Ineffective assistance of counsel; Failure to request a criminal responsibility evaluation; Center for Forensic Psychiatry (CFP)

The court vacated the trial court’s order denying defendant’s motion to withdraw his plea and remanded the “case to the trial court for it to hold a Ginther hearing regarding [his] claim of ineffective assistance of counsel before ruling on [his] motion to withdraw his plea.” He pled no contest to assault with a deadly weapon, and resisting or obstructing a police officer resulting in injury. He “subsequently moved to withdraw his plea, arguing that he would have proceeded to trial but for the ineffective assistance of defense counsel. The trial court denied the motion.” Defendant argued “that his trial counsel was ineffective in failing to request a criminal responsibility evaluation, and that this failure foreclosed any possibility of what would have otherwise been a plausible insanity defense.” The court expressed no opinion on his “ultimate prospects of success regarding an insanity defense, but [was] persuaded that a Ginther hearing should be conducted to allow the trial court to consider and decide defendant’s ineffective assistance claim in the first instance.” It found that it was “apparent from the existing record that defendant’s mental health issues were evident from the beginning of the proceedings. The prosecution and defendant’s first trial counsel both requested an evaluation to determine whether defendant was competent to stand trial. The CFP in fact found defendant incompetent to stand trial.” Yet, despite these facts, it appeared “that a criminal responsibility evaluation was never requested by [his] trial counsel, and the possibility of an insanity defense does not appear to have been raised.” The court agreed “with the trial court that the existing record is inadequate to determine whether defense counsel adequately investigated the possibility of an insanity defense and decided against it as a matter of sound trial strategy.” Moreover, the current record rendered the court “unable to determine whether defendant discussed with trial counsel the possibility of such a defense before defendant decided to plead no-contest to the charges against him.” As a result, the court declined “to decide whether defendant received the ineffective assistance of counsel and thus should have been permitted to withdraw his plea.”