Court Opinion

ID: 9758505
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 23:33:51.243145+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:50.881041
License: Public Domain

ROACH, Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Because this is the first time since Kentucky courts have operated under the modern civil and criminal rules that any appellate court of this Commonwealth has ignored the mandatory time-limitation contained in our rules governing appeals absent overriding requirements stemming from federal constitutional law, I dissent.
Appeals of post-conviction proceedings, such as those pursuant to RCr 11.42, are taken pursuant to RCr 12.04, which provides that “[t]he time within which an appeal may be taken shall be thirty (30) days after the date of entry of the judgment or order from which it is taken.... ” RCr 12.04(3). (CR 73.02 applies the same time limit to civil appeals.) The Criminal Rules do not impose a sanction for tardy filing of an appeal. Instead, sanctions are imposed by the Civil Rules. The Civil Rules are applicable to criminal matters unless contrary to or superceded by the Criminal Rules. RCr 13.04. Though we have specific appellate rules in the Criminal Rules, RCr 12.02 specifically provides that “Civil Rule[ ] ... 73.02(2)(c) ... shall apply also in criminal actions_” CR 73.02(2)(c) includes a sanction for failure to follow the rules generally and a more specific sanction, which actually applies to all the subsections of CR 73.02, for when an appeal is filed outside the prescribed time limit. The latter sanction is our concern here: “The failure of a party to file timely a notice of appeal, cross-appeal, or motion for discretionary review shall result in a dismissal or denial.” CR 73.02(2) (emphasis added).
Outside a single, narrow exception, the courts of Kentucky have understood that the “shall” in CR 73.02(2) means shall, and therefore requires strict compliance with the time limit for invoking appellate jurisdiction. In 1954, Kentucky’s highest court stated in regard to the 30-day time limit for taking an appeal under CR 73.02 that “we are without authority to annul this requirement or to extend the time for meeting it beyond the limits fixed in the Rule.” Electric Plant Bd. of City of Hopkinsville v. Stephens, 273 S.W.2d 817, 819 (Ky.1954). Since this first interpretation of the time limitations for appeals, our appellate courts have repeatedly held that absent a requirement found in federal constitutional law, the time limits for taking appeals in our rules are mandatory. See Johnson v. Smith, 885 S.W.2d 944, 949-50 (Ky.1994) (holding that “the battle be*143tween strict compliance with the rules of appellate practice to avoid dismissal and substantial compliance is now over” and that tardy appeals are subject only to strict compliance); Workers’ Compensation Bd. v. Siler, 840 S.W.2d 812, 813 (Ky.1992) (“Our adoption of the substantial compliance rule provides that the failure of a party to timely complete some procedural steps may not affect the validity of the appeal. However, filing of the Notice of Appeal within the prescribed time frame is still considered mandatory, and failure to do so is fatal to the action.” (citations omitted)); Cobb v. Carpenter, 553 S.W.2d 290, 293 (Ky.App.1977) (citing to Stephens and holding that the 30-day time limit is mandatory); Demoss v. Commonwealth, 765 S.W.2d 30, 32 (Ky.App.1989) (holding that RCr 12.04(3) time limit is mandatory and that an “appellate court cannot grant an appeal whenever it chooses to do so, in disregard of the rules of procedure”); Commonwealth v. Opell, 3 S.W.3d 747, 751 (Ky.App.1999) (“Filing a notice of appeal within the prescribed time frame is still mandatory and failure to do so is fatal to an appeal.” (citation and internal quotation marks omitted)). As this Court recently stated:
[O]ur holding today, that a tardy notice of appeal is subject to automatic dismissal and cannot be saved through application of the doctrine of substantial compliance, is a policy decision that is reflected in CR 73.02. This policy choice is necessary to preserve the finality of judgments.
Excel Energy, Inc. v. Commonwealth Institutional Securities, Inc., 37 S.W.3d 713, 716-17 (Ky.2000) (citation omitted). It seems beyond debate then that automatic dismissal is mandated by our rules. If the time limits are not met, the appeal should automatically be dismissed.
