Court Opinion

ID: 9466177
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:07:20.38781+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:35.088639
License: Public Domain

COLEMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring specially.
I was so appalled by the filing of a one-line brief by retained counsel in a criminal appeal that I concurred in the prior opinion in this case, reported at 594 F.2d 115. Upon it being brought to the attention of the panel that we were in conflict with the decision of another panel, Perez v. Wainwright, 594 F.2d 159 (5th Cir.), rendered almost simultaneously and which we did not know about, the above revised opinion is being issued, authored by Judge Ingraham and concurred in by Judge Godbold.
I concur in this opinion because it directs only that Passmore be given an out of time appeal. If his conviction was being subjected to outright invalidation I would most certainly dissent.
I wish, however, to make a record of some of my reservations about my concurrence. The solemn judgment of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, in which the retained lawyer filed the one-line brief, recites that the Court had made an independent evaluation of the record and had found no error. This means that the lawyer’s dereliction hardly resulted in any prejudice to Passmore. The better course would be to apply the harmless error rule of Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705. The out of time appeal is probably going to be a waste of time and effort on the part of both counsel and the Texas appellate court. Therefore, if I were deciding this case individually I would apply the harmless error rule and affirm the District Court.
By my concurrence I do not intend to be lending support to the idea that state appellate courts must now review all briefs as to the competency and adequacy of the representation afforded by retained counsel in order to foreclose claims of incompetency of counsel or inadequacy of representation at the appellate level, especially where, for all we know, the filing may be simply for delay or for some other reason not really based on any real hope of reversal.
I have searched the federal constitutional precedents and I find almost nothing on incompetency of counsel or inadequate representation in state court appeals. The hundreds of precedents in this area deal with what happened at the original trial on the merits, where the focal issue of guilt or innocence was at stake.
*665I must express the hope that this case will not become the vehicle by which overburdened federal courts are to begin reviewing the competency and adequacy of retained appellate counsel in state courts. As a Sixth Amendment matter, when a defendant is represented by retained counsel and a state court tells us that it has reviewed the record in an ordinary felony case, such as we have here, and found no error I think we should accept that unless the habeas corpus applicant can cite chapter and verse to show that the state appellate court was clearly wrong, to the prejudice of his constitutional rights.