Court Opinion

ID: 9453464
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:14:15.532716+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:40.265246
License: Public Domain

DANAHER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
Since the majority agree with me that counsel appointed by this court should now be permitted to withdraw from further participation in this case, it may seem strange that I note a dissent. But I do dissent, not from that very proper *979result, but from what has been written. Our colleagues who have not seen the record here are entitled to an explanation.
I
Suggs was convicted of robbery, one count, and of assault with a dangerous weapon, two counts. The record shows that Suggs, a passenger in the rear seat of a taxicab, directed the driver, Snead, to “Stop here.” Suggs then reached forward, placed one arm around Snead’s head, pulled it back, and placing a knife at Snead’s throat, said “This is it.”
A Mrs. Thomas, sweeping her sidewalk a few feet away, saw the episode, screamed and ran to her door telling her husband to call the police. She then ran back down toward the cab.
One Joseph Lawrence was working on his car opposite the cab. Attracted by the screaming of Mrs. Thomas, he ran across the street. Fearing Suggs “might make a mistake and actually cut his throat,” he first tried to reason with Suggs. The latter kept his knife at Snead’s throat and “seemed to have been searching [Snead’s] breast pocket.” Lawrence finally “took a chance” and “grabbed” Suggs by the hand holding the knife. Lawrence then was badly cut, requiring a skin graft and several weekly visits for later hospital attention. Snead was cut on the chin, on one thumb and one finger. Suggs got out of the cab and went up the street, followed by Snead at a safe distance.
Meanwhile Officer Washington had responded to the police alert. As the officer approached Suggs, the latter took a drink from a small bottle. Suggs was placed under arrest and the officer recovered from him a three inch knife. Washington testified that when booking Suggs, he made out a “line-up sheet during which Suggs coherently answered all questions. Further search at the precinct revealed that Suggs had on his person, Snead’s false teeth, rolled up in Snead’s handkerchief. These items had been in Snead’s shirt pocket.
Although Suggs testified that he had been drinking and had no recollection of any of the events thus described, the jury obviously rejected his testimony.
Thus with three actual eyewitnesses, Snead, Lawrence and Mrs. Thomas, and later, the officer; the cuttings and Lawrence’s hospital records, the jury could have found that the Government had overwhelmingly proved that Suggs was guilty as charged.
No requests to charge had been rejected. No exceptions to the jury instructions had been noted, indeed court-appointed trial counsel expressed himself as satisfied with the charge as given.1 No ruling by the thoroughly experienced trial Judge Keech could be seen to have been prejudicially erroneous.2 And surely, in usual course, we are not bound to notice claims of error raised for the first time on appeal.3 Without more, and in light of the record we normally would have affirmed at once in the view I take of this case.
II
And so it must then have seemed to the able attorneys we appointed. The District Court had granted the appellant’s petition for allowance of an appeal. Suggs had submitted some eight allegations of error, largely charging ineffective assistance of trial counsel.4 Counsel appointed by us conferred with Suggs on March 2, 1967 5 respecting the procedure we had outlined in McCoy v. United *980States, 125 U.S.App.D.C. 202, 370 F.2d 224 (1966).6 Counsel prepared their brief which was filed in this court on March 16, 1967, and then sent a copy of that brief to Suggs.
After my study of the appellant’s points and the presentation by counsel, I will not say they had briefed the case “against” their client. They noted rather each and every claim advanced by Suggs and cited seriatim the decisions of this court which had already disposed of each such claim. It was not the brief which was “against” Suggs — the facts and the law were against him.
III
Counsel here had honorably and conscientiously performed their duty as officers of the court. They told us they had concluded that “there is no non-frivolous question which counsel could present to this court,” and they so decided, properly, according to the record here. They would have been bound so to advise Suggs if he had been a “rich” man seeking their professional judgment. They had reviewed the record, conferred with Suggs, researched the applicable law, conferred with the trial attorney, and had made independent investigations concerning certain allegations proffered by Suggs. (Compare Douglas v. State of California, 372 U.S. 353, 358, 83 S.Ct. 814, 9 L.Ed.2d 811 (1963) as cited in Anders, 386 U.S. at 741, 87 S.Ct. 1396.) And they so advised this court.
Even then, they had not sought to withdraw from the case, no doubt because of a willingness to comply with our Judicial Council imprecation that counsel remain in the ease.7
IV
Before this case came on for hearing on May 16, 1967, the Supreme Court on May 8, decided Anders v. State of California.8 Our alert attorneys then read that counsel for the poor as well as those for the rich were to strive for “substantial equality and fair process” 9 where counsel acts in the role of an active advocate.
Of course in any such situation, the attorney would support his client’s case to the best of his ability. Conversely, if he were bound to tell the rich man he had no case, his professional integrity would require that he do no less for the poor man. And as an officer of the court, once having been pressed into service, if counsel “finds his case to be wholly frivolous, after a conscientious examination of it, he should so advise the court and request permission to withdraw.”10 In all honor, a scrupulous attorney may do no less.
It is obvious that these attorneys here so conceived their duty, for two days after Anders, counsel on May 10,1967 filed their motion to withdraw. They had already filed their brief and had furnished Suggs a copy of it. It is obviously understandable that having seen no prejudicial error in this record, they had already said what their professional judgment told them should be said, and they had nothing to add. Conscientiously they could file no brief to the contrary.
I deem it certain that it never occurred to them in view of the Federal Rules and the decided cases, that points upon which the trial judge had never been asked to rule could now be advanced as “arguably” supporting the appeal.
Thus counsel pointed to Anders which saw a defect in the procedure accorded by. the California courts. California must give the appellant time “to raise any points that he chooses,” the Court said.11
*981After he has done so, and with the appellant’s points under scrutiny, Anders went on to say, “the court — not counsel — then proceeds, after a full examination of all the proceedings, to decide whether the case is wholly frivolous.” 386 U.S. at 744, 87 S.Ct. at 1400. (Emphasis added.)
To the extent that Anders here can be said to apply, after the court shall have examined the points the appellant desires to raise and then finds them frivolous, the court “may grant counsel’s request to withdraw and dismiss the appeal insofar as federal requirements are concerned.”12
And the points this appellant had specified are, on this record, frivolous13 —and this appeal accordingly should be dismissed. That is what Anders says. It goes without further saying, in my opinion, that is the ground upon which the motion of counsel to withdraw should be granted.
The course upon which my colleagues have embarked, contrary to Anders, seems to be surfeited with mischief. No trial attorney need ask for a ruling, nor raise a claim and give the trial judge an opportunity to pass upon it, nor request an instruction, nor take exception to a charge as given. No matter how conclusively our precedents may seem to have foreclosed consideration of a point, the trial attorney need only sit back, secure in the expectation that if the outcome of the trial shall prove unsatisfactory, this court will appoint attorneys who can claim whatever they choose. Then, according to my colleagues, our court-appointed counsel may move to withdraw their appearance and put upon the court the burden14 of combing the record for possible error.
Obviously, I do not read Anders as do my colleagues and so simply suggest that jf the majority opinion becomes the law, we wjn really be busy.15

