Opinion ID: 439952
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the supervening-decision doctrine and estelle v. smith

Text: 97 Federal appellate courts often forgive a litigant's failure to raise an issue seasonably when at that time it would have been futile to do so, but a substantial change in or clarification of the law occurs in the litigant's favor after final judgment in the trial court. 52 This dispensation has sometimes been justified by reference to the court's statutory authority to effect such disposition as may be just under the circumstances. 53 On this basis, the court holds that the Supreme Court's decision in Estelle v. Smith 54 provided such an elucidation of Sixth Amendment principles as to excuse Byers' procedural default respecting the right-to-counsel claim. 55 That Estelle refined some facets of Sixth Amendment doctrine cannot be doubted; there the Supreme Court, for the first time, held a psychiatric examination to be a critical stage for Sixth Amendment purposes, 56 and indicated that the Sixth Amendment does not inexorably require the presence of counsel at critical stages. 57 The importance of this clarification, it might be argued, is underscored by the fact that federal courts theretofore held uniformly that Byers' Sixth Amendment contention lacked merit, and this, as a strong indication of likely futility of an objection, 58 might have been at least partly responsible for Byers' procedural default. Despite these considerations, however, I am not persuaded that we could soundly resolve that contention on this appeal. 98 Like the inquiry as to whether the trial proceedings disclose plain error, the ruling on whether to excuse a procedural lapse because of a supervening decision is entrusted largely to sound judicial discretion. 59 The similarities between these two determinations do not end here, for in each the objective guiding the exercise of discretion is achievement of a just disposition of the case. 60 It stands to reason, then, that the factors central to plain-error deliberations should also figure prominently in the decision on whether to regard Estelle as sufficient reason to overlook Byers' procedural neglect. Here, as already observed, the absence of obvious error, the defective record and the danger of prejudice to the Government militate strongly against consideration of the merits on any notion of plain error. 61 Moreover, I am not persuaded that Estelle engendered a significant clarification of Sixth Amendment doctrine favorable to Byers, or that there was sufficient reason to believe an objection at trial would be futile. I cannot see that these factors are any the less dispositive with respect to the determination on whether, under the supervening-decision doctrine, an examination of the merits of Byers' claim is essential to a just determination. 99 Estelle v. Smith involved a defendant in a state capital prosecution who underwent a court-ordered psychiatric examination to determine whether he was competent to stand trial. A dispute arose at the penalty phase of the bifurcated proceeding when the examining psychiatrist, on the basis of the examination, gave testimony indicating that the defendant had a violent nature and posed a continuing threat to society. The Supreme Court held that admission of this testimony violated the defendant's Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination because the state had not informed him that he had the right to remain silent during the examination and that any statement might be used against him at a sentencing proceeding. 62 The Court further held that the state had also infringed the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to assistance of counsel when, by failing to tell him that the psychiatrist might testify at the sentencing phase, it deprived him of any meaningful opportunity to consult with his attorney before deciding whether to submit to the examination. 63 100 In its opinion, the Court made clear that a psychiatric examination is a critical stage in a criminal proceeding, 64 and that as such it might warrant Sixth Amendment protections, albeit other than presence of counsel. 65 Despite this subsidiary pronouncement, however, I regard Estelle, viewed in light of its primary holdings, as not a significant doctrinal clarification helpful to the position Byers espouses. In the first place, the Court expressly limited its decision to criminal cases in which the defendant, unlike Byers, does not offer psychiatric evidence in his own behalf. 66 The Court suggested that a defendant who interposes an insanity defense has no right to remain silent during a psychiatric examination ordered to afford the Government a fair chance to oppose the defense. 67 I think this rationale seriously undermines Byers' Sixth Amendment claim. 101 Second, the Estelle Court extended Sixth Amendment protections only to the degree necessary to ensure intelligent exercise of the defendant's right to remain silent during the examination. 68 Since the Court indicated that defendants, such as Byers, forfeit the privilege of silence by entering an insanity plea, 69 the existence of concomitant Sixth Amendment protections would appear to be problematic. The only theory upon which Byers' Sixth Amendment claim might become acceptable--that an observer at or a transcript of the psychiatric interviews is vital to effective cross-examination--was available to the Court in Estelle. That it did not invoke or even refer to this rationale might well portend a Sixth Amendment construction too narrow to benefit Byers. 102 Noteworthy, too, as Byers acknowledges, the Estelle Court, far from breaking new constitutional ground or enunciating new Sixth Amendment principles, did no more than decide the case before it by logically 70 applying well-established doctrines concerning the right to counsel. 71 It is, then, more than a trifle inconsistent to maintain that Estelle achieved such a substantial clarification of extant law to warrant foregiveness of Byers' procedural irregularities. Taken as a whole, Estelle seems neither to have developed Sixth Amendment principles significantly nor to have increased measurably, if at all, the likelihood that Byers' Sixth Amendment argument has merit. 103 I shy away from the intervening-decision doctrine also because I am not convinced that Byers reasonably could have assumed that an objection would have been futile prior to Estelle. To be sure, the Sixth Amendment claim he now asserts had been rejected by a number of federal courts, 72 but it or similar claims had been accepted by several state courts, 73 and neither the Supreme Court nor this circuit had ruled definitively on the issue. Quite significantly, in Thornton v. Corcoran, 74 a Sixth Amendment contention closely similar to Byers' had experienced a friendly reception by this court. There we analyzed the complexities of the claim in light of relevant caselaw, 75 expressed reservation concerning the validity of the reasoning by which other courts had denied similar claims, 76 and acknowledged that the issue was anything but frivolous. 77 Although in Thornton we ultimately declined to consider the merits, 78 our opinion virtually invited other defendants to raise the question in future cases fortified by more informative records. 79 I thus am unable to say that prior to Estelle there was plausible ground for a belief that an objection would be futile. 80 Indeed, Byers advanced his Sixth Amendment argument early on the appeal and proffered Thornton in support, long before the decision in Estelle was announced. 81 That suggests to me that Estelle, instead of breathing life into a moribund issue, represented but an application of well-settled doctrine to the set of facts before the Court. 104 For these reasons, I would not entertain Byers' Sixth Amendment protest. I cannot ignore the important factors inveighing against resolution of this tardy contention by resort to the superficially appealing but ultimately inapplicable doctrine by which courts on occasion have excused procedural negligence in the face of a defendant-favoring supervening decision that materially and substantially alters or clarifies the relevant legal landscape.