Court Opinion

ID: 9463019
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:56:21.342027+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:54.126997
License: Public Domain

WALLACE, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I concur briefly. I have no disagreement with most of my Brother Sneed’s opinion; on the contrary, I join in his general analysis as well as the result. My primary exception is to the unnecessary en banc approval of our panel decision in Sieling v. Eyman, 478 F.2d 211 (9th Cir. 1973). Judge Sneed has called our attention to the criticism leveled at the Sieling decision “both for recognizing a state of semi-competence which permits a trial but denies a defendant the opportunity to plea bargain, and for providing an additional ground fraught with psychiatric uncertainties for collateral attack on guilty pleas . . .” Majority opinion, p. 985. For those reasons, I believe Sieling was wrongly decided.
Since the facts of this case actually meet the more stringent test of Sieling, they also meet a less restrictive standard. Thus it is unnecessary and, in my judgment, improvident, to give Sieling en banc approval here. See United States v. Demma, 523 F.2d 981, *988987 (9th Cir. 1975) (Wallace, J., concurring and dissenting). Since the majority has chosen to consider the continuing vitality of Sieling, I therefore express my view that Sieling should be overruled.