Court Opinion

ID: 9701050
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:00:19.887096+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:00:05.506650
License: Public Domain

ANDERSON, G. Barry, Justice
(dissenting).
The majority strikes down Minn.Stat. § 590.05 (2004) on the basis that Article I, § 6 of the Minnesota Constitution guarantees a convicted defendant appointed counsel on a petition for postconviction relief when that petition is the first review of the conviction. Because I do not read the Minnesota Constitution to include this right, I respectfully dissent.
As the majority notes, when interpreting our state constitution, we generally favor uniformity with the federal constitution and do not independently apply the Minnesota Constitution absent “language, concerns, and traditions unique to Minnesota.” Kahn v. Griffin, 701 N.W.2d 815, 824 (Minn.2005). Because the “tradition” of providing counsel on postconviction review — and indeed of providing “a right to one review” when a petitioner has not taken a direct appeal — is of statutory origin, the right to counsel on a postconviction petition does not meet this stringent standard.
As acknowledged by the majority, Minnesota’s history of providing appointed counsel to postconviction petitioners who have not pursued a direct appeal has always been based on statute. In addition, while the majority states that “the right to one review of a criminal conviction may arguably be grounded in the Minnesota Constitution,” there is strong evidence that the right to appeal is itself statutory. This court recently stated that “a convicted defendant does not have a constitutional right to appeal under either the United States Constitution or Minnesota Constitution.” Spann v. State, 704 N.W.2d 486, 491 (Minn.2005). While “a convicted defendant is entitled to at least one right of review by an appellate or postconviction court,” State v. Knaffla, 309 Minn. 246, 252, 243 N.W.2d 737, 741 (1976), the majority acknowledges that Knaffla, while it interpreted the Postconviction Remedy Act, did not reference the Minnesota Constitution.
Looking beyond these statutory guarantees, there is little additional basis for the conclusion that the Minnesota Constitution guarantees the right the majority finds today. The majority reads our prior decisions in Friedman v. Commissioner of Public Safety, 473 N.W.2d 828 (Minn.1991), and State v. Risk, 598 N.W.2d 642 (Minn.1999), as support for the view that “a defendant’s access to the other protections afforded in criminal proceedings cannot be meaningful without the assistance of counsel.” While this may be true as a matter of policy, I do not agree that these two decisions, which the majority acknowledges dealt with investigative stages of criminal proceedings, create a “tradition” warranting reading the Minnesota Constitution to guarantee the right to counsel in a postconviction proceeding.
Finally, the majority finds support for its holding in the reasoning of Douglas v. California, 372 U.S. 353, 83 S.Ct. 814, 9 L.Ed.2d 811 (1963). As the majority notes, however, Douglas dealt with appointment of counsel on direct appeal — a factor that appears to have been significant in the Supreme Court’s decision. See id. at 356-57, 83 S.Ct. 814 (“But where the merits of the one and only appeal an indigent has as of right are decided without benefit of counsel, we think an unconstitutional line has been drawn between *100rich and poor.”) (emphasis added). The case before this court today does not involve a situation in which a defendant is forced to undertake his only appeal as of right without the benefit of counsel. Dee-gan had the opportunity to appeal his conviction and sentence with the benefit of counsel via a direct appeal, an opportunity he chose not to pursue.
As a matter of policy, there is more than a little room to criticize the legislative decision to give the public defender discretion to decline representation to defendants in the procedural posture found here. The number of defendants affected by this amendment is small, the budgetary import insignificant, and the importance of counsel in an effective appeal is obvious.
But neither traditions based in statute nor poor policy choices by the legislature are sufficient to make an entitlement to counsel constitutionally mandated. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.