Court Opinion

ID: 9523954
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:48:46.871804+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:08:40.946109
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE SIMON, dissenting: My colleagues’ conclusion that the defendant received effective assistance of counsel in this case is baffling. This is not a case in which a defendant merely points to specific errors by her trial counsel and now claims that her attorney did not assist her effectively because his performance was less than perfect. The attorney who represented the defendant was transferred to inactive status by this court acting sua sponte on November 14, 1983, pursuant to our Rule 758, which authorizes such action when attorneys are incapacitated from continuing to practice law by reason of mental infirmity or mental disorder (87 Ill. 2d R. 758). As the majority notes, the State concedes that trial counsel provided ineffective assistance in this case. It seems incongruous to conclude that this defendant received effective assistance when the State admits that she did not and we have declared that her attorney was too incapacitated to practice law. The majority purports to apply Strickland v. Washington (1984), 466 U.S. _, 80 L. Ed. 2d 674, 104 S. Ct. 2052. Interestingly, the majority quotes: “[T]he ‘benchmark for judging any claim of ineffectiveness must be whether counsel’s conduct so undermined the proper functioning of the adversarial process that the trial cannot be relied on as having produced a just result.’ ” 105 Ill. 2d at 11, quoting Strickland v. Washington. The quotation conveys my point. When a defendant is represented by an incapacitated attorney, there can be no confidence in the result on the part of judge, jury, prosecutor, or defendant. The reliability of the trial is called so far into question that there is no way to know whether the trial produced a just result. If the right to trial is meaningless without the effective assistance of counsel (Powell v. Alabama (1932), 287 U.S. 45, 77 L. Ed. 158, 53 S. Ct. 55; Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), 372 U.S. 335, 344, 9 L. Ed. 2d 799, 83 S. Ct. 792), it is equally meaningless to say that such an important right can be protected by the participation of incapacitated counsel. The majority mistakenly attempts to apply a two-step test which was enunciated by the Supreme Court in Strickland and adopted by this court (People v. Albanese (1984), 104 Ill. 2d 504). In most cases, the defendant alleging ineffective assistance of counsel must enumerate specific errors. The defendant must then demonstrate that (1) judged by an objective standard of reasonableness counsel’s performance was incompetent, and (2) that defendant suffered prejudice as a result of counsel’s incompetence, i.e., that but for counsel’s unprofessional errors there is a reasonable probability that the results of the proceeding would have been different. Strickland v. Washington (1984), 466 U.S___, 80 L. Ed. 2d 674, 104 S. Ct. 2052. However, this case is different. The Strickland test is based upon a presumption that counsel’s behavior is rational. Starting from this presumption, one naturally reaches the conclusion that different counsel will approach a case via a number of different routes, and that it is not the duty of the courts after the fact to second-guess the trial strategies and tactics chosen by counsel. In any event, it is presumed that licensed counsel are competent, and there seems little point in overturning a verdict unless the defendant has suffered actual prejudice as a result of counsel’s errors. However, one does not reach the two-part Strickland test in cases in which the presumption does not apply. Since Strickland was a case in which the defendant alleged specific errors by counsel, there was no need for the court to elaborate on circumstances where there had been a constructive denial of counsel altogether. The Supreme Court discussed this situation in more detail in another case decided on the same day as Strickland (United States v. Cronic (1984), 466 U.S._, 80 L. Ed. 2d 657, 104 S. Ct. 2039). In Cronic, the court could not find that there was ineffective assistance because no circumstances were alleged which indicated an actual breakdown of the adversarial process. The court noted that “[t]he right to the effective assistance of counsel is thus the right of the accused to require the prosecution’s case to survive the crucible of meaningful adversarial testing.” (466 U.S. _, _, 80 L. Ed. 2d 657, 666, 104 S. Ct. 2039, 2045.) “[B]ecause we presume that the lawyer is competent to provide the guiding hand that the defendant needs [citation], the burden rests on the accused to demonstrate a constitutional violation [citation]. There are, however, circumstances that are so likely to prejudice the accused that the cost of litigating their effect in a particular case is unjustified.” (Emphasis added.) 466 U.S._,_, 80 L. Ed. 2d 657, 667, 104 S. Ct. 2039, 2046. This is a case where the adversarial process broke down. Attorneys are “ ‘necessities, not luxuries.’ ” (United States v. Cronic (1984), 466 U.S._,_, 80 L. Ed. 2d 657, 664, 104 S. Ct. 2039, 2043, quoting Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), 372 U.S. 335, 344, 9 L. Ed. 2d 799, 805, 83 S. Ct. 792, 796.) The assistance of incapacitated counsel is tantamount to no assistance at all, and thus results in the constructive denial of counsel altogether. In such a case, there should be no requirement that the defendant must prove that he was prejudiced by the attorney’s specific errors. Rather, there is a presumption that the assistance of counsel whom this court has found to be incapacitated is prejudicial. In a case such as this one, there is no meaningful way of sorting out counsel’s rational and irrational behavior in an attempt to determine whether the defendant was prejudiced by any of counsel’s specific errors. The atmosphere of a fair trial has been poisoned, and there can be no confidence that the trial concluded in a just result. In some ways, the putative assistance of an incapacitated attorney may be worse than no assistance at all. This defendant placed herself in the hands of someone who cannot be presumed capable of rationally assessing a case, planning and executing a defense strategy, and behaving appropriately in court. The State concedes this, and it is because he lacked these capabilities that this court transferred the attorney in question to inactive status. Yet the defendant was unaware of any of this. She hired a licensed attorney who, because he was licensed by this court, she assumed was capable of protecting her rights as well as any other competent attorney. If she had had no attorney, she would have been on notice that she had to take steps to protect her rights. Instead, she was lulled into a sense of false security. This defendant had no way of recognizing her attorney’s incapacity, and she should not be penalized for failing to secure different counsel. Her attorney appeared in court, he engaged in legalistic interchanges, and he might have appeared to her, a 20-year-old woman, to be doing his job. Although I have no doubt that there was a constructive denial of counsel in this case, and therefore find no need to ask whether the defendant was actually prejudiced, I also disagree with the conclusion of the majority that there was no actual prejudice in this case. Another attorney might have found defenses on the facts of this case. The record reveals that there was originally a codefendant who was represented by separate counsel. Codefendant’s counsel sought a competency examination in an attempt to establish an insanity defense. There may have been grounds for a similar defense here, but counsel never raised them. Counsel presented no defense. The pretrial record contains evidence that the codefendant admitted causing at least some of Shannon Mitchell’s injuries, and that the codefendant gave two statements to the police. In the first, he claimed that the defendant played no part in the beatings or mistreatment of the child, and in the second, he assigned her only a limited role.. Competent counsel might have found some way to use at least some of this information to construct a defense. The record reveals an erratic and sometimes bizarre performance by counsel, both in and outside the presence of the jury. Many of counsel’s arguments were irrelevant, repetitious, and impossible to follow. It is not possible to know exactly what effect all of this had on either the judge or the jury, but it is likely to have had some effect. While the jury may have been unaware that counsel did not conduct an effective cross-examination of one of the most important prosecution witnesses, the jury could not have helped but notice counsel’s continual irrelevant references to justice of the peace courts, to citizen cooperation with the police, and to taxable costs. Defense counsel’s rambling, discursive, and almost unintelligible closing argument, similar to incomprehensible briefs he filed in the appellate court and also to several petitions he filed in this court and which alerted us to his incapacity could not have helped his client’s cause. The very fact that this effect is subtle makes it that much more dangerous. While both judge and jury were no doubt making every effort to be fair, they were laboring under the misconception that counsel was both rational and competent, and they necessarily judged counsel’s behavior by the standards expected of the average, competent, rational attorney. The State admits that counsel was incompetent. The record reveals that this trial cannot be characterized as a true adversarial proceeding, because defense counsel was not a competent adversary. Yet I must go beyond the record to complete my point. Counsel’s obligations to the defendant do not begin and end in the courtroom. Counsel may also have been unable to adequately investigate his client’s case, to uncover and interview witnesses, or to appreciate information provided by his client well enough to construct a plausible defense, but we have no way of knowing whether these omissions occurred. There is no doubt in my mind that the defendant in this case was appreciably prejudiced by the participation of incapacitated counsel. At the least, she should not have been found guilty without representation by counsel who was not incapacitated. For the reasons stated above, I must therefore dissent.