Court Opinion

ID: 9596838
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:53:23.66134+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:42:54.123674
License: Public Domain

Annabelle Clinton Imber, Justice, concurring. I concur in the result of the majority opinion and agree that this case should be reversed because there was no showing of prejudice by the petitioner, as required by the second prong of the test in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). However, I must dissent from that portion of the majority opinion that finds this case distinguishable from State v. Hardin, 347 Ark. 62, 60 S.W.3d 397 (2001). In Hardin, the majority reversed a trial court’s decision granting a Rule 37 3petition for new trial due to ineffective assistance of counsel. Id. The trial court had misinterpreted a case decided under prior law and had erroneously based its decision on cumulative error. Id. The Hardin majority remanded the case to the trial court with instructions to re-analyze its decision with an eye to the individual errors and without regard to cumulative error. Id. In my dissent in Hardin, I pointed out that it was unnecessary to remand the case because the petitioner had made no showing of prejudice and, therefore, had not met the second prong of Strickland. State v. Hardin, supra (Imber, J., dissenting). This was borne out by the fact that the trial court’s decision in Hardin “set forth no facts showing prejudice and no such facts [were] apparent from the record.” State v. Hardin, 347 Ark. at 69, 60 S.W.3d at 401 (Imber, J., dissenting). Far from being distinguishable, the Hardin case and this case are four-square on point with each other. The majority states that Hardin is distinguishable because in the instant case the trial court found specific instances of error and did not base its order solely on cumulative error. Particularly, the majority makes note that the trial court found a new trial was appropriate on the grounds of Mr. Franklin’s failure to testify and states that this shows the court did not rely on cumulative error alone to make its determination. The majority quotes Hardin as follows: [W]hat we do not know is whether the circuit court would have found that one or more of the allegations of ineffective assistance of counsel, standing alone, showed that Mr. Weber made errors so serious that he was not functioning as the “counsel” gúaranteed the petitioner by the Sixth Amendment, and that the deficient performance prejudiced the defense sufficiently to undermine confidence in the outcome of the trial. State v. Hardin, 347 Ark. at 67, 60 S.W.3d at 400 (emphasis added). I fail to see how Hardin and the instant case are distinguishable. This language from Hardin shows that a trial court must make two findings in order to grant a new trial based on an error that rises to the level of ineffective assistance of counsel under the Strickland test: (1) that counsel was deficient in regard to the error so that he was not performing as “counsel” guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment, and (2) that the error prejudiced the defense sufficiently to undermine confidence in the outcome of the trial. In reading the trial court’s order in the instant case, the trial court found trial counsel deficient in regard to the issue of Mr. Franklin’s failure to testify. This met the first prong of the Strickland test. However, the State correctly pointed out that the trial court made no finding that Franklin’s failure to testify either resulted in prejudice to him or undermined confidence in the outcome of the trial; therefore, as in Hardin, the prejudice prong of Strickland was not met on the face of the trial court’s order with regard to the individual errors examined by the trial court. The only possible prejudice finding in the trial court’s order is in the point on cumulative error in which the trial court states: This Court has looked at trial counsel’s errors and omissions complained of by Franklin. Considering the totality of the circumstances, and the cumulative nature of trial counsel’s flaws and inadequacies, the Court concludes that the aggregate of errors violated Franklin’s due process of law by depriving him of substantial justice and a fundamentally fair trial. (Emphasis added.) The emphasized portion of this quote could possibly be read as a finding of prejudice that served to meet the second prong of the Strickland test; but, if so, it is the only such prejudice finding in the trial court’s order, and it is contained only in the point on cumulative error. Because the trial court did not base its order for new trial due to Franklin’s failure to testify on a two-pronged Strickland analysis, the only error in which the trial court arguably found Strickland prejudice was the point on cumulative error, placing this case exactly on point with Hardin. If Hardin was rightly decided, that would then mean Mr. Franklin’s case should also be remanded for the trial court to make a non-cumulative-error analysis on that final point on appeal, as was done in Hardin. The fact is that this case has been correctly decided because Mr. Franklin did not show, and the trial court did not find, any prejudice that met the second prong of the Strickland test. The Hardin decision ignored the prejudice prong of Strickland and, I believe, was incorrectly decided. Rather than distinguishing this case from Hardin, I would overrule Hardin with the decision handed down in this case today. Glaze, J., joins in this opinion.