Court Opinion

ID: 9788263
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 00:34:15.34275+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:06.341391
License: Public Domain

Justice COATS,
dissenting.
While I readily acknowledge the difficulty of ensuring criminal defendants, at one and the same time, both a meaningful right to the effective assistance of counsel and a right to personally exercise certain fundamental prerogatives free of counsel's approval or consent, I believe the majority misapprehends the nature and limits of these particular rights and therefore the relationship between them. Perhaps even more importantly, I fear that the complexity and sweeping seope of the majority's opinion is likely to force upon defense counsel and trial courts alike intolerable choices, necessarily based on imprecise predictions about the unfolding of events at trial. I therefore briefly outline my concerns, in the hope that until it is reversed, overruled, or at least limited, the majority opinion will be applied with caution and extended beyond the cireumstances of this case no more than absolutely required by its own terms.
Ostensibly, the majority rejects outright the notion of a fundamental right to an innocence-based defense, as found by the court of appeals, maj. op. at 699 n. 10, but in the very act of doing so it carves out an even broader right of criminal defendants to control the conduct of their counsel and defense. By construing the fundamental (and personal) right to testify on a defendant's own behalf to include not only taking the stand and giving his account of relevant matters but also the assurance that his testimony will not be undermined by his own counsel, the majority effectively creates a new measure of counsel's effectiveness-one that is not limited by *708considerations of materiality or prejudice. After today, a criminal defendant apparently need only make known to his appointed counsel the content of his intended testimony and make a timely request for substitution upon learning that counsel intends (or has already done something) to undermine his plan, in order to entitle himself to the appointment of substitute counsel and a mistrial if jeopardy has already attached, or to automatic reversal if he is not satisfied with the outcome of proceeding pro se in the face of a denial of his motion.
Since it is easy to lose sight of the question upon which relief in this case actually turns, it may be worth emphasizing that in the majority's analysis reversal ultimately depends upon whether the defendant was improperly denied substitute counsel. The majority reasons that if the defendant was entitled to, but was denied, a mistrial and substitution of appointed counsel, then his choice to proceed pro se was necessarily involuntary, amounting to a complete denial of counsel, a structural error requiring automatic reversal without regard to any showing of prejudice. In my view the majority errs, however, in holding that if appointed counsel indicated to the defendant their intent to undermine his prospective testimony, his trial rights were "impermissibly usurped," entitling him to replacement counsel.
Unlike the majority, I do not consider it within the power of counsel, through their conduct of a criminal trial, to deny or deprive a defendant of fundamental trial rights. Regardless of any conduct or concession of his counsel at trial, a defendant can be deprived of a trial right only by the court's failure to ensure that he is adequately informed of it or by denying him a voluntary choice to exercise it. While the denial of certain trial rights may, under some extreme cireum-stances, be tantamount to the entry of a guilty plea, the conduct of counsel alone cannot deny his client such rights. Cf Brook-hart v. Janis, 384 U.S. 1, 86 S.Ct. 1245, 16 L.Ed.2d 3814 (1966) (court wrongfully denied defendant the right of cross-examination and confrontation where agreement to truncate trial procedures was entered without defendant's consent).
Similarly, as long as the defendant is made to understand the nature and consequences of his right to testify, including its personal nature, see People v. Curtis, 681 P.2d 504, 514 (Colo.1984), and he is permitted to take the stand and testify freely upon choosing to do so, he has not been deprived of this fundamental right, regardless of the subsequent arguments of counsel. The performance of counsel relative to his client's testimony may well fall below the standard of reasonably competent representation and may in fact prejudice his client's interests, but I believe counsel's choice of tactics at trial implicates the effectiveness of his assistance-not his client's right to testify. Should counsel make unreasonable tactical decisions having an adverse impact on the outcome, a remedy for that conduct is separately available. See Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984).
