Court Opinion

ID: 9521999
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:16:42.310069+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:02:10.943847
License: Public Domain

Dooley, J.,
¶ 22.
concurring. I concur in the Court’s decision, essentially for the reasons stated. I write to put this case in context with others. Amicus makes two arguments that I have favored in the past — that the procedure for withdrawal of representation employed by the Defender General denies due process of law and that the act of counsel in accepting representation constitutes a waiver of the right to rely on 13 V.S.A. § 5233(a)(3) for an automatic withdrawal. I agree with the majority that neither fits the facts of this case.
¶ 23. First, this is an example of a case where the withdrawing attorney explained the grounds for withdrawal, a practice the Defender General has argued in the past must never be done in order to protect the client. As the majority explained in ante, ¶¶ 12-13, counsel explained his progress at each step of his representation, consulted with petitioner and even considered a supplemental argument made by petitioner and responded in writing. I agree that petitioner has a weak case for further due process protections. If appointed counsel and the Defender General had made equivalent disclosures in other cases we have reviewed, I would be more confident that the Defender General’s process could be fairly applied. In my judgment, the main point to draw from this case is that appointed counsel can disclose the steps in this representation, and in forming counsel’s opinion on merit, without injuring the client. I recommend that these steps be employed in future cases.
¶ 24. Second, I agree that the grounds for applying waiver to this case are also weak. We need only compare the events here to *63those in In re Crannell, 2012 VT 85, 192 Vt. 406, 60 A.3d 632, where nine years expired while the Defender General reviewed petitioner’s entitlement to counsel and found entitlement, or made no adverse decision, or promised counsel, only to rely on § 5233(a)(3) to withdraw. Review in this case took a long time, but there never was a point where counsel made promises about continuing representation on which he could not produce.
¶ 25. Although I concur in the rejection of the due process and waiver arguments of amicus, there are aspects of this case that show a process that remains broken. Justice Burgess argues in his concurrence that petitioner should have no right to representation after he rejected the prosecution’s offer of resentencing. I draw the opposite conclusion from that event — petitioner’s claim apparently had enough merit to cause the prosecutor to make a settlement offer that gave petitioner what he wanted. That fact, plus the lengthy analysis and decision of the superior court, gives pause as to whether appointed counsel is applying the standard of frivolity of Rule 3.1 of the Vermont Rules of Professional Conduct.
¶ 26. More important, the delays in the representation decision for PCRs remains unacceptable for any justice system. The challenge here was to what occurred at sentencing after a guilty plea. I cannot accept that it takes two years to determine whether petitioner will have counsel to assert the PCR claims arising out of sentencing. As I did in my concurrence in Crannell, I urge that we impose a much shorter period for counsel review and hold a waiver has occurred if review has not been completed in that time period.