Court Opinion

ID: 9494293
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:34:19.228082+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:20.112789
License: Public Domain

BYE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
There is no mistaking the district court’s error in this case. A district court must appoint counsel for an indigent prisoner when the court holds an evidentiary hearing concerning that prisoner’s 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion. See Rule 8(c) of the Rules Governing Section 2255 Proceedings; Roney v. United States, 205 F.3d 1061, 1062 (8th Cir.2000). Mack Green is clearly indigent and the district court ordered an evidentiary hearing, yet the court denied Green’s motion to appoint counsel. Despite the obvious error, I respectfully dissent from the majority’s new rule that eschews harmless error analysis.
An extremely limited set of constitutional errors affecting the entire conduct of a criminal trial have been deemed incapable of harmless error review because of their pervasive and corrosive character. Such errors are called “structural” errors. See Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 309-10, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991) (citing, as examples, the denial of counsel at a criminal trial, and the presence of a biased judge). Structural errors appear to be confined to the constitutional sphere because Congress has mandated the application of harmless error review by statute. See 28 U.S.C. § 2111 (requiring the circuit courts to disregard “errors or defects which do not affect the substantial rights of the parties”). Presumably, only grave constitutional errors could surmount the statutory default rule that harmless error analysis applies. Cf. United States v. Stevens, 223 F.3d 239, 244 (3d Cir.2000) (“[A] violation of Rule 32(c)(3)(A) is nonconstiht-tional error, which generally cannot amount to a structural defect.”) (emphasis in original). Even cases involving pervasive nonconstitutional error, such as a district court’s complete denial of discovery to a civil plaintiff, have been analyzed under the rubric of harmless error. See, e.g., Martel v. County of Los Angeles, 56 F.3d 993, 995-96 (9th Cir.1995) (en banc).
Because Green’s right to counsel does not emanate from the constitution, Pennsylvania v. Finley, 481 U.S. 551, 555-57, 107 S.Ct. 1990, 95 L.Ed.2d 539 (1987) (refusing to extend the Sixth Amendment right to counsel to postconviction proceedings), I am constrained to conclude that structural error analysis has no application to Green’s case. By statute, § 2111, we are obliged to determine whether the district court’s error in denying Green appointed counsel affected his substantial rights.
Unlike the majority, ante at 718, I do not believe that harmless error analysis in Green’s case would be based upon impermissible speculation and conjecture. Speculation is, of course, the hallmark of harmless error review, and I perceive no greater difficulty in ascertaining possible prejudice in Green’s case than in the ordinary case. Even if harmless error analysis were particularly complicated or difficult to perform in this case (an analysis I do not undertake here), Congress’s command that we disregard “errors or defects which do not affect the substantial rights of the parties,” 28 U.S.C. § 2111, affords us no basis for ignoring such complexity *720by establishing our own preferred mode of analysis.