Court Opinion

ID: 9863817
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 05:54:37.17215+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:04:20.979733
License: Public Domain

ON PETITION FOR REHEARING
BISTLINE, Justice,
dissenting on denial of petition for rehearing.
Adhering to the view that State v. Charboneau, 116 Idaho 129, 774 P.2d 299 (1989), applies retroactively, this Justice would vacate Fetterly’s death sentence and remand the cause for a new sentencing hearing. Additionally, rehearing should be granted for the Court to reconsider the ineffective assistance of counsel claim.
Fetterly argues that his original counsel1 was ineffective because he did not challenge the sentence under I.C. § 19-2515(c) during direct appeal on the first petition for post-conviction relief.
The Supreme Court has recognized two components necessary to a criminal defendant’s claim of ineffective assistance of counsel:
First, the defendant must show that counsel’s performance was deficient____ Second, the defendant must show that the deficient performance prejudiced the defense____ Unless a defendant makes both showings it cannot be said that the conviction or death sentence resulted from a breakdown in the adversary process that renders the result unreliable.
Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 2064, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984), see Gibson v. State, 110 Idaho 631, 634, 718 P.2d 283, 286 (1986).
The majority discards Fetterly’s claim by observing: 1) that the conclusion that Charboneau is not retroactive “necessarily disposes” of the ineffective assistance of counsel issue, and 2) that the issue was waived because Fetterly’s counsel should have known about the issue and raised it in the first petition.
As to the first observation, the majority apparently means that Fetterly was not prejudiced by his counsel’s failure to raise the I.C. § 19-2515(c) issue because Charboneau would not have applied retroactively to that case. However, since Charboneau was not issued until after we issued the opinion in Fetterly’s first petition, it is difficult to see how the question of Charboneau’s retroactive effect would have affected that case at all. More to the point is that if Fetterly’s counsel had raised the I.C. § 19-2515(c) issue, we undoubtedly would have interpreted the statute the same way we did just eight months later in Charboneau and Fetterly would have received a new sentencing hearing.
The majority’s second observation, that the ineffective assistance claim is waived because it should have been brought in the first petition, is unsound. The question before us is whether counsel was ineffective because he failed to argue that Fetterly was not sentenced in accordance with I.C. § 19-2515(c). That question cannot be answered by saying the act constituting the ineffective representation also constitutes a waiver of the ineffective assistance issue. The majority apparently does not realize that Fetterly’s counsel during his direct appeal and first petition was the same attorney who Fetterly now claims was ineffective. The majority cannot really expect Fetterly’s former counsel to have argued he was ineffective in the first petition. Such a situation would be an obvious conflict of interest. As Fetterly put it:
How can this Court say, given the foregoing scenario, that the ineffective assistance of counsel claim should have been raised in the first petition for post conviction relief? ... Was he supposed to realize he was ineffective in failing to interpret Idaho Code § 19-2515 in accordance with Charboneau? It is apparently the position of this Court that Peti*425tioner’s original counsel should be able to sit around his office and spot not only those issues which should be raised on direct appeal, but also spot those issues he failed to raise the first time around. This ignores the facts that the allegation of ineffective assistance of counsel is built upon a premise that a second attorney steps into the case, reviews the prior attorney’s performance, and finds some area in which the prior attorney was deficient.
Ultimately, the question for the Court is whether due process is satisfied when a capital defendant is provided appointed counsel and that appointed counsel fails to recognize his own errors when the original post conviction relief action is filed. If those errors can never be raised at any later time, then the original appointed counsel effectively becomes a participant in the death of the capital defendant, because the original counsel’s failure to point out his own errors effectively insulates those errors from any later review.
In my view, the majority’s disposition of the ineffective assistance of counsel claim is wholly inadequate. We should address the issue on the merits. If the majority were to do that, it would find that Fetterly has made out a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel.
No one disputes that the district court did not engage in the balancing procedure mandated by the legislature in I.C. § 19-2515(c). If counsel had raised that argument Fetterly would have received a new sentencing hearing. Thus, the first part of the Strickland test has been met.
Further, the loss of that sentencing hearing is a sufficient showing of prejudice to meet the second part of the Strickland test. Thus, for the reasons in my original dissent and the reasons raised in the petition for rehearing, I would grant rehearing, vacate the death sentence and remand for resentencing.

. ' Fetterly is represented by different counsel on this petition.