Furthermore, even though trial courts nee-essarily retain discretion to order the substitution of appointed counsel in order to avoid the likelihood of future mistrials or reversals (regardless of the defendant's wishes), see Wheat v. United States, 486 U.S. 158, 163, 108 S.Ct. 1692, 100 LEd.2d 140 (1988) ("[Tlhe district court must be allowed substantial latitude in refusing waivers of conflicts of interest not only in those rare cases where an actual conflict may be demonstrated before trial, but in the more common cases where a potential for conflict exists which may or may not burgeon into an actual conflict as the trial progresses."); People v. Frisco, 119 P.8d 1098, 1095 (Colo.2005) (same), a criminal defendant is entitled to the replacement of appointed counsel only when it can be determined that his current counsel will be unable, under the cireumstances, to provide effective assistance, see 3 Wayne R. LaFave et al., Criminal Procedure § 11.4(b), at 704 (38d ed. 2007) ("Defendant must have some well founded reason for believing that the appointed attorney cannot or will not competently represent him."); People v. Ar-guello, TT2 P.2d 87, 94 (Colo.1989). While various courts (including this one) have dis*709cussed a trial court's discretion to replace appointed counsel in terms of a complete breakdown in communications, see, eg., Ar-guello, TT2 P.2d at 94, the United States Supreme Court has made abundantly clear that indigent defendants are entitled only to effective assistance, without choice concerning any particular counsel, see United States v. Gongaleze-Lopez, 548 U.S. 140, 151, 126 S.Ct. 2557, 165 L.Ed.2d 409 (2006), and that an "inferential approach" to determining whether an indigent defendant's right to effective assistance has been violated is limited to cireumstances that "are so likely to prejudice the accused that the cost of litigating their effect in a particular case is unjustified." United States v. Cromic, 466 U.S. 648, 658, 104 S.Ct. 2039, 80 LEd.2d 657 (1984). Short of demonstrating a complete failure to subject the prosecution's case to meaningful adversarial testing or an actual conflict of interest, which necessarily evidences counsel's divided loyalties, a defendant who has appointed counsel at all critical stages can claim ineffective assistance only by pointing to specific errors in the proceedings and demonstrating their materiality with regard to the outcome. Id. at 659 n. 26, 104 S.Ct. 2039. Accordingly, the Supreme Court has only recognized an entitlement to substitute counsel when counsel is actively representing conflicting interests and objects to continued representation. See Holloway v. Arkansas, 485 U.S. 475, 484, 98 S.Ct. 1178, 55 L.Ed.2d 426 (1978). I believe the majority errs by creating a new entitlement to replacement counsel, even after jeopardy has attached, that is completely unrelated to the standard for effective assistance.
Beyond what I consider to be an error in the analysis, however, I am concerned that the majority's rationale dangerously places in the hands of criminal defendants a powerful tool to replace appointed counsel virtually at will; to control or delay proceedings to their advantage; and generally to whipsaw courts attempting to balance competing interests while effectively managing crowded dockets. Onee they have been cut loose from any mooring in constitutional materiality, it is difficult to fathom the precise contours of terms like "completely contradict" or "wholly undermine" or how a trial court could possibly be expected to decide when trial tactics or the intentions of defendants and their counsel have become so solidified as no longer to be subject to modification. And even if these ill-defined concepts could provide a sufficiently determinable standard for reliable decision-making, the majority's requirement for courts to intercede in the attorney-client relationship sufficiently to appreciate subtle differences between the vacillating intentions of defendants and their counsel, would, in and of itself, be intolerable.
Aside from permitting the trial court to determine whether the defendant's failure to sooner request a substitution of counsel was his own fault, the majority's remand appears to entitle the defendant to a retrial without any likelihood of substandard attorney performance and adverse impact. There was clearly method in the Supreme Court's decision not to simply limit the remedy for a violation of effective assistance but to define the constitutional right itself in terms of substandard performance having an adverse impact. See Mickens v. Taylor, 535 U.S. 162, 166, 122 S.Ct. 1287, 152 L.Ed.2d 291 (2002); Strickland, 466 U.S. at 686-87, 104 S.Ct. 2052; Cronic, 466 U.S. at 658, 104 S.Ct. 2039. In a case such as this, in which the defendant's claim of self-defense would be contradicted by the discovery of only one firearm at the scene and physical evidence establishing beyond all doubt that the defendant shot his former girlfriend at least three times and her boyfriend six times, it would be difficult to contend with a straight face that the defendant would be prejudiced by his counsel's attempt to lay some foundation for an alternate explanation of his proposed testimony or that such conduct would amount to substandard performance.
I find nothing in the Federal Constitution, or in the jurisprudence of either the United States Supreme Court or this court, suggesting a right to the appointment of counsel who will "accommodate," or investigate further, such a preposterous claim. To the extent the Supreme Court has entertained the question at all, it appears to have firmly rejected any suggestion that tactical concessions of guilt to a trier of fact are reserved for the defendant himself. See Florida v. Nixon, 548 U.S. *710175, 189, 125 S.Ct. 551, 160 LEd.2d 565 (2004) (attorney was not "required to gain express consent before conceding [the defendant's] guilt").
I would therefore simply reverse the judgment of the court of appeals and remand to that court for consideration of any remaining assignments of error.
I am authorized to state that Justice RICE and Justice EID join in this dissent.