Opinion ID: 466130
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Whether Counsel Was Automatically Disqualified from Further Participation.

Text: 46 As we have said above, by the order of the Ninth Circuit, Palacios was disbarred from practicing before this court because of his conduct in unrelated cases unbecoming a member of the bar of the court and failure to comply with    rules    of the court. Fed.R.App.P. 46(b) and (c). The conduct involved failure to meet deadlines in pending appeals, failure to prosecute an appeal, and giving an insufficient check in payment for court reporter services. The effect such an adjudication in this court will have upon a lawyer's status in a district court will depend upon the rules of the latter court. We therefore must turn to the practice and rules of the district court in which the trial was pending. 47 Local Rule 2.6.2 of the United States District Court for the Central District of California provides: 48 Upon receipt of reliable information that a member of the bar of this court has been suspended or disbarred from practice by the order of any court or administrative agency, this court shall immediately impose a like order of suspension or disbarment. The attorney so suspended may make application to the Chief Judge for reinstatement by regularly noticed motion. 49 Central District Local Rule 2.6.4 further establishes a procedure for referral of charges which have not yet been adjudicated by a court or administrative agency to a three-judge panel. That panel will conduct a hearing upon notice and the lawyer will have an opportunity to appear and be heard. This rule contemplates a different situation and does not on its face resolve the problem here. 50 In this case, the trial judge, after receiving notice of the order disbarring Palacios from practicing before the Ninth Circuit, conferred with the Chief Judge of the district court. Their consensus was that the trial ought not be halted. The district judge then discussed the disbarment order with Palacios and urged him to take it up with his client. The record discloses no indication of an intent by either judge or counsel to suspend the trial; nor does it show that the matter was ever revealed to counsel for the co-defendant. 51 Read literally, Rule 2.6.2 would seem to call for the immediate entry of a like order disbarring Palacios from practicing in the Central District. Yet neither the trial judge nor the Chief Judge accorded such significance to the rule, apparently not viewing its requirement as immediate. The announcement of a disbarment order may come at many different stages of a trial court proceeding and may produce consequences of major or only minor nature. The rule has a salutary purpose but obviously an automatic and immediate implementation could in many situations bring about litigation disaster. How, when, and under what circumstances such implementation should be accomplished would seem best left to the sound discretion of the court which promulgated it and the judges who must enforce it. We are therefore constrained to defer to the district court's reading to the extent that such a construction does not involve conflict with an order of this court, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, case or statutory law, or the Constitution of the United States. We see no such conflict. On the contrary, the record shows an ongoing jury trial of two defendants who were charged with multiple and very serious criminal offenses which was in its closing stages; that the effect of receipt of the appellate court's order confronted the court with a crucial decision whether to plunge the trial into chaos by the abrupt and sudden disqualification of the counsel for one of the defendants. Resolution of that problem required weighing conflicting rights of fair trial, speedy trial, depriving a party of counsel of his own selection, and thorny questions of double jeopardy. See, e.g., Arizona v. Washington, 434 U.S. 497, 505, 98 S.Ct. 824, 830, 54 L.Ed.2d 717 (1978) (sua sponte declaration of mistrial without a showing of manifest necessity therefor may trigger bar of double jeopardy). Faced with these alternatives, the trial court concluded that exigent circumstances justified postponing the immediate entry of a local disbarment order. This was not the usual situation in which the local rule could be applied easily and without serious disruption of the judicial process. The court had realistically a choice only between the Scylla of going ahead with trial, or the Charybdis of throwing the case into confusion and disarray. We find its decision reasonable and valid. 52 Some parallel to the trial court's dilemma can be found in many cases where, during trial, an attorney, by design, excess of zeal, or other reason, engages in serious contumacious or provocative conduct. A trial judge contemplates sanctions; but, weighing the length of trial already expended, the difficulty of marshaling witnesses and evidence for a second trial, the interest of a defendant in a trial in which his rights are accorded, and the public's interest in fair, but also prompt and just, resolution of the issue, the judge will often elect to stay his sanction and let the trial come to orderly conclusion, rather than risk or declare a mistrial. See, e.g., United States v. Altamirano, 633 F.2d 147 (9th Cir.1980), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 839, 102 S.Ct. 145, 70 L.Ed.2d 120 (1981). 53 We conclude that the district court was not required by its Local Rule 2.6.2 immediately and automatically to enter an order disbarring counsel and disqualifying him from further participation in the trial. 