Court Opinion

ID: 9471128
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:25:27.4805+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:16.760783
License: Public Domain

ELY, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
Under the current law of our court and that of numerous other Courts of Appeals, I must concur in the opinion of my Brother Alarcon. His opinion reflects intensive study and remarkable scholarship. As I express my concurrence, however, I cannot resist the temptation to reiterate my deeply held conviction that ineffective representation by the attorney for an accused should be equated with lack of any representation whatsoever. I have no doubt that one tried for a criminal offense often fares very much worse, especially in a jury trial, if he is represented by incompetent counsel than he would fare if he had no attorney at all. This, I believe, is an undeniable truth. My belief is squarely based not only upon my own personal legal experience for almost fifty years, participating in hundreds of trials as a trial lawyer and subsequently reviewing countless records as a circuit judge for almost nineteen years. It is also founded upon experiences related to me by highly respectable attorneys and judges during my officerships in the Texas Junior Bar Association, the California State Bar, the Los Angeles County Bar Association, particularly during my presidency, and intimate associations arising from my membership in the House of Delegates of the American Bar Association and from my many years of fellowship in the American College of Trial Lawyers.
If my belief in the above respects is correct, and that belief has thus far been unalterable, then it should logically and fairly follow that when it is determined that an accused has been represented by a legally incompetent attorney, as is the case here, it should be presumed, without further inquiry and as a matter of law, that the accused has suffered such grievous prejudice as to entitle him forthwith to a new trial. Compare Cooper v. Fitzharris, 586 F.2d 1325 (9th Cir.1978) (Hufstedler, Circuit Judge, joined by Ely and Hug, Circuit Judges, dissenting at 1334).