Opinion ID: 1946665
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Court's Denial of the Motion to Withdraw in the Face of Post-Competency Hearing Evidence

Text: Just before the plea proceedings commenced on January 5, 2004, the court was advised that appellant had been hospitalized for twelve days during December 2003. The court inquired of defense counsel whether he had seen any significant difference in [appellant's] functioning since this latest episode in the hospital. Although defense counsel responded that he had not, [22] the information about appellant's post-competency-hearing hospitalization arguably raised anew the issue of appellant's competency. This court has held that where the issue of a defendant's mental competence [has] been raised on the record, the trial court must conduct a specialized hearing to determine the competence of a defendant who seeks to plead guilty. Edwards, 766 A.2d at 988 (quoting Hunter v. United States, 548 A.2d 806 (D.C.1988)). The trial judge did not conduct a second competency hearing, and so we must address the issue of how this bears on appellant's motion to withdraw his guilty plea. The issue is an important one because the record reveals that appellant suffered a major seizure on December 18, 2003, and while hospitalized underwent an EEG that showed what Dr. Hyde, in a letter dated January 8, 2004, called markedly abnormal brain activity. [23] And, in her November 10, 2003 competency ruling, the trial judge had specifically noted Dr. Hyde's testimony that seizures can result in loss of consciousness and confusion in post seizure, as well as an impairment of cognitive function. We addressed a similar situation in Edwards, where the court conducted a plea proceeding and accepted Edwards' guilty plea while unaware of his diminished mental capacity, which was later documented in an evaluation by a clinical psychologist, Dr. Levin. Dr. Levin's evaluation described the substantial brain damage and marked changes in cognitive functioning that Edwards had sustained after a beating by police years earlier. See 766 A.2d at 984, 987. We noted that even though the trial court had been unaware of this history during the plea proceeding, the trial judge's denial of Edwards' post-sentencing motion to withdraw his plea was informed by Dr. Levin's evaluation. Id. at 988. We rejected Edwards' claim that the court had erred in denying his motion to withdraw, noting that the denial was based primarily on [the trial judge's] personal observations of and conversations with Edwards, factors to which we accord great deference. Id. We also noted that Dr. Levin never opined that Edwards was incompetent to enter a plea, id., and that the trial judge had clearly considered Dr. Levin's report but rejected it as unpersuasive on the issue of Edwards' competence at the time of the plea. Id. at 988 n. 10. We reason similarly here. It appears that Judge Broderick was not aware of the details of appellant's December 2003 hospitalization and EEG at the time of the plea proceeding, but information about both did inform her denial of Wallace's motion to withdraw his guilty plea. Judge Broderick noted that appellant's EEG taken on December 24, 2003 evidenced permanent and irreversible brain damage, that appellant had a major seizure on December 18, 2003, eighteen days before his plea hearing, and that Dr. Hyde found that [appellant] became confused for several days after `a bout of severe seizures.' However, like the trial judge in Edwards, Judge Broderick found the evidence relating to the December 2003 episode unpersuasive on the issue of competence, stating that [n]o evidence was presented that there was a change in the Defendant's [competency] since the time of the competency findings. We find no clear error in the court's assessment. Even if we discount the lay opinions of defense counsel that there was no change in Wallace's functioning between the time of the competency hearing in November 2003 and January 2004, the record does not compel a conclusion that appellant's competency had diminished from November 2003 to January 2004. As noted, Dr. Hyde's letter of January 8, 2004, interpreting appellant's December 24, 2003 EEG stated that the EEG showed markedly abnormal brain wave activity, with slowing over the frontal lobes, consistent with permanent and irreversible frontal lobe damage. But Dr. Hyde did not suggest in his letter that the new EEG showed that appellant was incompetent at the time of his plea. [24] Indeed, Dr. Hyde had earlier testified that an abnormal EEG does not mean that an individual is incompetent to stand trial, agreed that an EEG look[ed] at . . . in isolation does not tell much about competency, and explained that it is possible [for an individual] to have both normal and abnormal studies. Also of particular note, Dr. Hyde had explained during the competency hearing that you will see a lot of abnormalities in the post-seizure period. Taken together, Dr. Hyde's statements suggest that it was to be expected that appellant's EEG taken six days after his December 2003 seizure would show abnormal brain activity, and that no conclusion can be drawn from that EEG that appellant was less competent to