54 This is not to say that Palacios ought not to have shared the information with his client, who then could have been heard as to his views. But we do conclude that neither the ends of justice nor Local Rule 2.6.2 of the Central District of California required the court immediately and automatically to enter an order disbarring Palacios and disqualifying him from further participation, even though Palacios disregarded the judge's direction that Carvajal be told the unanticipated turn of events.B. Whether Disbarment Rendered Counsel's Services Ineffective. 55 Even if we had concluded that under its local rules the district court in this case should have entered a like order pursuant to Local Rule 2.6.2, we would reject the argument that disbarment by the circuit court turned Palacios' continued services in Carvajal's behalf ineffective under the Sixth Amendment. 56 Disbarment is a punishment or penalty imposed upon a lawyer, who is accordingly entitled to procedural due process for himself before imposition of sanction, In re Ruffalo, 390 U.S. 544, 547, 88 S.Ct. 1222, 1224, 20 L.Ed.2d 117 modified, 392 U.S. 919, 88 S.Ct. 2257, 20 L.Ed.2d 1380 (1968), and who is further still under obligation--if it is legally possible--to protect his client's interests against the indictment with which he is still charged. 57 Though admission to practice before a federal court is derivative from membership in a state bar, disbarment by the State does not result in automatic disbarment by the federal court. 58 Id. at 547, 88 S.Ct. at 1224. Disbarment being the very serious business that it is, ample opportunity must be afforded to show cause why an accused practitioner should not be disbarred. Theard v. United States, 354 U.S. 278, 282, 77 S.Ct. 1274, 1276, 1 L.Ed.2d 1342 (1957). Ample precedent supports the position that Palacios was not automatically disqualified, and that his subsequent services would not, without regard to their intrinsic quality, be deemed ineffective. 59 In United States v. Hoffman, 733 F.2d 596 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 105 S.Ct. 521, 83 L.Ed.2d 409 (1984), Hoffman's lawyer, Vernell, a licensed member of the Florida bar, was, during a trial in the district court of Arizona, suspended by Florida from the practice of law for a period of six months, having suffered misdemeanor convictions for failure to file income tax returns, and because he had counseled two clients to enter guilty pleas and then to challenge their pleas as void due to his conflict of interest in representing them. A local rule for the District of Arizona required an attorney subject to disciplinary action by the bar of another jurisdiction to report that matter to the court. Another rule provided that, upon suspension or disbarment by any court of competent jurisdiction, such attorney would be forthwith suspended from practice before this court, and [unless upon good cause shown within 40 days], he will be disbarred. D.Ariz.R. 7(c). 60 Vernell did not inform the court of his disbarment during the trial, and the Arizona district court did not order him disbarred from that forum until a month after his client Hoffman had been sentenced. In a post-judgment petition for relief under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2255, Hoffman argued that upon his Florida disbarment, Vernell was no longer counsel within the meaning of the Sixth Amendment, that the trial judge would have been obligated to suspend him immediately had he known of the Florida suspension, and that he should be deemed to have been disqualified from the time of his Florida suspension. We rejected that argument. 61 We began in Hoffman by noting that the Sixth Amendment guarantee of counsel means assistance by an attorney who has been found qualified to represent a client as evidenced by admission to the bar. Id. at 599. But we refused to apply a per se rule that in the federal court, representation by a lawyer suspended from practice by a state bar automatically results in the denial of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Id. at 601. A defendant must show actual errors and omissions by counsel that a conscientious advocate would not have made, and which prejudiced him. Id. at 603. 62 Vernell was in fact reinstated the following year, long after sentence and judgment, but that does not affect the application of the same principle here. Hoffman teaches that the fact that an attorney is suspended or disbarred does not, without more, rise to the constitutional significance of ineffective counsel under the Sixth Amendment. Rather, a defendant must ordinarily point to specific conduct which prejudiced him in order to raise the constitutional claim. To constitute ineffective representation by counsel 63 Defense counsel's errors or omissions must reflect a failure to exercise the skill, judgment, or diligence of a reasonably competent criminal defense attorney--they must be errors a reasonably competent attorney acting as a diligent conscientious advocate would not have made, for that is the constitutional standard. 64 Cooper v. Fitzharris, 586 F.2d 1325, 1330 (9th Cir.1978) (en banc ) (footnote omitted), cert. denied, 440 U.S. 974, 99 S.Ct. 1542, 59 L.Ed.2d 793 (1979). See also United States v. Butler, 504 F.2d 220, 223 (D.C.Cir.1974) (per curiam) (that counsel was not a member of the local bar was not alone sufficient to find the right to effective counsel breached; but significant trial errors and other prejudicial considerations, in addition to nonmembership, warranted remand). The majority in Hoffman therefore rejected the view that a presumption of ineffectiveness arises in the trial forum when a lawyer is suspended from practice by his bar state. 733 F.2d at 603-04 (Nelson, J., dissenting). 