Court Opinion

ID: 9547579
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:49:11.324542+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:17:52.341124
License: Public Domain

MATTHEWS, Justice,
concurring.
It is my opinion that most skilled civil trial attorneys can provide a competent defense in most criminal cases. A trial lawyer’s persuasive talents are as applicable to criminal cases as to civil eases. When a civil lawyer takes on a new case a substantial amount of research ordinarily is required, even if the case is in a field of law in which the lawyer regularly practices. Criminal case assignments will also require the attorney to do legal research. This preparation is not different in kind from what he must do to do his job adequately in any litigation he undertakes.
In accordance with the above, I could not state with confidence, as the majority does at page 15, that forcing an attorney inexperienced in criminal law to represent a criminal accused will often deny the accused effective assistance of counsel. My reading of the cases in which ineffective assistance has been raised indicates that inexperience has often been raised as a ground for an ineffective assistance claim, but not often successfully.1
Further, I would not assert as the majority does at page 1231 that criminal law and procedure are now more complicated than they were in 1967. This statement seems to be founded more on nostalgia than fact. There is a natural tendency to look at the past as a more simple time. However, in a dynamic system there are always issues that are new whose implications are not yet known. The criminal law issues of the 80’s may be different from those of the 60’s, but that does not make them harder.2
Other than in the respects noted above, I concur in the majority opinion.
COMPTON, Justice, dissents “from that part of the opinion which holds that the government, acting through the judicial branch, may coerce a private citizen to perform free services for governmental purposes. A full dissent will follow.”

. See, e.g., Green v. State, 579 P.2d 14, 16 (Alaska 1978) ("The test [for ineffectiveness of counsel] is whether his performance was below what would be expected of. a lawyer with experience, not whether he in fact had that experience.”); Tucker v. State, 482 S.W.2d 454 (Mo.1972) (lack of previous experience in the trial of criminal cases, as distinguished from civil cases, does not of itself demonstrate ineffective assistance); Hawkins v. State, 269 Ind. 16, 378 N.E.2d 819 (1978) (inexperience does not necessarily amount to ineffective representation unless the trial, considered as a whole, is reduced to a mockery of justice, shocking to the conscience of the reviewing court); Annot., 2 A.L.R. 4th 27, 196-199 (1980).

. The issues of the 60's were reflected in such landmark cases as Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963), Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 84 S.Ct. 1758, 12 L.Ed.2d 977 (1964), Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961).