Court Opinion

ID: 9705211
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:59:56.889151+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:08.929899
License: Public Domain

BROSKY, Judge,
concurring:
I join the majority opinion and write to comment on the second issue.
*224This issue raised the question whether appellant was afforded ineffective assistance of counsel by virtue of the handling of different phases of his cases by different Public Defenders. I repeat that I join the majority’s treatment of this issue. Nonetheless, it raises a troubling question.
Since appellant does not allege any specific instances of ineffectiveness on the part of any of the individual counsel who represented him, his challenge is to the system per se of assigning counsel to handle particular phases of a case rather than handling a case from beginning to end. While a certain degree of facility would develop, in such a horizontal assignment of counsel’s duties,1 some disadvantages are also apparent. Chief among these disadvantages is a lack of in-depth knowledge of the facts of any given case counsel is handling a phase of. A vertical assignment of cases would obviously increase counsel’s familiarity with the facts of a case and consequently greatly aid counsel’s handling of a case.
Whether this particular disadvantage is offset by the advantage of specialized expertise is not presented to us in a manner which would allow us to resolve it.2 Appellant did not present to the court below, (thus creating a record for our review), data relating to the general quality of representation resulting from the system he challenges. Such data might have taken a variety of forms, including—but not limited to—studies in criminology or jurisprudence on the subject, testimony from qualified experts and case law from other jurisdictions. None of this was presented to the court below or is included in the record before us.3 Consequently, we are unable to treat the question in its broader context. *225I write only to bring attention to what may prove to be a serious challenge to the means of providing indigent defendants with counsel.
Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963), guaranteed, as a federal constitutional right, the assistance of counsel in state-prosecuted criminal cases. It remains for a future case to determine whether the challenged counsel assignment procedure mutes Gideon’s trumpet.

. One particular phase where this arrangement could result in specialized expertise would be suppression hearings.

. Nor, more importantly,, was it so presented to the court below.
There are, no doubt, a number of other advantages and disadvantages of the horizontal handling of cases. They are not even argued.

. If the system itself were found on the basis of such a record to generally provide ineffective assistance of counsel, then it would follow that cases under the system would, at the least, have a presumption of ineffective assistance of counsel.