. Cf. Fed.R.Ckim.P. 30.

. Id., 52(b).

. And see the Second’s Circuit’s en bane opinion in United States v. Indiviglio, 352 F.2d 276, 279, 280 (1965), cert. denied, 383 U.S. 907, 86 S.Ct. 887, 15 L.Ed.2d 663 (1966).

. A post-conviction challenge on a proper showing under § 2255 is, of course, open to Suggs. Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 441, 83 S.Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837 (1963).
And not every so-called constitutional error, even if established, will require reversal. Chapman v. State of California, 386 U.S. 18, 22, 23, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967).

. Suggs was also then advised of his right to represent himself if he so desired.

. And see Johnson v. United States, 124 U.S.App.D.C. 29, 360 F.2d 844 (1966).

. See Johnson v. United States, supra note 6, and Judge Burger’s concurring opinion, 124 U.S.App.D.C. at 30-32, 360 F.2d at 845-847; cf. Ellis v. United States, 356 U.S. 674, 675, 78 S.Ct. 974, 2 L.Ed.2d 1060 (1958).

. 386 U.S. 738, 87 S.Ct. 1396, 18 L.Ed.2d 493 (1967).

. Id. at 744, 87 S.Ct. 1396.

. Id. at 744, 87 S.Ct. at 1400.

. But counsel here had already done that; finding no non-frivolous question themselves, they raised the points Suggs specified.

. 386 U.S. at 744, 87 S.Ct at 1400.

. Sec 28 U.S.C. § 2111, and Chapman v. State of California, supra note 4, 386 U.S. at 22, 87 S.Ct. 824.

. Chief Judge Bazelon in his letter to the Attorney General dated May 17, 1967, stated:
“Ninety-three percent of the criminal cases tried in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia are appealed to this court,” [adding that] “Our case load has risen from 48 to 78 cases per judgeship in the last few years and continues to increase.”

. The possibilities are substantial. In the first nine months of this year, there occurred in the District of Columbia, 4091 robberies, 2400 cases of aggravated assault, 10,535 burglaries and 5921 auto thefts. (Uniform Grime Statistics released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, December 11, 1967.)