Court Opinion

ID: 9652178
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:20:25.663009+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:49.188468
License: Public Domain

MACK, Associate Judge,
dissenting:
We are confronted with circumstances where an indigent defendant, in great distress after being sentenced to spend from ten to thirty years in jail, told his counsel he wanted a “new trial,” where counsel did not directly ask him if he wanted to appeal, and where counsel thereafter neither contacted him nor did anything on his behalf. In my opinion these circumstances bring this case within the rationale of those decisions which hold that such extraordinary inattention by counsel to his client’s interests amounts to ineffective assistance of counsel cognizable on collateral attack — at least for the limited purposes of restoring a defendant to the status of one upon whom sentence has just been imposed and who has ten days in which to institute a direct appeal. Hines v. United States, D.C.App., 237 A.2d 827 (1968); Dillane v. United States, 121 U.S.App.D.C. 354, 350 F.2d 732 (1965), aff’d after remand 127 U.S.App.D.C. 377, 384 F.2d 329 (1967). See also Rodriquez v. United States, 395 U.S. 327, 89 S.Ct. 1715, 23 L.Ed.2d 340 (1969). I would reverse the denial of the motion to vacate the sentence, and remand for resentencing.