Court Opinion

ID: 9469989
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:54:11.386965+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:39.898227
License: Public Domain

McKAY, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the judgment of affirmance and write separately to express my understanding of the case.
Mr. Golub was convicted of six counts of mail fraud in 1979. He appealed his conviction, claiming that he was denied adequate assistance of counsel at trial. We reversed the conviction and remanded the case for a new trial. After a rehearing en banc, we reconsidered and modified our decision, remanding the case for a specific determination from the district court of whether Mr. Golub was fully afforded his sixth amendment right to assistance of counsel. On remand, the district court provided Mr. Golub with court-appointed counsel, a generous allowance of continuances, and government funds to subpoena witnesses and provide expert testimony regarding the adequacy of counsel at trial. After four hearings over a nine-month period, the district court determined that Mr. Golub’s counsel in the original trial both was competent and was allowed sufficient time to prepare the defense. Mr. Golub now returns to us on appeal.
The tortuous history of this case registers the importance that we attach to the sixth amendment right to counsel. Together with the district court, we have conducted a searching inquiry into Mr. Golub’s sixth amendment claim. An examination of the fully developed record now before us dispels any previous doubts that Mr. Golub received adequate assistance of counsel.
The expanded record serves to focus and resolve the inquiry that Mr. Golub projected in the first appeal. Clearly, the issue is not “Did the defendant have a lawyer?” He did. The issue is not “Did the defendant have a competent lawyer?” He did. The issue is not “Did the defendant have a competent lawyer who exercised reasonable skill, judgment and diligence at trial?” Clearly, he did.1 Instead, the record reveals that the sole controvertible issue on appeal is “Did the trial court’s insistence that Mr. Golub’s newly retained lawyer try the case on one week’s notice prevent the lawyer from preparing an effective defense?” Illu*217initiated by the full record, the answer is “No.”
The record indicates that the defendant’s first lawyer withdrew from the case two weeks before trial because Mr. Golub was monumentally uncooperative. The record also shows that the trial court was determined to prevent further delays in the trial, and that the trial court pressured Mr. Golub’s new counsel to proceed to trial under a difficult time schedule. The defendant asserts that the schedule denied him effective' assistance of counsel, contending that as a result of the time pressure, his trial attorney was prevented from calling eleven exculpatory witnesses.
I agree that a lack of trial preparation time may result in a denial of the sixth amendment right to counsel. See Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45, 53 S.Ct. 55, 77 L.Ed. 158 (1932); United States v. King, 664 F.2d 1171 (10th Cir.1981). However, as the Supreme Court has noted, there is no ground for providing remedies for pretrial interferences absent some basis for inferring prejudice to the defendant. United States v. Morrison, 449 U.S. 361, 365, 101 S.Ct. 665, 667, 66 L.Ed.2d 564 (1981). See United States v. Cronic, 675 F.2d 1126 (10th Cir.1982). The record before us specifically demonstrates that the time schedule did not prejudice the defendant. The testimony of the trial attorney indicates that it was either the lack of assistance from the defendant in locating the witnesses, or the lack of value in their potential testimony, that precluded the attorney’s use of these witnesses.2 Moreover, it is particularly telling that after four hearings on remand, with the aid of very able counsel, with government funds available to subpoena witnesses, with repeated continuances spanning nine months, the defendant failed to provide any of the exculpatory testimony that he claims his trial lawyer, given additional time, would have produced at trial.
The fully developed record convincingly shows that the short trial preparation period afforded by the court did not prejudice the defendant. With this issue put to rest, nothing remains of the defendant’s claim of inadequate assistance of counsel when it is assessed under any reasonable interpretation of the constitutional standards. See United States v. Crouthers, 669 F.2d 635 (10th Cir.1982); Dyer v. Crisp, 613 F.2d 275 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 445 U.S. 945, 100 S.Ct. 1342, 63 L.Ed.2d 779 (1980). Three highly qualified lawyers have provided a more than adequate job of ensuring that the issues in the defendant’s case were properly presented in the trial court and on appeal. After maintaining earlier doubts as a result of shadows cast by an inadequate record, I now have no hesitation in affirming the appealed convictions.

. Indeed, one witness that the defendant claimed would produce exculpatory evidence testified that he did not know the defendant or any of the facts surrounding his case.