Court Opinion

ID: 9720748
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:40:42.572516+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:20.972733
License: Public Domain

DRAPER, P. J.
I dissent.
Of course, we are governed by the Supreme Court decision (People v. Marsden, 2 Cal.3d 118 [84 Cal.Rptr. 156, 465 P.2d 44]). But in that case, the trial judge flatly refused defendant’s request to “bring up specific instances” of the claimed shortcomings of trial counsel. As I read the decision, it but holds that the trial court could not exercise its discretion “without listening to his [defendant’s] reasons for requesting a change of attorneys.” To me, it was the refusal of defendant’s offer to relate specific instances of misconduct which, alone, required reversal. Here, the court neither interrupted nor limited appellant’s statement of his reasons for dissatisfaction. It has not been suggested that Marsden requires affirmative solicitation of additional complaints or of amplification of those stated.
The majority, however, holds that the trial court was under some duty to inquire as to whether counsel’s omission to produce evidence suggested by defendant’s complaint “was a matter of discretion or the result of neglect.” I am at a loss to know how such inquiry can be made. The complementary privileges of the Fifth Amendment and the attorney-client relationship would bar direct inquiry by the court of either defendant or counsel as to the truth of the facts underlying defendant’s complaints. Of course, the prosecutor is present at the hearing. In his presence, the court’s posing of the question suggested by the majority would confront defense counsel with an impossible dilemma. To assert a “tactical reason” would necessarily concede the existence of evidence adverse to defendant but not yet produced by the prosecution. To concede negligence would require defense counsel to affirmatively introduce the evidence, however adverse, before the trial closed, or to create a built-in ground for reversal by adhering to his view, however correct, that the evidence would be harmful. Certainly, if the Supreme Court had intended to raise this problem, the opinion would have discussed it and suggested some guidelines for the trial courts.
Appellate counsel has made no offer to show that either the hospital *298record or the doctor’s notes would in fact have benefitted defendant. He but speculates that they might have done so. If speculation is to be indulged in, it must be noted that defendant’s reference to “the doctor’s report” is at best vague. The asserted victim said she had been treated for her wound. Defendant himself had been shot. Trial counsel did produce, with his records, the doctor who had treated defendant at the same emergency hospital where the victim said her wounds were sutured, and at about the same time. It is most difficult to assume that counsel refrained from interrogating the same emergency service about the treatment of the victim, or that such inquiries revealed information helpful to defendant which counsel failed or refused to produce through the doctor whom he did call. In any event, it is clear that Manden does not direct that intendments in any such speculation are to be against the competency of counsel and the determination of the trial court.
Trial judges soon learn the frequent tendency of lay defendants to stress refutation of wholly collateral matters by showings which necessarily are adverse to them on the important issues which determine guilt. This doubtless is one reason for insisting upon legal representation of defendants in criminal cases. I cannot discount the determination of the able and experienced trial judge here, made only after an unimpeded statement by the defendant of his complaints against counsel.
Objection to appointed counsel’s adequacy, after a jury trial is well under way, is becoming an increasingly common ploy among defendants. The majority’s requirement of a trial of counsel’s adequacy, in the absence of the jury and on an unconvincing complaint by the lay defendant, would but increase resort to this ploy without discernible benefit to ultimate justice.
I would affirm the judgment.
Respondent’s petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied September 2, 1971.