65 Our rejection of a per se rule in Hoffman was not unprecedented. In analogous situations, other courts have rejected similar per se rules. For example, the Supreme Court rejected the proposition that disbarment in a state results in automatic disbarment in federal court. Ruffalo, 390 U.S. at 547, 88 S.Ct. at 1224; Theard, 354 U.S. at 281-82, 77 S.Ct. at 1276. Disciplinary orders affecting an attorney's bar status do not warrant the application of per se rules. United States v. Bradford, 238 F.2d 395 (2d Cir.1956), cert. denied, 352 U.S. 1002, 77 S.Ct. 558, 1 L.Ed.2d 546 (1957) (right to counsel not violated where defendant was represented in federal court by member of New York bar who had not applied for admission to practice in the federal bar); accord, Derringer v. United States, 441 F.2d 1140, 1141 (8th Cir.1971) (per curiam) (representation by counsel who was member of state bar but not admitted to federal district court did not deprive defendant of effective assistance of counsel). 66 A defendant's right to effective assistance of counsel would be violated where he is represented by a person posing as a lawyer who had not been admitted to any bar. E.g., Solina v. United States, 709 F.2d 160, 169 (2d Cir.1983) (reversing denial of defendants' motion to vacate conviction where his attorney was a graduate of accredited law school who twice failed New York bar examination and who had never been admitted to any other bar); Harrison v. United States, 387 F.2d 203, 212-14 (D.C.Cir.1967) (conviction reversed because government used defendant's statements from earlier trial in which defendant was represented by ex-convict posing as a lawyer), rev'd on other grounds, 392 U.S. 219, 88 S.Ct. 2008, 20 L.Ed.2d 1047 (1968). The principle applied in such cases is that one never admitted to practice law and therefore who never acquired the threshold qualification to represent a client in court cannot be allowed to do so, and no matter how spectacular a performance may ensue, it will not constitute effective representation of counsel for purposes of the Sixth Amendment. Conversely, the infliction of discipline upon an attorney previously qualified and in good standing will not and should not transform his services into ineffective assistance. 67 In a somewhat analogous situation, a decision of the Seventh Circuit is informative. In United States v. Merritt, 528 F.2d 650 (7th Cir.1976), (per curiam) counsel appointed to represent a defendant in an Indiana trial had passed the Iowa bar examination but, unknown to the court, had failed the Indiana examination three times (and therefore was ineligible for a retake until completion of an additional year of study). He had apparently had no prior trial experience. On appeal the defendant claimed ineffective assistance of counsel. The Seventh Circuit said: 68 [t]he bar examination failures and the inexperience of appointed counsel create an appearance of inadequate representation that is compounded by the cumulative effect of several incidents which provide reasonable grounds for questioning counsel's professional judgment and skill. Standing alone none of these incidents would lead us to conclude that counsel had not met a minimum standard of professional representation. Under all the circumstances of this case, however, we think that standard was not met. 69 Id. at 651 (citation omitted). In other words, since the attorney had met the qualifications of a sister state, it could not be said, without looking to the trial record, whether, although not a member of the Indiana bar, he did or did not possess the minimum standard to represent a defendant in court. In Hoffman we also looked to see whether counsel, despite the Florida suspension, met our requirement of reasonably competent criminal defense attorney. Hoffman, 733 F.2d at 603. 70 We adhere to our stated standard. Neither suspension nor disbarment invites a per se rule that continued representation in an ongoing trial is constitutionally ineffective. Admission to the bar allows us to assume that counsel has the training, knowledge, and ability to represent a client who has chosen him. Continued licensure normally gives a reliable signal to the public that the licensee is what he purports to be--an attorney qualified to advise and represent a client. But it is an undeniable fact of experience that lawyers unhappily incur sanctions ranging from censure to disbarment; that sometimes that discipline flows from revealed incompetence or untrustworthiness or turpitude such as to deserve no client's confidence. All we need hold here is that a lawyer's services were ineffective on a case, not a per se, basis. 71 Indeed, Carvajal does not contend, and the record does not show, that the conduct which provoked our order was such as reasonably could be said to have affected or impaired his trial performance. The only suggestion of shortcoming presented by Palacios appears in his failure to communicate the fact of disbarment to the client and to discuss the implications, if any, that might ensue. Carvajal argues the existence of some linkage between the failure to advise him of the disbarment and Palacios' failure to submit a timely motion on double jeopardy grounds. But there is no explanation of how the omission to submit the motion was, on the record of this case, such an omission as a reasonably competent attorney would not have made, or how the omission prejudiced him. See Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 2064-68, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984) (to make successful claim, a defendant must show that counsel's performance fell below objective standard of reasonableness, identifying such with particularity, and must show prejudice--that but for counsel's errors, the result would have been different). 72 We therefore hold that the disbarment of Palacios during trial did not violate Carvajal's Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel. Palacios retained the ability to render effective assistance of counsel to Carvajal at trial, and the record does not show his failure to do so despite his disbarment. 