Court Opinion

ID: 9461735
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:23:24.210142+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:14.305009
License: Public Domain

RIVES, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
There has never been an evidentiary hearing on the question of effective assistance of counsel. In an appeal from an earlier denial of habeas corpus, this Court had expressly stated that “Under *877all of these circumstances no issue concerning effectiveness of counsel will be decided.” Loftis v. Beto, 5 Cir. 1971, 450 F.2d 599, 602. I think that we should remand for an evidentiary hearing on that issue.
The record reveals that, at an eviden-tiary hearing, Loftis might be able to show that he was denied his sixth and fourteenth amendment rights. However guilty Loftis may be, he may have been harmed by ineffectiveness of counsel. Loftis was sentenced to fifty years’ imprisonment. His counsel’s attention, pri- or to trial, had been devoted entirely to matters of continuance and severance and the district court was so informed. A hearing may have disclosed the probability that effective counsel would have plea-bargained for some lesser sentence than fifty years’ imprisonment.
I do not mean to imply that the harmless error rule should be applied. However guilty, Loftis had a constitutional right to a trial not fundamentally unfair, and to the effective assistance of counsel. A hearing would probably have demonstrated that his trial was a mere mockery of justice. It appears that he was forced to trial before the same jury which had heard his common-law wife plead guilty. Two of the five judges of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dissented from the affirmance of Loftis’ conviction and elaborated upon a theme stated in the dissent’s opening paragraph:
“A matter of plain and simple fundamental unfairness is here involved. This appellant should not have been forced to trial on his plea of not guilty at the same time and before the same jury, who was required to find his co-defendant, with whom he was jointly indicted as acting together, guilty upon her plea of guilty and to assess her punishment while attempting to pass on the issue of appellant’s guilt or innocence under a charge on principals.”
Loftis v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 1968, 433 S.W.2d 704, 707.
The mockery may have been intensified when, without objection from Loftis’ counsel, the jury witnessed his wife suffering severe withdrawal symptoms, screaming, crying, and holding her stomach while her head lay on the counsel table.
In addition to circumstances which would render the trial fundamentally unfair, a hearing would probably disclose other instances in which counsel failed to meet the sixth amendment standard of fairness and knowledge of such instances by the state trial judge or prosecutor.
I respectfully dissent.