Court Opinion

ID: 9534660
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:41:48.120629+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:30:58.862554
License: Public Domain

MACY, Chief Justice,
specially concurring, with whom URBIGKIT, Justice (Retired), joins.
I agree that Bearpaw v. State, 803 P.2d 70 (Wyo.1990), should not be applied retroactively to this case due to its unique circumstances. I am troubled, however, by the suggestion in the majority opinion that a record “sufficiently complete for [appellate] counsel to assert several errors” satisfies the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution or, for that matter, Article 1, Section 6 of the Wyoming Constitution.
The Due Process Clause requires that states provide a “ ‘means of affording adequate and effective appellate review to indigent [criminal] defendants.’ ” Entsminger v. Iowa, 386 U.S. 748, 751, 87 S.Ct. 1402, 1403, 18 L.Ed.2d 501 (1967) (quoting Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. 12, 20, 76 S.Ct. 585, 591, 100 L.Ed. 891 (1956)). This requirement encompasses the right to have a tran*607script or the functional equivalent thereof, Griffin, 351 U.S. 12, 76 S.Ct. 585; the right to be represented by counsel on “the first appeal, granted as a matter of right,” Douglas v. California, 372 U.S. 353, 356, 83 S.Ct. 814, 816, 9 L.Ed.2d 811 (1963); and the right to be provided with the effective assistance of counsel, Evitts v. Lucey, 469 U.S. 387, 105 S.Ct. 830, 83 L.Ed.2d 821 (1985).
I believe that anything short of a full transcript or its functional equivalent is incompatible with “adequate and effective appellate review.” To suggest otherwise ignores both federal and local law as well as the basic tenets of effective appellate advocacy. See Hardy v. United States, 375 U.S. 277, 84 S.Ct. 424, 11 L.Ed.2d 331 (1964); Bearpaw, 803 P.2d 70; State v. Thomas, 38 Wyo. 72, 264 P. 1017 (1928); and Richardson v. State, 15 Wyo. 465, 89 P. 1027 (1907).