 

if the accused is denied counsel at a critical stage of 

his trial.' 466 U.S. at 659, 104 s. Ct. at 2047 

(footnote omitted). Similarly, Chapman recognizes that 

the right to counsel is 'so basic to a fair trial that 

[its] infraction can never be treated as harmless 

error.' 386 U.S. at 23, and n.8, 87 S. Ct. at 827-28 

and n.8. And more recentiy, in Satterwhite v. Texas, 

486 U.S. , , 108 S. Ct. 1792, , 100 L.Ed.2d 

284 (1988)-;-we stated that a pervasive denial of counsel 

casts such doubt on the fairness of the trial process, 

that it can never be considered harmless error. Because 

the fundamental importance of the assistance of counsel 

does not cease as the prosecutorial process moves from 

the trial to the appellate stage, . the presumption 

of prejudice must extend as well to the denial of 

counsel on appeal." 

Id. at 353-54. Two key elements in the Court's reasoning control 

our decision here. First, because the Sixth Amendment violation 

left petitioner "entirely without the assistance of counsel," the 

Court held that both Strickland's prejudice requirement and 

Chapman's harmless error analysis are inapplicable. Id. at 354 

(emphasis added). Second, the Court justified this holding by 

analogizing the need for counsel on appeal to its "par~amount 

importance" at trial. Id. at 351-52, 354. 

We believe that Penson precludes application of harmless 

error analysis to waiver of counsel cases. Acceptance of an 

invalid waiver in violation of a defendant's Sixth Amendment 

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( 

rights necessarily leaves him "entirely without the assistance of 

counsel" at trial. To the extent that our cases are inconsistent 

with this holding, they are overruled. 1 

REVERSED and REMANDED. 

1 Because this panel opinion overrules Tenth Circuit precedent, 

it has been circulated among all the judges of this court in 

regular active service. All judges have expressed agreement with 

the conclusions expressed herein concerning the inapplicability of 

harmless error analysis to waiver of counsel cases. 

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