Court Opinion

ID: 9671789
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:43:27.034617+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:12.104421
License: Public Domain

KENNEDY, Presiding Judge,
dissenting.
It is regrettable that the movant here is not to be allowed so much as an evidentiary hearing on his Rule 24.035 motion.
The issue in this case is not whether mov-ant was competent to stand trial when he entered his guilty plea; the issue is whether “the files and record of the case conclusively show that the movant is entitled to no relief.” Rule 24.035(g). If not, he is entitled to an evidentiary hearing. Whether the files and record of the case “conclusively” show he is entitled to no relief depends ultimately upon whether they “conclusively” show his counsel was under no duty, in the fulfillment of his duties to his client, to ask for a second opinion about his client’s mental condition.
The intent of the rule, as evidenced by its language, is to call for an evidentiary hearing on Rule 24.035 motions as a standard, with summary denial as the exception.
In this case, movant’s counsel, after the report had been filed which declared movant mentally able to stand trial, had before him a report which diagnosed movant’s condition as follows: memory impairment (unable to remember attorney’s name; unable to remember incidents leading to his arrest); indication of paranoia with possible delusional thinking; Organic Mood Disorder, Depressed; alcohol dependence by history; po-lysubstance abuse by history; borderline intellectual functioning; personality disorder, not otherwise stated with borderline and antisocial traits; skull fracture (1987) with post traumatic headaches.
The report concludes, however, that; mov-ant was mentally competent to stand trial.
The initial report, six months earlier, by a different doctor, had contained virtually the same clinical findings as the second, and had concluded the opposite, i.e., that movant was not mentally competent to stand trial.
The majority opinion says movant’s counsel was entitled to accept the conclusions of the second report uncritically and at face value — even though contradicted by the first — and was not obliged to seek another examination. If he had made the request for *752a second examination, the court would have had no discretion to deny it. Section 552.020.10(2); State v. Collier, 624 S.W.2d 30, 33 (Mo.App.1991).
It might be, upon an evidentiary hearing, that trial counsel could explain why he relied upon the conclusions of the second examination. There were quite possibly facts known to trial counsel, and observations of trial counsel, not shown in the record, which made it reasonable for him to omit the request for a second examination. But that is far from saying the record conclusively shows it was reasonable for trial counsel not to request a second examination.
In addition to the reports on file in the record of the case, Baird alleges in his amended Rule 24.035 motion that he will present mental health evidence, upon an evi-dentiary hearing, if one is granted, from seven named institutions. A lawyer for an accused with Baird’s history would surely have inquired about past treatment of mental problems. These would furnish yet stronger reasons for a lawyer in the performance of his duty to secure the second mental examination. Once again, counsel upon an eviden-tiary hearing may very well be able to deny, or to explain, his or her actions. Without an evidentiary hearing, though, we are dealing in speculation.
The case of Brooks v. State, 882 S.W.2d 281 (Mo.App.E.D.1994), does not support the majority opinion. It is a contrast to the present case. The defendant there had no history of mental illness such as the present movant had. There was nowhere in the record any diagnosis of mental incompetence, to alert defense counsel as to the distinct possibility of mental unfitness to proceed.
I am unable to see how it can be said that the record in this case conclusively shows defense counsel was acting reasonably in accepting the untested conclusions of the second report. If the decision on the Rule 24.035 motion had to be made on the record in the original case, without evidence, the decision should be to sustain the motion.