Court Opinion

ID: 9458696
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:59:43.120879+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:52.057380
License: Public Domain

ELY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
I respectfully dissent. It is true, of course, that a District Court has wide discretion in respect to the allowance of requested continuances. At the same time, we know that the manner in which such discretion is exercised is reviewable.
Here, the appellant had a long history of severe mental illness and, for such, had been intermittently confined to mental institutions. In these circumstances, it seems to me that the appellant’s attorney had reason to anticipate that the opinion of the court-appointed psychiatrist would prove to be contrary to that which the psychiatrist eventually expressed. Within a very few days after receiving the report of the psychiatrist, which, in its conclusion, must have been somewhat surprising to the appellant’s attorney, the attorney filed his motion for a continuance.1 The motion was not opposed by the Government. The supporting affidavit set forth as reasons for the request that another psychiatrist should be appointed and that the medical record of the Government’s Springfield medical facility, wherein the appellant had just been confined and under observation for a period of five months, should be obtained. Obviously, these records were important, if for no other reason than to enable adequate cross-examination of the court-appointed psychiatrist. The appellant was an indigent and thus was obviously unable to seek out and employ competent physicians *127who, with more extensive study, might have confirmed his claim of insanity.
The majority suggests that the defense attorney did not present his motion with sufficient promptness. • I do not agree, but if the majority is correct, then Valtierra should have relief in postconviction proceedings under 28 U. S.C. § 2255. The only defense presented was the defense of insanity, and even had the defense not sought to obtain the Springfield records, I would be curious as to why the District Court did not, acting sua sponte in the nonjury trial, obtain and review that vitally material evidence. The correctness of the determination in respect to the appellant’s sanity necessarily remains uncertain, inasmuch as the District Court had no opportunity to review the most recent medical records, those which, perhaps, were the most comprehensive and enlightening concerning the only critical issue.
I would reverse.

. The defense attorney received the psychiatrist’s report on January 20, 1971. He filed the motion for continuance five days later. The written motion is not included in the record on appeal, but I have obtained it from the Clerk of the District Court and examined it. There are references, in the Reporter’s Transcript before us, to the Motion filed on January 25th.