Court Opinion

ID: 9450458
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:48:33.813851+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:19.950609
License: Public Domain

KILEY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent.
If Calland’s first attorney considered his services terminated he should have withdrawn of record; if the second attorney was substituted as Calland’s attorney he should have entered his appearance.
But these formal requisites are not of the essence of the denial of Calland’s right of appeal. Both of his attorneys admit discussing an appeal with him within the ten-day period. The first one testified that “I told him that I would seek to perfect an appeal for him if that is what he wanted,” and that he talked to the district judge about Calland’s interest in an appeal but “filed nothing.” The second attorney testified that Calland told him “some of the witnesses had lied * * * and that he wanted to appeal”; that he stated he would start when paid; that he was paid shortly after the ten-day period had expired “as a retainer to investigate whether there was a possibility of filing an appeal, a motion for appeal”; that thereafter he had discussions with Calland’s brother about affidavits “upon which to predicate an appeal”; that he knew when he talked to Calland that the ten-day period would expire in one or two days; that he did not tell Calland he could himself by letter to the judge protect his right to appeal; and that he knew then that Calland might have grounds to appeal but that if no notice of appeal were filed, the right of appeal would be lost whether or not there was a basis for a new triaL
Calland’s letters to his second attorney in April and May 1962 referred to “new trial” and “appeal” interchangeably. In a letter to his first attorney in December 1962 he referred to a “direct appeal as is prescribed in title 28, U.S.C. §§ 1291 and 1294 * * In the letter Calland received from his second attorney on October 24, 1962, the attorney stated that he had waited “in vain” for information needed “on which to predicate an appeal” and that “the odds for the success of an appeal are extremely nil.”
The majority correctly states that Cal-land knew of the ten-day limitation, but the record does not support its claim that he waived his right of appeal by knowing and approving of what his attorney was doing. He instructed his second attorney to file a timely notice of appeal and the latter failed to do so. If the attorney had in mind a motion for new trial to the exclusion of an appeal, or a condition that he would not file the notice of appeal until he was paid, he certainly failed to communicate these things to his client. Cal-land’s conduct, under the circumstances, hardly amounts to “an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege.” Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 464, 58 S.Ct. 1019, 1023, 82 L.Ed. 1461 (1938); Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 83 S.Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837 (1963). On the contrary, this was a case of the defendant’s attorney ignoring his client’s instruction to file a notice of appeal, within the rule of Dodd v. United States, 321 F.2d 240 (9th Cir. 1963).
My opinion is that the record discloses an overly technical disposition of Cal-land’s fundamental right of appeal. It seems to me, that on the testimony of the two attorneys alone, the inference is unavoidable that a grave injustice has been done to Calland in violation of his right to effective counsel under the Sixth Amendment and his right of appeal under F.R. Cr.P. 37. So far as representation is concerned, he was probably less well off, being able to retain an attorney of his choice than if he had had no attorney. In the latter event, under Rule 37(a) (1), the *47clerk would have had the duty to “prepare and file forthwith” the notice of appeal upon request. I think that Calland in the hearing upon remand proved the factual allegations of his petition, so that his motion of October 30, 1962 should be considered a timely notice of appeal.