Court Opinion

ID: 9648971
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:39:34.991908+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:08:26.827850
License: Public Domain

George Rose Smith, J., dissenting in part. The partial reversal in this case is a costly victory for the appellants. The new trial which the majority have seen fit to award them cannot possibly do them any good, but it may do them a vast amount of harm. That is, the majority reverse the 21-year maximum sentence that resulted from the appellants’ having been represented by a drunken lawyer, but the majority affirm two companion 21-year maximum sentences that were entered upon the appellants’ pleas of guilty to other charges of burglary and grand larceny. What earthly good can a new trial do the appellants? Even if they are acquitted they will be no better off than they are now, with two concurrent 21-year sentences facing them. On the other hand, they may be convicted and given an additional sentence to run consecutively after the other two. Obviously they would be better off if the majority had seen fir to affirm this case in toto instead of reversing it in part. The reversal is actually a Pyrrhic victory that can only enhance the appellants’ bewilderment at the manner in which they are being solemnly treated by the courts. I think it obvious that the sentences upon the pleas of guilty should also be set aside. Error is presumed to be prejudicial unless we can say with confidence that it was not. That disclaimer of prejudice cannot be made here. The appellants originally pleaded not guilty to the two additional charges. At the conclusion of the first trial, which the majority correctly treat as a mockery of justice, and on the very day of that trial, the appellants were brought before the judge by the. prosecuting attorney, who stated that the defendants had “advised” him that they would like to change their pleas. The trial judge, who undoubtedly thought the first trial to have been in compliance with the constitution, then went through the motions of informing the defendants of their right to counsel in the other two cases. I find it not at all surprising that the defendants, with the first trial just finished and fresh in their minds, were not greatly impressed by the court’s offer to provide them with yet another lawyer. Certainly we cannot say with assurance that the pleas of guilty were not influenced to any degree whatever by the mock trial to which the accused had just been subjected. * Moreover, it is equally clear that the trial judge, believing the first maximum sentence to be a valid one, did not mean to impose any additional punishment upon the defendants as a result of their pleas of guilty, for he explicitly directed that all three sentences run concurrently. What else, under heaven, could the trial judge have done? He could not, with a straight face, have imposed lesser sentences, such as five years, to run concurrently with the other 21-year sentence. He did not mean to impose an additional sentence to run consecutively. Hence it is perfectly clear that the trial judge did not intend for the defendants’ pleas of guilty to put them in any worse position than the one they already occupied as a result of their having been represented by a drunken lawyer. How then can the majority say that the declared error in the jury trial had no effect whatever upon the companion sentences? Of course, precisely the same considerations prevailed at the post-conviction hearing in the court below, because when the judge upheld the original jury verdict there was no reason for him to reconsider the companion sentences. In conclusion, I can only say that I am deeply disturbed by the demonstrable injustice and apparent insensitivity to the facts that are apparent in the majority’s decision.