enter a plea on January 5, 2004 (seventeen days post-seizure) than he had been at the time of the competency hearing. Moreover, the December 2003 EEG appears to be cumulative of evidence already on the record. In his January 8, 2004 letter, Dr. Hyde referred to the 2003 EEG as providing  additional evidence of abnormal slowing over the frontal lobes (emphasis added). This had already been shown by other abnormalities on neurological examination reflecting his underlying brain damage, including clumsy fine motor movements with the left hand, bilaterial grasp reflexes, and poor complex motor sequencing in the hands bilaterally. Dr. Hyde testified about these same abnormalities at the competency hearing, stating that in April 2003, appellant had clumsiness on a number of fine motor movements, and `primitive reflexes,' often seen in individuals with frontal lobe dysfunction, and noting that there ha[d] been some progressive brain damage since appellant's 2000 EEG (which had also shown bilateral slowing over the cerebella hemispheres). [25] Cf. Williams, 595 A.2d at 1005 & n. 2 (psychological report introduced at post-plea hearing had no bearing on defendant's competency because it added nothing to what was already known at the time of the plea). Dr. Hyde's January 8, 2004 letter discussed not only appellant's December 24, 2003 EEG, but also the facts that appellant's mental status fluctuates in response to his seizure disorder and that appellant often is confused for several days after a bout of severe seizures. It is not clear from the record whether appellant's December 18, 2003 seizure was part of a bout of severe seizures, or whether, if appellant was confused after the December 18 seizure, that confusion (perhaps several days of confusion) had resolved or subsided by the end of his twelve-day hospital stay. However, in denying appellant's motion to withdraw, the trial judge emphasized that [a]ll the evidence was considered, and one piece of important additional record evidence was an evaluation by Dr. Lally, setting out his findings from a 2.75-hour interview of appellant that Dr. Lally conducted at D.C. Jail on December 31, 2003, i.e., after appellant had been discharged from Greater Southeast Community Hospital. [26] During this visit with appellant, Dr. Lally observed that appellant was alert and oriented to person, place, and time and that appellant's speech was clear and at a normal volume. Although appellant's speech tended to be slower with lengthy delays in his response to questions about court-related matters, there was no evidence of a thought disorder in the form or content of his thinking. Appellant's expression of affect was somewhat constricted, but generally appropriate. In short, this evaluation by Dr. Lally  the only expert evaluation in the record that is based on an interview of appellant after his December 2003 seizure but before his January 5, 2004 guilty plea  contained nothing that required the trial judge to conclude that appellant's competence to stand trial or plead guilty had diminished between the November 2003 competency hearing and the January 2004 plea proceedings. We reach the same conclusion about the other new evidence that appellant presented with his Rule 32(e) motion. Appellant contends that his Bureau of Prison medical records generated since his guilty plea  one dated October 22, 2004, and the other dated January 7, 2005,  confirm that he is incompetent and not malingering. [27] The trial judge refused to consider these records, reasoning that they were not relevant to appellant's competency during the plea. The trial court applied the appropriate standard. As the Supreme Court instructed in Dusky, it is a defendant's present ability that should be evaluated during competency evaluations. 362 U.S. at 402, 80 S.Ct. 788. The trial judge did not abuse her discretion in holding that appellant's mental evaluations on dates nine and twelve months after the guilty plea have little if any relevance on the issue of whether appellant was competent when he entered his guilty plea. Cf. United States v. Collins, 430 F.3d 1260, 1267 (10th Cir.2005) (noting that a defendant's competency can change over time) and Rogers v. Snyder, No. 00-007, 2001 WL 652032, , 2001 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8866, -17 (D.Del.2001) (disallowing new evidence suggesting that petitioner was not competent to stand trial in March 1996 as it was not relevant to whether petitioner was competent to enter a guilty plea in 1993). Finally, as we did in Edwards, we accord great deference to Judge Broderick's personal observations of and conversations with appellant, which informed her judgment that appellant was competent to plead guilty on January 5, 2004. The trial judge noted in her order denying the motion to withdraw that she carefully assessed the Defendant at every question during the plea proceeding and that the Defendant's mental state was understood and considered by the Court at the time of the plea. For all the foregoing reasons, we cannot conclude that the trial court abused its discretion in denying the Rule 32(e) motion to withdraw on the grounds of appellant's (claimed) mental incompetency to enter a plea.