Opinion ID: 2631199
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: A Conflict of Interest Existed Which Deprived Stenson of His Right to Effective Counsel

Text: The majority also completely dismisses Stenson's conflict of interest claim saying [c]ase law does not support the application of the concept of a conflict of interest to conflicts between an attorney and client over trial strategy. Majority at 9. This is characteristic of the wrongheaded notion that counsel's behavior was merely a matter of strategy. In fact, the Ninth Circuit has joined the Tenth Circuit in holding an attorney may create a conflict of interest by abandoning the duty of loyalty [7] to his client : A defense attorney who abandons his duty of loyalty to his client and effectively joins the state in an effort to attain a conviction or death sentence suffers from an obvious conflict of interest. Such an attorney, like unwanted counsel, `represents' the defendant only through a tenuous and unacceptable legal fiction. In fact, an attorney who is burdened by a conflict between his client's interests and his own sympathies to the prosecution's position is considerably worse than an attorney with loyalty to other defendants, because the interests of the state and the defendant are necessarily in opposition. Frazer, 18 F.3d at 782-83 (emphasis added) (citation omitted) (quoting United States v. Swanson, 943 F.2d 1070, 1075 (9th Cir.1991) (quoting Osborn v. Shillinger, 861 F.2d 612, 625 (10th Cir.1988))). Stenson is entitled to appointed counsel who does not, against his wishes, effectively concede his guilt as a matter of strategy. By so doing, Stenson's counsel essentially joined the state in its effort to secure a conviction and `utterly failed to subject the prosecution's case to meaningful adversarial testing.' Frazer, 18 F.3d at 782 (citation omitted) (quoting Swanson, 943 F.2d at 1074) (quoting United States v. Cronic, 466 U.S. 648, 659, 104 S.Ct. 2039, 80 L.Ed 2d 657 (1984)). Contrary to the majority's assertion that conflict of interest analysis does not apply to this case, Stenson's attorneys (for reasons I understand) deprived him of his right to adversarial representation contrary to constitutional guaranties.