73 Our holding that Carvajal was not denied effective assistance of counsel is not changed by Carvajal's argument that the district judge was obligated to inform him directly of Palacios' disbarment and to obtain a waiver of Carvajal's right to effective counsel. Obviously, full disclosure to the client by counsel of such a happening during trial would make sense and could have settled this entire issue. The district judge recognized this, stating to Palacios, I think you are under obligation to talk to your client about [the disbarment]. 74 Carvajal's position is that the trial had to be halted unless he knowingly waived his right to proceed with the same counsel or without counsel. We do understand a trial judge's reluctance to terminate the entire trial, or to wait for a new attorney to familiarize himself with defendant's case. In such a situation, caution, as well as the judge's concern for protection of all those before the court, should prompt the court to make certain that a defendant be informed of so significant a matter which might affect the person's interests. The district judge urged counsel himself to tell his client. Had he followed through, lawyer and client could possibly have settled all questions between them. But the omission to do so does not constitute grounds for disturbing the conviction. 75 We also reject the argument that by not informing him of Palacios' disbarment, the trial judge created a conflict of interest between him and counsel. We rejected an analogous argument in Hoffman where the defendant claimed counsel's failure to inform the court of his Florida suspension put the two in conflict. 733 F.2d at 601. Instead, we adopted the standard set forth by the Supreme Court in Cuyler v. Sullivan, 446 U.S. 335, 100 S.Ct. 1708, 64 L.Ed.2d 333 (1980), for determining when a lawyer's conflict of interest violates his client's right to counsel. A defendant must demonstrate that his counsel actively represented conflicting interests. Id. at 350, 100 S.Ct. at 1719. In Hoffman, we concluded that the defendant failed to show an actual conflict that adversely affected his counsel's performance. 733 F.2d at 602. 76 The same is true here. There is nothing to indicate that Palacios was so affected by his personal adversity that he was thereafter beset with conflicting interests prejudicial to the conduct of Carvajal's trial, or that he was placed in an adversarial position relative to Carvajal. Cf. id. Moreover, it was the district judge who informed Palacios of his disbarment. There was no fraud on the court, and this is not a case where a layman posing as an attorney may risk fear of exposure, as in Solina, 709 F.2d at 164. The concern in Solina that a layman posing as an attorney might fear that vigorous representation could lead to inquiry into his background and discovery of his lack of credentials is not present here. See also United States v. Cancilla, 725 F.2d 867, 870 (2d Cir.1984) (per se rule that right to effective assistance of counsel violated where, unknown to defendant, trial counsel engaged in activity related to conduct for which defendant was convicted). Nor does this case resemble United States v. DeFalco, 644 F.2d 132, 133 (3d Cir.1979) (en banc) (defendant may have been denied effective assistance of counsel absent waiver, if he was unaware that his attorney, while representing him on appeal, was under indictment and had accepted a plea bargain in the same federal district court.) 77 Carvajal suggests that Palacios may have feared additional disciplinary censorship from the district court, and that this might have prevented him from competing vigorously with the government before the trial court on Carvajal's behalf. But the district judge informed Palacios that he had discussed the disbarment with the Chief Judge of the district court, and that both judges agreed to allow Palacios to complete his representation of Carvajal. Thus, under these facts we fail to see any constraint on counsel's complete and exuberant presentation. DeFalco, 644 F.2d at 136. Carvajal's conflict of interest argument is wholly speculative. Neither representation by counsel disbarred during trial, the district judge's failure to inform Carvajal of the disbarment, nor the court's disclosure of the disbarment to Palacios but not Carvajal denied Carvajal the effective assistance of counsel. V. 78 The defendants' final argument concerns the propriety of their cumulative sentences on the CCE counts and the substantive predicate narcotics offenses. Both defendants argue that their convictions on predicate narcotics offenses that form the basis for their section 848 convictions are lesser-included offenses. Relying on Brown v. Ohio, 432 U.S. 161, 164-70, 97 S.Ct. 2221, 2224-27, 53 L.Ed.2d 187 (1977), and Jeffers v. United States, 432 U.S. 137, 150, 97 S.Ct. 2207, 2216, 53 L.Ed.2d 168 (1977), the defendants argue that their conviction on the greater CCE offense requires this court to vacate both their convictions and sentences on the lesser-included predicate narcotics offenses. The Supreme Court's most recent pronouncement on the relationship between the CCE offense and the charged substantive predicate narcotics offenses, counsels against the defendants' interpretation of these two cases. 79 In Garrett v. United States, --- U.S. ----, 105 S.Ct. 2407, 85 L.Ed.2d 764 (1985), the Supreme Court construed the CCE offense as constituting an offense separate from the predicate narcotics offenses. Similarly, the Court interpreted the intent of the Ninety-First Congress as desiring the imposition of cumulative punishment for the CCE and predicate offenses. Accordingly, we affirm the district court's imposition of cumulative sentences on the defendants' separate convictions for violating section 848 and the separate substantive narcotics violations contained in the indictment.