Court Opinion

ID: 9639667
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:43:46.187517+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:20.870419
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent, because I am urn able to convince myself that there was, in his escape case, a knowing and intelligent waiver of counsel by a 15 year old, no matter what the judgment recitals state about the court’s advising him of his right to counsel and to consult with a friend and defendant’s being able “to decide his need for counsel”. Criminal law is a highly specialized field. Ask any civil lawyer who is appointed to defend an indigent. It does not seem reasonable to me that the defendant could have had any appreciation of the legal problems involved in his case when he pleaded guilty at age 15 to escape. That these were complex is demonstrated by the majority opinion itself.
As I read the majority opinion, basically it rests on waiver by a 15 year old. Clearly the defendant did not have counsel and unless there was an effective waiver, and I *598do not believe there was, it seems to me the case is governed by Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799, and Burgett v. Texas, 389 U.S. 109, 88 S.Ct. 258, 19 L.Ed.2d 319, the procedure followed in obtaining the escape conviction was unconstitutional, and the present judgment should be reversed and remanded. Unless the defendant, had been legally convicted at an earlier date, he, of-course, was entitled to have the jury, in the first instance, fix his punishment in his present case, rather than the court. Since in my view he had not been legally convicted earlier, the second offender act did not apply here and defendant is entitled to a new trial.