Court Opinion

ID: 9480225
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:41:35.156503+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:33.172661
License: Public Domain

McKAY, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
At footnotes 2 and 12 of the court’s opinion, it concludes that the effect of late notice of the Denver and Milwaukee offenses is not before us. That conclusion not only is unwarrantedly technical (based on the pagination of the panel opinion) but also ignores the panel’s express reference to the tardy notice (as opposed to the need to include the crimes in the indictment on which this court is evenly divided) when it wrote: “Rather, our holding is compelled by the interaction of these elements with each other and with the lack of notice of use of the uncharged offenses examined in section I.” United States v. Rivera, 837 F.2d 906, 923-24 (10th Cir.1988). I think the panel clearly considered the two crimes in two different contexts: sufficiency of the indictment and opportunity to prepare. I consider the tardy notice issue to be part and parcel of cumulative error analyses. The court seems tangentially to consider this part of the issue as a part of its segmented analysis of the effective assistance of counsel issue.
I also think the en banc court’s view of the panel opinion on the issue of cumulative error reads the panel opinion differently than I do. What the panel recognized is that, by their very nature, timeliness of notice, preparation of counsel, and time to prepare are interdependent and cannot be fairly separated. Incompetence is not the only basis for finding that counsel was ineffective. The role of the court and the *1479prosecution in precluding a fair opportunity to prepare can give rise to a deprivation of effective assistance of counsel. The same components also can make up a fair analysis of abuse of discretion in not granting a continuance. The panel opinion merely recognizes this interrelationship. I am of the view that the court’s opinion is excessively pigeonhole-like in its approach to these interrelated issues, and I cannot join it.
That said, the court’s examination of the probable impact of these trial problems has led me to reconsider my prior judgment. I am now persuaded that I previously inadequately considered the necessary role of prejudice in determining that the errors should result in reversal. The court’s discussion of prejudice fully sets forth the facts and inference which support my revised judgment. I therefore concur in the court’s judgment that this case should not be reversed on the basis of even the accumulative effect of what I consider to be errors in failing to give counsel a fair opportunity to prepare. I also agree that resentencing is necessary. I persist in my view that the indictment on the CCE count was defective for the reasons I previously stated in that part of the panel opinion vacated by virtue of this court being equally divided on that issue. I would reverse that part of the conviction in this case.