Court Opinion

ID: 9757402
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 22:38:52.044518+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:39.007057
License: Public Domain

Statement of Associate Judge BELSON,
with whom ROGERS, Associate Judge, joins:
I concur in the result reached by the plurality. I am convinced that appellate counsel’s representation was not ineffective. I am so convinced because he not only raised and briefed the mutual admissi*1073bility point regarding severance, but also brought the “simple and distinct” point sufficiently to this court’s attention so that if this court went on to hold (as it did) that counsel was correct that evidence of the offenses was not mutually admissible, this court would have been duty bound to examine the trial record to see whether the charges were capable of being tried, and were tried, in a sufficiently separate and distinct manner. That is the sort of issue that will invariably require the court to survey the record itself. If counsel had argued the issue and had supplied appropriate citations to the record, it would have been helpful to the court and, undeniably, to appellant as well. I think, however, that the failure to do so, especially in the context of an appeal in which other points were adequately presented, did not constitute ineffective assistance of appellate counsel. See Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 686, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 2063, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984).