789 F. Supp. 2d 1235 - Becker v. Martel’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 state decisions

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The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 2 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The Court looks at what Petitioner understood and was told at the time he waived counsel. See Erskine, 355 F.3d at 1164-65 ; Balough, 820 F.2d at 1489 . On October 21, 2004, Petitioner was arraigned on a forty-one count complaint and was informed that he was facing a maximum of fifty-eight years in prison. On December 21, 2004, the district attorney amended the complaint and added twelve more counts. Therefore, the maximum penalty necessarily would have increased to more than fifty-eight years. FN6 However, the trial court did not advise Petitioner about the added counts or the revised maximum penalty he would face and whether it would have affected his decision to represent himself. FN6. In the corrected penalties provided by Respondent, the original maximum penalty should have been 33 years and 8 months at the initial arraignment on October 21, 2004. On December 21, 2004, the maximum penalty Petitioner should have been facing was 41 years and 8 months. The maximum penalty increased by eight years from the 41-count complaint to the 53-count complaint. Respondent argues that since it is clear Petitioner wanted to represent himself even when he believed he was facing 58 years, he did not need to be readvised of his right to counsel in subsequent proceedings. However, in Erskine , the Ninth Circuit pointed out the government’s erroneous argument that a petitioner’s Faretta waiver was valid because he was subsequently sentenced to less than what he erroneously thought was the ma”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Jensen v. Hernandez