The majority attempts to evade the mandatory effect of our rule — in essence, rewriting the rule — by seizing on and expanding the lone exception found in Commonwealth v. Wine, 694 S.W.2d 689 (Ky.1985). The majority opinion states that Wine “essentially held that if the right to a first appeal is lost because of ineffective assistance of counsel, whether because the notice of appeal was not timely filed or because the appeal was dismissed for, e.g., counsel’s failure to file a brief, then the appeal must be allowed or reinstated unless the client agreed to, condoned, or contributed to the dismissal.” Ante at 136-37.
I agree with this understanding of Wine as it applies to first appeals. However, a review of Wine ’s reasoning indicates that it should be limited to first appeals. After several extensions of time to file the appellant’s brief, counsel for the appellant was denied a final extension by the Court of Appeals, and the appeal was dismissed. Wine, 694 S.W.2d at 691-92. In an attempt to restart the running of time for the appeal, the appellant filed an RCr 11.42 motion, which we held was only “designed to permit a trial court an opportunity after entry of judgment to review its judgment and sentence for constitutional invalidity of the proceedings prior to judgment or in the sentence and judgment itself’ and therefore was “not an appropriate remedy for a frustrated appeal.” Id. at 694.
Nonetheless, we allowed the appellant to pursue his tardy appeal. In doing so, we noted:
Our courts are compelled to abide by the decisions of the United States Supreme Court which has held in unmistakable terms that when a state authorizes an appeal from a conviction in a criminal ease, it cannot deny an appeal to an indigent. Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. *14412, 76 S.Ct. 585, 100 L.Ed. 891 (1956). Douglas v. California, 372 U.S. 353, 83 S.Ct. 814, 9 L.Ed.2d 811 (1963), held that, in a first appeal, an indigent appellant in a criminal case must be supplied with an attorney, and Evitts v. Lucey, 469 U.S. 387, 105 S.Ct. 830, 83 L.Ed.2d 821 (1985), held that due process requires an appellant in a criminal case to be provided with effective assistance of counsel. In Evitts v. Lucey, the United States Supreme Court noted that states may enforce procedural rules in a criminal case with sanctions against an attorney rather than dismissing the appeal of the client.
Id. at 695. From this, we concluded:
It seems abundantly clear from the decisions of the United States Supreme Court that State rules of procedure, however important they may be to the orderly administration of justice, cannot be allowed to frustrate an appeal of an indigent defendant who has been denied effective assistance of counsel.
Although the law is still developing as to what constitutes ineffective assistance of counsel in the constitutional senses, it cannot be doubted that the failure of counsel to file an appellate brief which results in the dismissal of an appeal constitutes ineffective assistance. It is as if no appeal had been taken. In such a case, the appeal must be reinstated unless the conduct of counsel has been condoned by, agreed to, or is in some way attributable to the client.
Id. at 695.
However, Wine did not rely on any state ground in its holding. It simply held that state procedural rules must give way when federal constitutional rights would otherwise be violated. Though not stated in Wine, this is due to the fact that most of the federal protections found in the Bill of Rights are also applicable to state governments under the Fourteenth Amendment. The problem in applying Wine, however, as even the majority.opinion concedes, is that no federal constitutional rights are involved in the present matter. The United States Supreme Court has previously addressed the right to counsel in the context of state post-conviction proceeding, holding that “[tjhere is no constitutional right to an attorney in state post-conviction proceedings.” Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 752, 111 S.Ct. 2546, 2566, 115 L.Ed.2d 640 (1991). The Court further noted that there was no federal right to counsel on appeal of such a proceeding: “Given that a criminal defendant has no right to counsel beyond his first appeal in pursuing state discretionary or collateral review, it would defy logic for us to hold that Coleman had a right to counsel to appeal a state collateral determination of his claims of trial error.” Id. at 756-57, 111 S.Ct. at 2568. Rather than concede that the reasoning in Wine was necessarily narrow, the majority claims it was decided on such narrow grounds only because it was presented with a narrow issue, implying, of course, that had the issue we now face been presented, the majority’s reasoning would have prevailed then. As the majority opinion claims:
[T]he reason Wine focused solely on constitutional issues was that it involved only the denial of a first appeal because of ineffective assistance of counsel, thus falling squarely within the constitutional parameters of Douglas and Evitts. Wine was not required to address whether the loss of a statutory right of appeal because of counsel error would justify granting a reinstated or belated appeal.
