Court Opinion

ID: 9488496
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:47:17.295898+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:55.607804
License: Public Domain

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER,
Circuit Judge, concurring.
I agree wholeheartedly with my colleagues that when Padgett’s counsel informed the trial judge that “[w]e are not prepared to move forward at this time,” he was in effect requesting a continuance. See ante at 74. Indeed, a contrary interpretation is not only “an unduly harsh and literal reading of the exchange” (ante at 74), but, in my view, a frivolous one. Repeatedly, Padgett’s counsel emphasized to the court that the sudden disclosure of the amended report on the day of the medical examiner’s testimony had taken the defense “completely by surprise” (Padgett App. 23, 24), that the defense case *76had been prepared based on the earlier version of the report (Padgett App. 23-24), and that defense attorneys had not had any opportunity to review the critical amendment with Padgett or with one another (Padgett App. 24).
Given the unexpected disclosure of the amended report at the eleventh hour, I cannot agree with my colleagues that Padgett is foreclosed from arguing that he would have sought a rebuttal expert had he been granted a continuance simply because his counsel did not request a continuance expressly for that ‘purpose. See ante at 74-75. As the record makes entirely clear, the defense had been given the examiner’s amended report only five minutes earlier and had not had even a moment to review the report and decide how to respond to it. Padgett App. 24. Indeed, when defense counsel later made the modest request for ten minutes to confer with his client about the report, he was given only five. Padgett App. 29. Under these circumstances, I do not think Padgett or his counsel can be faulted for not articulating on the spot what they might use a continuance to accomplish. The contention that he might have obtained a rebuttal expert is not at all unreasonable, and given the unexpected and belated disclosure of the medical examiner’s amended report, I believe we are obligated to assume that he would have obtained such an expert.
Having said that, I ultimately am satisfied that even if Padgett had been granted a continuance in order to meet the amended report with rebuttal testimony, the jury’s verdict would not have been different. See ante at 75. The circumstances surrounding the death of Renee Padgett, and in particular Mr. Padgett’s admission from the time police first arrived at the scene that he had, in fact, shot her, confined the defense to the theory that he did so in self defense — at least, Pad-gett has offered no other viable theory that he might have pursued. No doubt, the evidence in the medical examiner’s amended report indicating that the gunshot wound to Mrs. Padgett’s head was a contact wound was important to the prosecution’s successful effort to debunk the self-defense theory. Yet, as Judge Bauer has convincingly demonstrated, a great deal of other evidence undermines Padgett’s account of events and indicates that the shooting was not, in reality, defensive. Ante at 75. I therefore agree that any prejudice stemming from the denial of a continuance did not rise to the level of a due process violation. Ante at 76. For that reason, I concur in the court’s decision to affirm the denial of the petition for a writ of habeas corpus.