Court Opinion

ID: 9721049
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:47:22.911764+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:23.167502
License: Public Domain

ANDERSON, PAUL H.
(dissenting).
I join in the dissent of Justice Meyer but write separately to highlight a significant concern that I have with the majority opinion. I agree with Justice Meyer’s dissent that Finnegan did not knowingly and voluntarily waive his right to be present at trial, a right guaranteed under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. I further agree with Justice Meyer’s dissent that Finnegan’s absence was due to a “genuine medical emergency.” But Finnegan’s absence may well have been caused by more than just that. The record indicates that Finnegan was absent from trial because he had attempted to commit suicide.
The majority rejects a rule that any criminal defendant who attempts suicide is voluntarily and justifiably absent from trial. The majority purports to “reaffirm our case-specific and fact-driven approach” to voluntariness determinations. I do not disagree that determinations of voluntariness should be driven by facts. But I am very concerned with the majority’s implication that a genuine suicide attempt might constitute a knowing and voluntary waiver of the right to be present at trial. I categorically oppose such a possibility and categorically reject any rule of law premised on this possibility.
When a district court undertakes a factual inquiry into the voluntariness of a defendant’s absence from trial and, as a result of that inquiry, determines that the defendant was absent because he intentionally tried to end his own life, I would hold — as a matter of law and as a matter of common sense — that the defendant has not waived his right to be present at trial. In my view, voluntary absence from trial and suicide are fundamentally different and irreconcilable concepts. We should not conflate the two as I fear the majority has done here.
As Justice Meyer’s dissent points out, the right of a defendant to be present at his trial is a longstanding right, the roots of which predate the creation of our country. On the other hand, our society’s views on suicide, its causes, and ramifications are evolving and are thus less firmly rooted. In the past many people considered suicide to be a sin and several jurisdictions have treated it as a crime. Today, as we stand on the threshold of the second decade of the twenty-first century, we are more enlightened. By this I mean that society’s views and attitudes toward suicide are more informed than they have been in the past. We now have a better understanding of the mental anguish, pain, and depression that can lead, indeed force, a person to consider taking his or her own life.
I had hoped that we had moved beyond the point that when a defendant who is scheduled for trial does not show up and is *253found to be comatose, it is considered acceptable not to inquire into the defendant’s medical condition and instead to say, whatever the medical condition, “this was a choice” and was “based on the defendant’s own actions” and to then proceed with trial without the defendant present citing as one of the reasons that a State expert witness drove to trial at 5 a.m. I find it unacceptable that a district court could conclude, without further investigation as to the exact nature of his medical condition, that Finnegan “did voluntarily absent himself from the trial ... [by] his own volition” and, by this conduct, waived his right to be present at his own trial. I believe that we can and should do better than we have in this case. An attempt to take one’s own life is not the same as electing to undergo nonemergency surgery on the eve of trial, see United States v. Barton, 647 F.2d 224, 238 (2d Cir.1981), or changing one’s mind and electing to undergo bypass surgery nearly three months into trial because it is deemed strategically wise to do so, see United States v. Edwards, 303 F.3d 606, 624, 628-29 (5th Cir. 2002). A suicide attempt is more akin to a genuine medical emergency that is involuntary than it is to the foregoing types of voluntary acts. Therefore, I join Justice Meyer’s dissent in concluding that Finnegan was improperly denied his right to be present at his trial, that the district court’s error in denying him this right was not harmless, and that he is entitled to a new trial.