Court Opinion

ID: 9861799
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 00:34:34.172358+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:29:05.989549
License: Public Domain

HARRIS, Justice
(dissenting).
Defendant’s trial problem was not ineffective assistance of counsel; it was ineffective assistance of client. I cannot believe counsel’s decision to forego cross-examining or arguing had a whit to do with the trial’s outcome. Under the bizarre circumstances here counsel’s decision might well have then seemed good trial strategy. I think it fell within the standard of reasonable competence, the test we explained in Sims v. State, 295 N.W.2d 420, 423 (Iowa 1980), and Hinkel v. State, 290 N.W.2d 28, 30-31 (Iowa 1980).
Defendant’s absence placed his counsel in what counsel considered to be an impossible situation. His trial strategy was devastated. Efforts thereafter centered on what counsel then believed to be his client’s only hope: that the judge might become persuaded to grant a mistrial. His choice to decline to participate did not succeed in achieving the mistrial. Perhaps it was doomed to failure. Perhaps by way of hindsight it can be said counsel’s silence would do nothing to impel the judge to grant a mistrial. But counsel might reasonably have believed that chances for a mistrial would diminish to whatever extent he continued to participate. In view of his client’s absence from the trial, chances of persuading the judge to grant a mistrial seemed better than chances of arguing successfully to the jury.
I would affirm.
REYNOLDSON, C. J., and UHLEN-HOPP and McGIVERIN, JJ., join in this dissent.