Court Opinion

ID: 9560295
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:46:48.78487+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:12:46.560522
License: Public Domain

HUNSTEIN, Chief Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur fully in Divisions 1, 2, and 3 of the majority opinion. However, because I would remand Wilson’s ineffective assistance of appellate counsel claims for an evidentiary hearing in the trial court, I must respectfully dissent to Division 4.
Current appellate counsel did not enter an appearance in this case until after appellant’s appeal was docketed in this Court. Thus, because an attorney cannot assert ineffective assistance of counsel claims against himself, see Garland v. State, 283 Ga. 201 (657 SE2d 842) (2008), any errors made by first appellate counsel were incapable of being raised until this appeal. In other words, this is the “‘earliest practicable moment,’” see Glover v. State, 266 Ga. 183, 184 (2) (465 SE2d 659) (1996), at which Wilson could raise the issue *146of first appellate counsel’s alleged ineffective assistance. Thus, contrary to the majority’s characterization, allowing these claims to proceed at this point does not “eviscerate” the earliest practicable moment rule but rather honors it.
Decided November 9, 2009.
Ronald S. Boyter, Jr., Deborah J. Poole, for appellant.
Spencer Lawton, Jr., District Attorney, Christine S. Barker, Assistant District Attorney, Thurbert E. Baker, Attorney General, David A. Zisook, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
Furthermore, the approach followed by the Court of Appeals, which the majority adopts herein, is problematic in that it is based on the notion that any ineffective assistance of trial counsel claims not raised on motion for new trial are waived, without acknowledging that it is the ineffectiveness of appellate counsel which is being asserted and which by its very nature could not have been raised in the first motion for new trial. Even more troublesome than this analytical flaw, however, is the practical effect of requiring the deferment of these claims to habeas corpus proceedings. Given that Georgia law does not guarantee the assistance of counsel on habeas corpus, see Gibson v. Turpin, 270 Ga. 855 (1) (513 SE2d 186) (1999), deferring these claims to habeas will in many cases force litigants to assert these claims pro se, to their substantial disadvantage.
For these reasons, I would disapprove the practice of deferring such ineffective assistance of appellate counsel claims to habeas corpus proceedings and thus would remand Wilson’s claims in this regard to the trial court.
I am authorized to state that Justice Benham joins in this concurrence in part and dissent in part.