Court Opinion

ID: 9730152
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:02:48.766969+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:04.516973
License: Public Domain

WIENER, J., Concurring.
In determining whether a trial lawyer performed in a manner to be expected of reasonably competent attorneys acting as diligent advocates, appellate courts should be cautious of the apparent intellectual acuity gained by hindsight. Although Monday morning quarterbacking may be stimulating, it is inappropriate when judging lawyers who deal in the demanding and uncertain turf of the courtroom. “Appellate courts must recognize that in second guessing tactical decisions reached by trial counsel, they chill the creativity of lawyers with a resultant standardized and mechanistic style of advocacy developed in every case as a matter of protection for the lawyer with questionable benefit to the client. Lawyers must retain the individuality of thought essential to the artisan in the performance of his craft.” (People v. Espinoza (1979) 99 Cal.App.3d 44, 48 [159 Cal.Rptr. 803].)
Having said all of this, however, I still remain puzzled why trial counsel here did not object to White’s testimony contained in the preliminary hearing transcript before the trial started on the ground White was denied effective counsel at his preliminary hearing. Had trial counsel done so, the court could have dealt with the imponderables presented in this appeal. Specifically, whether there is some explanation for what appears to be a most unusual decision in permitting his client to testify at the preliminary hearing and to admit an element of the charge for which he was ultimately convicted. If after an evidentiary hearing the court found White’s preliminary hearing counsel to have been incompetent, White’s testimony in the preliminary hearing transcript could have been suppressed. On the other hand, if counsel had acted competently, the testimony remains and White is properly denied the opportunity of fictionalizing a different scenario. In any event, although it was his own testimony which prejudiced White at trial, I do not believe this fact should immunize a lawyer who may have erred in the first instance by allowing his client to testify at the preliminary hearing. I interpret “potentially meritorious defense” to be a generic phrase which in our constitutionally structured adversary system will include a defendant’s volunteered testimony which will furnish the *780prosecution with an additional, but wholly unnecessary, opportunity to successfully impeach a defendant.
Although appellate courts continually wrestle “. . . with the growing problem of the dual attack on adequacy of counsel by both direct appeal and writ of habeas corpus” (In re Lower (1979) 100 Cal.App.3d 144, at p. 145 [161 Cal.Rptr. 24]), we do not have the benefit in this case of either the in limine proceeding described above or of what has now become routine—a petition for writ of habeas corpus to allow for an evidentiary hearing to resolve the difficult factual questions which are presented. Accordingly, in light of this record, I concur in the result.
A petition for a rehearing was denied May 19, 1981, and appellant’s petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied July 29, 1981.