Court Opinion

ID: 9495967
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:14:24.482308+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:17.457363
License: Public Domain

CARR, District Judge,
dissenting.
I remain unable to concur in the majority’s judgment for the reasons previously expressed in my original dissent. 257 F.3d 554, 574-80. I continue to be of the view that this case, particularly in light of Bell v. Cone, 535 U.S. 685, 122 S.Ct. 1843, 152 L.Ed.2d 914, (2002), is governed by the cause and prejudice standard of Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984), rather than the per se standard of U.S. v. Cronic, 466 U.S. 648, 104 S.Ct. 2039, 80 L.Ed.2d 657 (1984). While, unquestionably, the petitioner’s attorney failed to consult adequately with the petitioner prior to trial, the record does not support the conclusion that he, as required to grant relief under Bell and Cronic, “entirely fail[ed] to subject the prosecution’s case to meaningful *749adversarial testing. 466 U.S. at 659, 104 S.Ct. 2039.
I also remain persuaded that we are bound to abide by the decision of another panel in a case presenting facts that are, in my view, substantially indistinguishable from the facts of this case. Dick v. Scroggy, 882 F.2d 192, 197 (6th Cir.1989).
Though my views on the foregoing have been expressed amply in my original dissent, and will not be repeated here, I will repeat the following observation from that opinion, in which I fault the trial court for its inexplicable failure
to have taken the time before commencing a first degree murder trial to inquire effectively into the circumstances, and to have ensured that the petitioner’s counsel was reasonably well prepared to defend his client. The trial court’s failure, in the face of the petitioner’s unanswered claims of lack of contact with his attorney and the lawyer’s eve-of-trial suspension from practice, to grant a short continuance is, in a word, incomprehensible. The compulsion to maintain a tidy docket should never, as it so clearly did here, place fundamental rights at risk. Would a week’s delay have really mattered?
The message of this case is not that federal courts are quick to intervene into state proceedings; the message is, rather, that the state trial court in this case could and should have done a better job of upholding the Constitution. Had it taken but a few moments to consider the petitioner’s complaints meaningfully, or had it postponed the trial for a brief period to make certain that Evelyn was truly ready for trial, this case would not be here. The time the trial court may have saved has led to a great and otherwise unnecessary expenditure of time on the part of the Michigan courts of review, the district court, and this court.
257 F.3d at 580.
Respectfully, I dissent.