Court Opinion

ID: 9448199
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:25:19.396973+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:19.304200
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The petition for rehearing shows that the point relied on by the majority to reverse Judge Smith’s grant of the habeas corpus writ, namely, waiver of objection by the public defenders assigned as counsel for the accused to the introduction in evidence of the confessions, was neither briefed nor argued to us. It also shows that the accused objected to the counsel and tried to repudiate them and that they in turn sought relief from the assignment, both before and after the trial, because they could not reach any relation of co-operation with him. A holding that counsel assigned an accused may waive him into the electric chair seems in any *91event dubious. But when it appears further that there was no co-operation between accused and counsel and that the accused had repudiated the counsel, the conclusion of waiver borders on the fantastic in any human and practical or, indeed, legal sense. F.R.Crim.P. 52(b); United States ex rel. Goldsby v. Harpole, 5 Cir., 263 F.2d 71, certiorari denied 361 U.S. 838, 850, 80 S.Ct. 58, 4 L.Ed.2d 78.
The majority by implication accept Judge Smith’s reasoned view, D.C.Conn., 197 F.Supp. 125, that the petitioner’s rights were violated by the long delay in notifying him that he was entitled to counsel. In view of the decisive effect thus given the alleged waiver, the point should be thoroughly argued and briefed, particularly by the State, before we allow this harsh rule of involuntary loss of rights to stand.1 I would grant the petition for rehearing.

. In view of the importance of this issue, I do not reach other problems which must be settled if the conviction is to stand. Hence I pass such matters as the validity of the first confession obtained after the midnight ride to Hartford, or the utility of that confession in any event in view of its conceded falsity. It is unfortunate that so many cases of illegally coerced confessions of a like nature are now appearing in this state, so generally renowned for its fair administration of the law; thus see Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U.S. 534, 81 S.Ct. 735, 5 L.Ed.2d 760, reversing 2 Cir., 271 F.2d 364; Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U.S. 568, 81 S.Ct. 1860, 6 L.Ed.2d 1037, reversing State v. Taborsky, 147 Conn. 194, 158 A.2d 239; and the present case. It would seem that legislation setting forth the constitutional rights of the accused would be helpful as directives to the police and prosecutors; and the Governor’s veto of the bar supported “Act Concerning the Right of the Accused to Have Counsel,” proposed P.A. 1961, No. 585, on the ground that it was not needed, seems less firmly based than his criticism of the ambiguity of the language employed.