Court Opinion

ID: 9765020
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:48:00.91072+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:03.530199
License: Public Domain

NIX, Justice,
dissenting.
The majority’s conclusion that appellant is deserving of a new trial because of a conflict between the trial attorney and the client thus depriving appellant of effective assistance of counsel is a figment of the imagination, totally unwarranted under the facts on this record. The majority first speculates that counsel possessed information which *15may have exculpated the client. Counsel has not testified to this fact nor has appellant asserted that this was the case. In any event, it is obvious that whatever information trial counsel may have been privy to, neither he nor his client was anxious to have it offered during the course of the trial.1
Absent a showing that counsel possessed facts which would have been of benefit to the defense, and that testimony could not be and was not introduced because of the attorney-client relationship, there is no basis for concluding a conflict existed resulting in the ineffective assistance of trial counsel. The alternative hypothesis of the majority is equally specious. Assuming arguendo, that trial counsel shared some guilty knowledge with appellant, I find it difficult to jump from that premise to the conclusion that counsel’s zeal in his client’s behalf would necessarily be diminished. To the contrary, such an affinity would be likely to provide an increased desire to achieve a favorable result for the client.
Since the majority has seen fit to refer to the “further erosion of dwindling public confidence in our legal system” (Slip opinion, page 7), if such a trend is present, and I do not accept that it exists, decisions such as this would provide some justification for that loss of confidence. In my opinion allocatur should not have been granted in this case since the issues were properly decided below and the appeal should be dismissed as improvidently granted.

. The majority attempts to bolster its fantasy by directing attention to counsel’s efforts to elicit during trial from a Mr. Reed and appellant certain advice counsel had given to his client in the course of a conference. This testimony was properly excluded as hearsay. This “significant incident” ignores that counsel’s evidence as to what he said on that occasion, if offered, would also have been subject to the same objection. Nor can we conclude from this that counsel possessed knowledge of the facts of the case which might have substantially aided his client’s cause.