Opinion ID: 4211918
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Nature of the Right to Counsel on Review

Text: According to petitioner, that statutory right to representation by counsel “implicitly requires    the provision of adequate counsel.” (Emphasis in original.) For that premise, petitioner relies primarily on State ex rel Juv. Dept. v. Geist, 310 Or 176, 796 P2d 1193 (1990), in which we held that the statutory right to counsel applicable in a termination of parental rights case is a right to “adequate” counsel. In Geist, the mother whose parental rights were at stake was provided counsel under a statute that guaranteed indigent parents in termination cases a right to “an attorney to represent them at state expense.” Id. at 180 n 3. The court-appointed lawyer who represented the mother at the termination hearing had been recently removed from a list of lawyers who were qualified to represent clients in such proceedings, and the lawyer moved to withdraw. The court denied the lawyer’s motion to withdraw and ultimately terminated the mother’s parental rights. On appeal, the mother challenged the termination judgment on the ground that she had been denied adequate representation of counsel. The Court of Appeals “assumed that the legislature intended a statutory right to counsel to include a right to adequate counsel,” and this court expressly agreed with that premise. Id. at 185. We also concluded that, “[a]bsent an express legislative procedure for vindicating the statutory right to adequate counsel, this court may fashion an appropriate procedure.” Id. Generalizing from the holding in Geist, petitioner argues that any statute that grants a right to state-provided counsel implicitly grants a right to adequate counsel, because Cite as 362 Or 15 (2017) 21 granting a right to counsel would be a pointless legislative exercise if the right could be satisfied by counsel who is not adequate to fill that role. As intuitively sound as that proposition may seem in the abstract, however, our more recent decision in Dept. of Human Services v. T. L., 358 Or 679, 687-693, 369 P3d 1159 (2016), suggests that we will not simply assume that every statutory right to counsel necessarily grants a right to adequate counsel. In T. L., although the parties and the Court of Appeals had accepted that the rationale of Geist extends to counsel appointed to represent parents in dependency proceedings other than termination, we undertook to “independently address” that proposition. Id. at 687. In doing so, we focused on factors that the court uses to determine whether the “nature of particular juvenile proceedings and due process require the appointment of counsel.” Id. at 69193. Considering those factors in the particular context of a proceeding to change a child’s permanency plan away from reunification with the parents, we concluded, based on “the complex nature of the legal and factual issues, and the gravity of the interests at stake,” that appointed counsel in such proceedings “must be adequate.” Id. at 693. Moreover, as Geist illustrates, even when the court accepts the proposition that the legislature granted a right to adequate counsel, the more pertinent inquiry is “what standard of adequacy” should apply. 310 Or at 187. In Geist, the court rejected the mother’s argument that the court should evaluate her attorney’s performance under the standard of adequate representation that the court employs in criminal cases to protect a criminal defendant’s constitutional right to counsel. Id. Instead, the court concluded that the flexible standard of “fundamental fairness” is the proper standard for deciding whether parents have received adequate representation in a termination case.6 Id. at 188-90. Under that standard, this court determined, the mother received adequate assistance of counsel in the termination proceeding. Id. at 194. 6 Geist emphasizes that, in general, “fundamental fairness requires that appointed counsel exercise professional skill and judgment,” but that “the search for a single, succinctly-stated standard of performance, objectively applicable to every case, is ‘a fool’s errand.’ ” 310 Or at 190 (quoting Krummacher v. Gierloff, 290 Or 867, 874, 627 P2d 458 (1981)). 22 Haynes v. Board of Parole Petitioner does not meaningfully analyze whether and to what extent ORS 144.337(1) grants a right to adequate counsel to assist with the judicial review of petitioner’s parole board order, and ultimately we need not decide those questions in this case. That is so because, even if counsel’s failure to timely file the petition for review denied petitioner the right to counsel granted by ORS 144.337(1), as discussed below, that denial does not justify the remedy of a late review process—the only remedy that petitioner seeks.