Court Opinion

ID: 9765837
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:21:30.102623+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:16.130513
License: Public Domain

Richard B. Adkisson, Chief Justice, dissenting. When appellant entered a plea of guilty, he waived the requirements of the speedy trial rule. A.R.Cr.P. Rule 30.2. He is not entitled to return now under a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel and vitiate his guilty plea unless he was denied a fair adjudication of guilt by pleading guilty. A defendant who waives his remedies and admits his guilt assumes the risk of ordinary error in either his or his attorney’s assessment of the law and facts. Mitchell v. State, 271 Ark. 512, 609 S.W.2d 333 (1980), citing McMann v. Richardson, 397 U.S. 759 (1970). At most, petitioner’s counsel made a procedural error, one of many such errors which are waived by pleading guilty. A guilty plea breaks the chain of events in a criminal process. A petitioner may not come back after pleading guilty and vacate his plea because counsel in retrospect may not have correctly appraised the significance of some fact. Tollett v. Henderson, 411 U.S. 258 (1973). Just as an attorney’s failure to challenge an illegal arrest is not ineffective assistance of counsel because the legality of an arrest does not affect the validity of the judgment, Singleton v. State, 256 Ark. 756, 510 S.W.2d 283 (1974), an attorney’s failure to raise a speedy trial claim is not ineffective assistance of counsel because the procedural rules setting the time for trial do not impinge on the integrity of the guilty plea. Petitioner Hall has not said that he was not guilty or in any way shown that he was denied a fair determination of his guilt. The judgment in his case is sound and his petition for postconviction relief should be denied. The failure to file a timely speedy trial motion is not ineffective assistance of counsel and our opinion in Clark v. State, 274 Ark. 81, 621 S.W.2d 5 (1981), which holds it is, should be overturned. A procedural rule must not take precedence over an uncontested adjudication of guilt. I am authorized to state that Justices Hickman and Hays join in this dissent.