Court Opinion

ID: 9483758
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:30:38.620226+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:49.283147
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. GIBSON,
dissenting, with whom BOWMAN, and MAGILL, Circuit Judges, join.
I respectfully dissent.
The court today weaves a gossamer web of speculation about what attorneys facing a state law evidence question might have done. I cannot uphold an ineffective assistance claim on such evanescent grounds.
As the' court acknowledges, polygraph examination results are admissible in Arkansas only when there is a written agreement between the parties.
In Houston’s Rule 37 proceedings, the Arkansas Supreme Court held that the test results would be admissible only if both parties agreed in writing to the admission. There was no written agreement. The test results were simply inadmissible and any effort by defense counsel to offer them as evidence would have been futile. The district court agreed with this reasoning.
This court’s hypothetical re-creation of events begins with its acceptance of Houston’s allegation that defense counsel and the prosecutor orally agreed before the polygraph test that the test results would be admissible. The court then speculates that, before the test, defense counsel should have asked the prosecutor to put the agreement in writing and that failure to do so betrayed a startling ignorance of the law. The court assumes that the prosecutor probably would have signed the written stipulation because she wanted to obtain admissible results or because it was the ethical thing to do. This is wholesale speculation. A written stipulation between the parties requires the consent of both. I think it equally plausible that the prosecutor simply would have refused to sign a written stipulation. If that had been the case, the entire claim of deficient, performance by defense counsel collapses. The court’s opinion rests on the assumption that, if so requested, the prosecutor would have signed the stipulation rather than refused to do so. This court’s after the fact choice between two plausible occurrences injects, rather than eliminates, “the distorting effects of hindsight.” See Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 689, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 2065, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984). After all, it is just as reasonable to believe that defense counsel concluded that the prosecutor would refuse a request for a written *1254stipulation. Whether to make the request was a matter of judgment for defense counsel. This court’s “second-guessing” of that judgment overlooks Strickland’s strong presumption that counsel rendered adequate assistance. Id. at 689-90, 104 S.Ct. at 2065-66.
We, in Nolan v. Armontrout, 973 F.2d 615, 618 (8th Cir.1992)-(Loken, J.), and the Supreme Court, in Burger v. Kemp, 483 U.S. 776, 785, 107 S.Ct. 3114, 3121, 97 L.Ed.2d 638 (1987), have questioned the use of speculation in considering claims of ineffective assistance of counsel.
The court goes on to accept Houston’s allegations that the trial court was a party to the oral agreement. As our panel opinion made clear, Houston’s Rule 37 motion in the Arkansas court asserted that only the defense attorney and the prosecutor were parties to the oral agreement. The claim of the trial court’s presence and participation in the agreement appears for the first time in the habeas petition filed in the district court. Consideration of the trial court’s participation in the agreement thus raises an issue not presented to the state court, and this court’s consideration of it violates Keeney v. Tamayo-Reyes, — U.S. —, —-—, 112 S.Ct. 1715, 1719-20, 118 L.Ed.2d 318 (1992).
The court next suggests that, after the polygraph results were known, defense counsel should have requested that the prosecutor sign the stipulation and, if the prosecutor refused, have offered the test results into evidence without the stipulation. The court goes on to engage in a hypothetical discussion as to what would have happened at that point: either the prosecutor might have relented and signed, or the trial court, (here the court accepts Houston’s untimely allegations) might have decided to enforce the oral agreement. Finally, the court imagines that the trial court’s exclusion of the test results would have created a powerful issue on appeal. Here again, the court’s argument is founded on speculation. In suggesting that the defense could have offered the test results without a written stipulation and that the trial court’s exclusion of the results under those circumstance might have been reversible error, the court plainly ignores Arkansas law requiring a written stipulation. If the defense counsel had made the futile gesture of offering the test results without a stipulation, the trial court would have excluded them and rightly so.
Finally, Houston is not helped by Whiteside v. State, 12 Ark.App. 271, 675 S.W.2d 645 (1984), as there was no question in that case of the existence of the stipulation or of its terms. In Whiteside, an oral agreement that the polygraph results would be admissible was made before the judge in open court. Id. at 645-46. After being warned of the consequences of taking the polygraph exam and being advised by his counsel that the results would be admissible, the defendant took the exam and failed. The Arkansas Court of Appeals held that the oral agreement on the record in open court was sufficient to authorize admission of the unfavorable test results. Id. at 646. Whiteside recognizes the earlier Arkansas cases requiring a written stipulation: Id. In the present case, there are no proceedings on the record that could substitute for a written stipulation and Whiteside is therefore inapplicable.
The court today allows Houston to proceed on the basis of extended speculation as to what the parties may have done under varying circumstances. His case turns on a claimed oral agreement on a question of state law, and Arkansas law clearly requires a written stipulation to support admission of polygraph results. The claim is not of constitutional dimension. The court errs in refusing to affirm the dismissal of Houston’s petition.