Court Opinion

ID: 9482503
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:52:08.030684+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:01.965109
License: Public Domain

EDMONDSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting in which COX and BIRCH, Circuit Judges, join:
If defense counsel had withdrawn in the midst of trial, he might have been guilty of conduct outside of the range of competent representation; but, he did not withdraw. His threat to withdraw, not acted upon, does not make counsel ineffective.
The lawyer and the client disagreed about tactics; but the lawyer had no duty to yield to the client, particularly under the circumstances of this case. Before trial, defendant had willingly agreed with counsel’s advice that defendant not testify, but one day into a two-day trial, defendant changed his mind and pressed to testify. When a criminal defendant attempts to overrule his lawyer’s tactical decisions, he runs some risk that the lawyer will seek to withdraw.1 In this case, the threat to withdraw persuaded the client to accept the tactics to which he had originally agreed. I believe defendant had no absolute right to testify. See United States v. Teague, 953 F.2d 1525 (11th Cir.1992) (Edmondson, J., concurring). His constitutional right to testify was limited to a right to be free of governmental interference with his testimony; and there was, in fact, no governmental interference.
Counsel’s decision not to call defendant was a reasonable one. I cannot say that defense counsel was ineffective in a constitutional sense; the adversarial proceeding was fair. I would reverse the judgment of the district court.
Even if I agreed with United States v. Teague, 953 F.2d 1525 (11th Cir.1992), I would grant Nichols no relief because I see the court’s opinion as creating a “new rule” within the meaning of the Supreme Court’s decision in Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989).2 It is true, of course, that a defendant’s right to effective assistance is not new. But that misses the point. Rights for the pur*1555poses of Teague v. Lane must be more particularized than that; otherwise, one could say that it is well-settled that one is due a fair trial and, from then on, there would be no new rights, just clarifications of the well-established right to a fair trial. Teague v. Lane would then amount to nothing.
Our United States v. Teague en banc opinion purports to vest criminal defendants with a new right — the right to be advised particularly of the right to testify if one chooses and the right to testify despite counsel’s strongly held and reasonable criticism that defendant’s testifying will significantly lessen the likelihood of acquittal. United States v. Teague speaks of ineffectiveness of counsel. But, unlike most evaluations of proper performance in claims of ineffectiveness of counsel, the right to testify as developed in United States v. Teague is not dependent on or shaped by the facts of each case; it is a general rule.3 No Supreme Court holding demands that outcome; dicta, such as the often quoted language in Rock v. Arkansas 4 cannot “dictate” a result in later cases unless we intend to disregard the important distinction between a holding and dicta or unless we intend to redefine the word “dictate.”5 It is one thing to follow precedent; it is something else to extend it.
Also, United States v. Scott, 909 F.2d 488 (11th Cir.1990), does not hold or dictate what the en banc court in United States v. Teague holds; the Scott decision holds that it is error for a judge (that is, a government official) to instruct a client that he must choose between testifying on his own behalf or giving up his right to counsel.6 The Scott opinion talks about a defendant’s absolute right to testify in federal courts, but even if we assume that the case holds that a defendant will be denied the effective assistance of counsel if his lawyer— not a judge — prevents defendant from testifying and that Scott would dictate the same practice in state courts, Scott was decided in 1990 and involved a trial held in 1989. I contend that Scott itself is a new rule in this circuit and cannot — in the light of Teague v. Lane—be allowed to affect the validity of Nichols’ 1986 conviction.
Labelling a holding a “new rule” does not end the retroactivity analysis; there are two exceptions to the principle that new rules are unavailable on collateral review. Sawyer v. Smith, — U.S. at -, 110 S.Ct. at 2831. Neither exception applies here. The first exception is the new rule that decriminalizes defendant’s offense or “prohibits imposition of a certain type of punishment for a class of defendants because of their status or offense.” Id. (citations omitted). This exception clearly does not apply.
The second exception involves “watershed rules of criminal procedure ... [which] alter our understanding of the bedrock procedural elements that must be found to vitiate the fairness of a particular conviction ... [and] without which the like*1556lihood of an accurate conviction is seriously diminished.” Id. I cannot see how allowing the defendant to have the last word on whether he will testify enhances the accuracy of the criminal conviction, or enhances anything, for that matter, except the difficulty of the lawyer’s efforts on behalf of defendant’s best interests. In fact, as I have written in my concurring decision in United States v. Teague, allowing the defendant to override his counsel’s tactical decisions probably lessens the quality of the adversarial process upon which we count for a fair trial leading to a reliable outcome. Teague, 953 F.2d at 1535 (Edmondson, J., concurring).
Because the rule supposedly created by United States v. Teague is a new rule, which conforms to no established exceptions, I would not allow Nichols to receive retroactively the benefit of that rule. I would deny habeas corpus relief and reverse the judgment of the district court.

. Withdrawal in the midst of a state trial raises several interesting ethical and constitutional questions; but because no one withdrew here, we need not decide them today. I would leave the ethical questions to the states. On the federal rights issues, I doubt that lawyers have no correct choice but to tolerate a lot of client interference on tactical matters or that lawyers have no right to attempt to withdraw when counsel and client sharply disagree in the midst of trial, especially if the client is changing his position from that agreed to before trial.

. Teague v. Lane holds that new rules are generally to be excluded from application on collateral review. Teague, 489 U.S. at 316, 109 S.Ct. at 1078.

. The opinion in United States v. Teague talks a lot about a defendant’s right to testify. Most of these words are dicta — words unessential to the case’s outcome. Considering the facts in Teag-ue, the question of whether a defendant has the personal right to decide to testify could have been decided either way without affecting the outcome of the case. The decision should properly be viewed to hold only that, if defendant has a right to choose for himself to testify, he did not, in fact, choose to do so in Teague. Because Teague’s will to testify was not “ ‘overborne’ by his counsel,” the court did not need to decide what rights would have been violated if, in fact, Teague’s will had been overborne.

. Rock holds that a per se' rule excluding all hypnotically refreshed testimony infringes im-permissibly on a criminal defendant’s right to testify on his behalf. Rock v. Arkansas, 483 U.S. 44, 61, 107 S.Ct. 2704, 2714, 97 L.Ed.2d 37 (1987).

. Teague v. Lane explained that "a case announces a new rule if the result was not dictated by precedent existing at the time the defendant’s conviction became final.” Teague, 489 U.S. at 301, 109 S.Ct. at 1070. Just because earlier decisions "inform, or even control or govern, the analysis of [a] claim, it does not follow that they compel [or dictate] the rule.” Sawyer v. Smith, — U.S. -, -, 110 S.Ct. 2822, 2828, 111 L.Ed.2d 193 (1990) (quoting Saffle v. Parks, 494 U.S. 484, 491, 110 S.Ct. 1257, 1261, 108 L.Ed.2d 415 (1990)).

. The precedential authority of a case is properly based not on what was said in the opinion, but on what was actually decided by the court.