Court Opinion

ID: 9454972
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:05:32.152963+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:24.252702
License: Public Domain

WATERMAN, Circuit Judge
(concurring and dissenting):
I concur in Judge Medina’s excellent and exhaustive exposition of the applicable law, and it is with some reluctance that I find it necessary to file my dissent from the order remanding this proceeding to the district court for a hearing as to whether Smith was informed or knew prior to the expiration of his time to appeal that he could appeal without cost to himself and with the assistance of counsel appointed by the State. I would remand with instructions to sustain the writ on the record already made.
It is my view that the facts already recited by the experienced and highly respected New York State Supreme Court Justice who heard petitioner’s coram no-bis proceeding in January 1965, and summarized by Chief Judge Mishler below in his opinion handed down in June 1967 after he had examined this coram nobis record (and the trial record as well), establish that this sixteen year old indigent youth who had had no education beyond the eighth grade was deprived of his constitutional right timely to appeal his conviction because he was not timely informed by the trial counsel his family had retained, and did not otherwise know, that he could appeal his conviction without cost to himself and with the aid of state-appointed counsel. I would therefore reverse the holding below on the record already made and would order the court below to sustain relator’s habeas corpus writ unless within a reasonable time to be fixed by the district court the People permit relator to file an appeal from his conviction in forma pauperis and to proceed with assigned counsel, see People v. Callaway, 24 N.Y.2d 127, 299 N.Y.S.2d 154, 156, 247 N.E.2d 128 *657(1969), where the Court of Appeals sets out a procedure to be followed. See also People v. Montgomery, 24 N.Y.2d 130, 299 N.Y.S.2d 156, 247 N.E.2d 130 (1969).
I quote from Chief Judge Mishler’s opinion of June 16, 1967. Petitioner stated “that he had the following conversation with his attorney:
“I told the attorney that I would like to appeal. He asked did I have any money. I told him I would have to get in touch with my family. He said without money I could not appeal your case. That was all that he said.
“The petitioner’s trial lawyer, an experienced practitioner in the field of criminal law, had no recollection of such a conversation, but his files substantiated the petitioner’s version. His records showed that he wrote the petitioner’s parents advising them of their son’s desire to take an appeal, and indicating that if he failed to hear from them he would take no further interest in their son’s case.”
And
“ * * * In this case, at most, there was a failure of retained counsel to fully advise his client of his right to appeal in forma pauperis, and to protect his client’s right to appeal by simply filing a notice of appeal. The state is not an overseer or ‘a surety for the proper performance of counsel, whether assigned or retained * * * ’ United States ex rel. Mitchell v. Follette, supra [358 F.2d 922] at 927.”
As the quote by Judge Mishler from United States ex rel. Mitchell v. Follette lacks relevance now because the State, as set forth in People v. Montgomery, supra, 299 N.Y.S.2d at 159, 247 N.E.2d at 131, has accepted responsibility for seeing that an indigent minor is fully advised of his constitutional right to carry forward an appeal from a conviction and the record below is clear that Smith was indigent, was a minor, and was not fully advised, there can be no justification, in my view, for any further hearing or any further delay in granting petitioner the relief to which the record discloses he is entitled. See Roberts v. LaVallee, 389 U.S. 40, 88 S.Ct. 194, 19 L.Ed.2d 41 (1967).