Court Opinion

ID: 9805003
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 17:26:25.991363+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:31:08.709029
License: Public Domain

Tom, J.E
(dissenting). The Sixth Amendment affords a criminal defendant the right to representation by counsel; it does not guarantee the absolute right to representation by a particular attorney (Wheat v United States, 486 US 153, 159 [1988]). Where, as here, the chosen attorney is prohibited by a conflict of interest from conducting a thorough investigation, including interviewing a potential favorable witness, and would be prohibited from cross-examining that witness if called by the Feople, the attorney is unable to ensure that he will provide his client with an effective defense. Under these circumstances, even though the defendant expresses a willingness to waive any conflict, the exercise of the trial court’s broad discretion to disqualify the attorney, to preserve the defendant’s right to effective representation, will not be disturbed (People v Carncross, 14 NY3d 319, 329-330 [2010]).
Defendant was charged with two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree and one count of resisting arrest. The weapon possession counts alleged, respectively, that he possessed a loaded firearm outside of his home or business and that he possessed a loaded firearm with the intent to use it against another. Both defendant and one Toi Stephens ran away from the scene at the approach of police, and both were stopped and arrested. After defendant had been represented by attorney Robert Fisher of the New York County Defender Services (NYCDS) for eight months, counsel alerted the court that he had learned from reviewing Rosario material that his office had represented “the witness I had been looking for since May, Mr. Toi Stephens.” The NYCDS had represented Stephens in connection with the same incident from which the charges against defendant arose, presenting counsel with a conflict of interest. The court adjourned the matter for a few days to allow Mr. Fisher an opportunity to resolve the matter.
On the return date, counsel advised the court that Stephens had entered a guilty plea “shortly after his arraignment,” but had not waived confidentiality with respect to his representation by the NYCDS local defender. As a result, counsel had been *106forbidden by his supervisor to examine the file on Stephens or even to send an investigator to locate him. To continue with his attorney’s representation, defendant would have to waive any attempt by counsel to either locate Stephens or cross-examine him.
The People informed the court that they presently had no intention of calling Stephens on their case-in-chief; however, should it be claimed that someone other than defendant had possession of the gun, they would attempt to find Stephens and call him to testify. In view of defense counsel’s inability to conduct any cross-examination of Stephens, the People asked that Mr. Fisher be relieved.
The court explained the conflict of interest resulting from the same office representing parties whose charges both arose out of the same incident. Though doubtful that he would be able to locate Stephens, defendant stated that he had been present when Stephens made a statement to police and that he “would want to have him called as a witness.” Nevertheless, defendant expressed his desire to continue being represented by Mr. Fisher because obtaining another attorney would delay trial and defendant wanted to “get this matter over with as soon as possible.”
The court explained that Stephens’s testimony might be considered relevant and that the witness might be located and called to the stand by the People. In that event, Mr. Fisher would be placed “in a very difficult position” where he would not be able to provide effective representation. Counsel also reiterated that he would be placed in a “terrible position” if Stephens testified, because he would be unable to cross-examine him. At trial, the People had the open option of calling Stephens as a witness. Thus, despite defendant’s professed willingness to waive counsel’s potential conflict of interest, there might still exist “a real conflict that [the court] might not be able to . . . overcome.” Noting its responsibility to assure a fair trial without any impediment to either party, the court directed a substitution of counsel (see Carncross, 14 NY3d at 328 [“the trial court had the independent obligation to ensure that defendant’s right to effective representation was not impaired”]).
The majority proceeds from the advantage of hindsight to conclude that Mr. Fisher was never “privy to any confidential information regarding Stephens.” The propriety of the court’s ruling, however, must be examined in the context of the information available at the time it was made and the harm to be *107avoided, not with the luxury of certainty after the fact. As the United States Supreme Court observed, a trial
“court must pass on the issue whether or not to allow a waiver of a conflict of interest by a criminal defendant not with the wisdom of hindsight after the trial has taken place, but in the murkier pretrial context when relationships between parties are seen through a glass, darkly” (Wheat, 486 US at 162).
Since counsel could not examine the file that had been assembled by the local defender during its representation of Stephens, there was no information available to enable the court to assess whether Stephens might be able to offer any testimony favorable to defendant. The person with the most insight into what Stephens knew was defendant, who heard the statement Stephens made after his arrest, based upon which defendant indicated that he wanted Stephens called as a witness on his behalf. Given all the indications — that defendant regarded Stephens as a desirable witness and that the People would call him to testify should defendant suggest the gun was not his — it would have been improvident in the extreme to permit a conflicted attorney to proceed with his representation of defendant without any hope of being able to find out what Stephens knew or said so as to prepare an adequate defense, or without the ability to cross-examine him were he to be called by the People. Without the ability to ascertain possible exculpatory evidence within Stephens’s knowledge or the ability to cross-examine Stephens if called and present incriminating evidence against defendant, due to the conflict of interest, counsel could not properly represent defendant. Yet, the majority, with the benefit of hindsight, remarkably finds no conflict of interest with counsel’s representation of defendant. Substitute counsel faced no such limitations and was not ethically obliged to avoid locating and interviewing Stephens or to refrain from calling him to testify on defendant’s behalf should his testimony prove beneficial. Thus, the trial court properly concluded that “had counsel not been disqualified under these circumstances, counsel’s ability to objectively assess the best strategy for defendant to pursue may have been impaired” (Carncross, 14 NY3d at 328; see Wheat, 486 US at 163 [trial court must be afforded substantial latitude with respect to disqualification “where a potential for conflict exists which may or may not burgeon into an actual conflict as the trial progresses”]).
People v Wilkins (28 NY2d 53 [1971]), relied upon by the majority, stands only for the proposition that unknowing dual *108representation of conflicting interests by the same attorney of record does not raise a presumption of ineffective assistance of counsel “without some showing of a conflict of interest or prejudice” (id. at 55). Prejudice results from factors that “deter[ ] . . . counsel from presenting an effective defense” (id. at 57), factors that are very much in evidence in the matter at bar. Here, the record indicates that “the particular staff attorney who defended the defendant knew of a potential conflict [of interest] and [would have been] inhibited or restrained thereby during trial” (id.). Clearly, Wilkins supports disqualification under the circumstances confronting the trial court in this matter.
Finally, it should be noted that the majority’s disposition places trial judges in a position where any ruling made on disqualification of counsel is subject to reversal. Had defendant’s attorney not been relieved by the court, defendant would be contending that counsel’s inability to conduct a thorough investigation by locating and interviewing Stephens, who may be a favorable witness, deprived him of effective representation. It is not the function of appellate review to saddle the trial court with a Hobson’s choice but rather to respect its broad discretion “when the defendant’s actions with respect to counsel place the court in the dilemma of having to choose between undesirable alternatives, either one of which would theoretically provide the defendant with a basis for appellate review” (People v Tineo, 64 NY2d 531, 536 [1985]; see also Wheat, 486 US at 161-163).
Accordingly, the judgment should be affirmed.
Moskowitz, DeGrasse and Richter, JJ., concur with Kapnick, J.; Tom, J.P, dissents in a separate opinion.
Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County, rendered October 29, 2010, reversed, on the law, and the matter remanded for a new trial.