Court Opinion

ID: 9698156
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:43:27.373139+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:38.941667
License: Public Domain

Spencer, J.,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the. majority opinion herein. These cases are not controlled by State v. Montgomery, 182 Neb. 737, 157 N. W. 2d 196 (1968). In that case there was prejudice in not granting a separate trial. Here there was not. Here, both defendants repudiated their confessions. To suggest that separate attorneys would have cross-examined either defendant about his confession other than to attempt to sustain his repudiation is absurd. There is no question that both of the defendants were together. No competent attorney defending one of *634them would attempt to prove that the other committed the crime while his client watched.
Both defendants were interested in repudiating their confessions. This their counsel attempted to do. Bruton v. United States, 391 U. S. 123, 88 S. Ct. 1620, 20 L. Ed. 2d 476, is not applicable because the defendants were subject to cross-examination, although, as suggested, there would be no cross-examination on the confession.
Defendants objected to a joint trial, not to joint representation by the same attorney. This case is not controlled by Holloway v. Arkansas, 46 U. S. L. W. 4289. That case specifically involved a request for separate counsel. The evil the court addressed was joint representation by one counsel of conflicting interests. There, the attorney objected to joint representation by court appointment of three defendants because of possible prejudice. Here, Jackson’s attorney, when Stevenson’s attorney became ill, was requested to visit with Stevenson to see if Stevenson wished Jackson’s attorney to represent him also. Stevenson had an opportunity to object to this representation. No objection was made. Here, the attorney, who was requested to ascertain whether ot not a conflict of interest existed, did not suggest one. Further, no motion for severance was made after the public defender was asked to represent both defendants.
Mr. Justice Powell, in Holloway v. Arkansas, supra, said: “While disavowing a per se rule of separate representation, the Court holds today that the trial judge’s failure in this case ‘either to appoint separate counsel or take adequate steps to ascertain whether the risk was too remote to warrant separate counsel’ worked a violation of the guarantee of ‘assistance of counsel’ embodied in the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments.”
In this case, however, the trial court provided an opportunity to ascertain whether or not a conflict of *635interest existed. None was shown. Further, there is nothing in the record in the trial of this case which would indicate that the rights of either defendant were prejudiced by the joint representation. In the absence of an objection to a joint trial, in the absence of defendant Stevenson’s objection to his representation by Jackson’s attorney, the majority opinion gratuitously gives a new trial to two obviously guilty arsonists.