Ante at 137. But the majority’s reasoning and subsequent approach to the rule does not flow logically from Wine.
*145Though the majority fails to state its thesis explicitly, its opinion appears to combine a statutory right to appeal with what it describes as a statutory right to counsel so as to allow certain defendants to proceed with tardy appeals of a circuit court’s determination of an RCr 11.42 motion. While the statutory right to appeal is clearly defined, see KRS 22A.020(1), the majority’s characterization of the statutory right to counsel, specifically how it leads to a right to effective assistance of counsel on par with the constitutional right of counsel that applies to direct appeals, is problematic.
The majority derives the statutory right to effective assistance of counsel from the convergence of one of our criminal rules and the statutes related to the Department of Public Advocacy (DPA). Specifically, the majority cites to RCr 11.42(5) and KRS 31.110(2)(c). We have previously concluded “that RCr 11.42(5) establishes when a judge must appoint counsel for an indigent movant and that KRS 31.110(2)(c) establishes when the DPA may provide legal services even without judicial appointment.” Fraser v. Commonwealth, 59 S.W.3d 448, 456 (Ky.2001). The rule and statute, taken together, create what the majority calls a “statutory right to counsel.”
The majority cites to several other states that have held that statutory rights to counsel gives rise to a right of effective counsel in post-conviction proceedings, then relies on several of the DPA statutes — KRS 31.030, which defines the general duties and authority of the DPA; 31.071(l)(b), which requires an attorney to be competent in order to work for the DPA; and KRS 31.219, which specifies that a DPA attorney has a duty to perfect a client’s appeal — to inject the right of effective counsel into Kentucky’s statutory right to counsel. As the majority notes, “[t]he specification of the authority and duties of the DPA ... clearly anticipates that the representation provided to indigent defendants will be at least minimally competent.” Ante at 139.
While I do not disagree with this characterization of the DPA’s duties, I simply cannot subscribe to the majority’s jigsaw puzzle approach to effective assistance of counsel in post-conviction matters. To begin with, this statutory right to counsel is conditional and incomplete. RCr 11.42 requires that counsel be appointed only in certain circumstances. And KRS 31.110(2)(c) limits the entitlement to “proceeding[s] that the attorney and the needy person considers appropriate” and terminates the entitlement when, “with the court involved, [counsel] determines that it is not a proceeding that a reasonable person with adequate means would be willing to bring at his own expense.... ” The inevitable result, as was the case with one of the defendants here (Steven Moore), is that counsel often is not appointed by the court, the DPA does not intervene, and the defendant is forced to proceed pro se.
Though the majority discusses the statutory right to counsel as a source of the right of effective assistance of counsel, the discussion appears to be mere window-dressing. The majority does not describe how it arrives at this extended right from the bare statutory right to counsel in a post-conviction matter. It does cite to cases from a few other states that have held that their statutory right to counsel also includes a right of effective counsel. But this is not enough, especially when that so-called right is then used to override a long-standing and stringent requirement for invoking appellate jurisdiction. In fact, since the question before us is not whether a defendant was denied appointed counsel, the statutory right to counsel discussion is not especially important, unless there is *146some element in the majority’s reasoning that it chose not to include in its opinion. Ultimately, in terms of Kentucky law, the majority relies only on those statutes defining the DPA attorneys’ duties to their clients to arrive at the statutory effective assistance right.
It is this reliance on the DEA-duty statutes as the source of a right of effective post-conviction counsel, however, that is most troubling. First, I disagree that those statutes create such rights for defendants. The DPA is a creature of wholly statutory origin. KRS 31.010. Those statutes defining the authority and duties of the DPA’s attorneys, e.g., KRS 31.030, are simply part of the description of the DPA’s mandate — they govern the creation, maintenance, and internal operation of the DPA. Those statutes do not give rise to corollary rights in the clients of those attorneys employed by the DPA in order to carry out its statutory mandate.
