Court Opinion

ID: 9636361
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:25:08.851181+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:44.192764
License: Public Domain

NEWMAN, Chief Judge,
dissenting:
In Monroe v. United States, 389 A.2d 811, 822 (D.C.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 1006, 99 S.Ct. 621, 58 L.Ed.2d 683 (1978), we stated that when a trial judge fails to make a meaningful inquiry into a defendant’s claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, this normally constitutes reversible error.
The reason we insisted on a meaningful inquiry was to protect the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel and thus his right to a fair trial. Id. at 816, 820-22. The majority has implied that the rationale of the Monroe holding was to conserve the resources of the judicial system and to expedite the disposition of ineffective assistance claims. But, in fact, these issues were discussed in Monroe only in our explanation of why we decided to apply the standard of review promulgated in McMann v. Richardson, 397 U.S. 759, 90 S.Ct. 1441, 25 L.Ed.2d 763 (1970), when reviewing pretrial claims of ineffective assistance instead of the minimal competence type standards of review found in Strazzella, Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Claims: New Uses, New Problems, 19 Ariz.L.Rev. 443, 446-47 (1977), and Angarano v. United States, 312 A.2d 295, 299 (D.C.1973), reh’g en banc denied, 329 A.2d 453 (D.C.1974), which are used in reviewing post-trial claims of ineffective assistance.
Since the principal concern in Monroe was the Sixth Amendment rights of the defendant, the important question in the instant case is whether these rights can be protected if the case is remanded for an evidentiary hearing with respect to defendant’s ineffective assistance claim, as the government and majority wish to do, instead of reversed as Monroe would seem to require. I do not believe they can be.
The majority has already ascertained one major problem with an evidentiary hearing. The case is no longer fresh in the minds of those who were involved and not even the defense counsel and the defendant are likely to remember the details of the extent of the defense counsel’s pretrial preparation. What is likely to happen is that the eviden-tiary hearing will be reduced to a credibility contest between the defendant and his trial attorney. Therein lies another major problem. At the hearing the defendant and his trial attorney will probably be adversaries. The attorney will have incentive to exaggerate his pretrial preparation in order to protect his professional reputation. At this post-trial hearing the incentive to exaggerate will be greater than at a pretrial hearing because the stakes are larger. At the pretrial stage, if the attorney’s efforts were found to be inadequate, he could simply withdraw from the case with little fanfare or embarrassment. But at the post-trial stage, the attorney knows that if his performance is found to constitute ineffective assistance of counsel and the case is therefore reversed, the embarrassment and loss of prestige ensuing will be great.
I fear that the course of action taken by the majority will effectively emasculate Monroe by creating a disincentive to the proper conducting of the pretrial hearing mandated by that holding.