Even more troubling, however, is the fact that if legal rules defining the duties of an attorney to a client are alone enough to create this right of effective assistance in post-conviction proceedings, then all defendants who have attorneys must enjoy that same right. Our Rules of Professional Conduct require that all members of the Bar provide competent representation. See SCR 3.130-1.1 (“A lawyer shall provide competent representation to a client. Competent representation requires the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation.”); SCR 3.130-1.3 (“A lawyer shall act with reasonable diligence and promptness in representing a client.”). These rules bind all members of the Bar, meaning that all attorneys owe a duty of competent representation to their client. If the majority’s logic is sound, then this duty entails a corollary right of effective assistance — one enjoyed by all clients, public and private. The majority even implies this to be the case when it applies its derived principles of effective assistance to Hawkins’s tardy appeal: “[W]hen incompetence of counsel, especially state-appointed counsel, costs an indigent defendant a statutory right of appeal, that defendant ought to be entitled at least to a reinstated or belated appeal.” Ante at 139. This language, while emphasizing appointed counsel, does nothing to limit this approach to DPA attorney representation.
But this exposes the difficulty in allowing a defendant to pursue a tardy appeal of a post-conviction matter due to ineffective assistance of counsel. It leads to the bizarre result that only pro se defendants may not pursue tardy appeals of post-conviction matters, despite our policy to allow pro se litigants greater leniency and to hold them to a lesser standard than attorneys. See Million v. Raymer, 139 S.W.3d 914, 920 (Ky.2004) (“This Court has many times held that when a prisoner elects to proceed pro se, he is not subject to the same standard of pleading as is legal counsel; and that rules are to be construed liberally in his favor.” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)); Miller v. Commonwealth, 458 S.W.2d 453, 454 (Ky.1970) (“Where the prisoner is proceeding pro se, as here, we do not impose on him the same standards as those applied to legal counsel.” (internal punctuation and citation omitted)); Moore v. Commonwealth, 394 S.W.2d 931, 932-33 (Ky.1965) (“[W]e are not disposed to be too strict in application of procedural rules to an indigent prisoner who is without counsel.”). If pro se defendants are to be denied tardy appeals, then surely those defendants who enjoy the counsel of an attorney enjoy no greater rights.
■ But allowing an attorney’s duty to provide competent counsel during post-convic*147tion proceedings to create a right of effective assistance of counsel would lead to an even more absurd result: the effective evisceration of our rules concerning the time to file an appeal. Under the majority’s logic, since all attorneys owe their clients a duty of competent representation, and such a duty gives rise to a right of effective representation, any matter of right appeal lost due to incompetence or ineffectiveness of counsel must be reinstated. If this is so, then why have we repeatedly applied the rule of strict compliance to the time in which to pursue an appeal? The answer is simple — because our rules require it: “The failure of a party to file timely a notice of appeal, cross-appeal, or motion for discretionary review shall result in a dismissal or denial.” CR 73.02(2). Strict compliance, as we have held in Johnson, Excel Energy, Inc., and numerous other cases, is the policy embodied in CR 73.02(2). It admits only one sanction: dismissal of the appeal. Thus our discussion comes full circle.
The majority attempts to cobble together disparate rules and statutes to create a post conviction state-law analog to the first-appeal federal rights in Wine. But in doing so, it does such violence to our rules requiring timely appeals so as to defeat them. Today, contrary to Johnson and every other case we have ever decided, we are allowing the description of the duties of the DPA to trump our own previously absolute rules of procedure. In so doing, this Court has made clear that none of our rules concerning appeals can be enforced. If the right of appeal in KRS 22A.020(1) and the duty of DPA counsel to be competent together trump our unequivocal time limits, how can any of our procedural rules concerning appeals stand in the way of that right? And why should a civil litigant not be entitled to the same rights that we are giving these criminal defendants in this matter? After all, they too have a right to appeal under KRS 22A.020(1), and their attorneys are required to be competent. Truly, such a consistent application of the holding of this case would “bring our judicial system to its knees.” Our jurisprudence, despite the advent of substantial compliance, has consistently upheld our rules related to the timeliness of appeals. We should continue to do so. Our rules require strict compliance — nothing less— unless federal law requires otherwise.
Because I do not believe that we should overrule scores of cases and that we should enforce our rules as written, with their requirement of strict compliance, I respectfully dissent from the reversal of Hawkin’s conviction. I do agree with the majority’s conclusion that pro se defendants are subject to the requirement of strict compliance with the time limit for filing an appeal, thus I concur in the majority opinion insofar as it affirms Moore’s conviction.
JOHNSTONE, J., joins this opinion, concurring in part and dissenting in part.