Opinion

Walker v. State

  • 68 O.B.A.J. 316
  • 933 P.2d 327
  • 1997 OK CR 3
  • 1997 Okla. Crim. App. LEXIS 2
  • 1997 WL 34440
Court
Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma
Filed
Jan 23, 1997
Status
Published
Author
Lane
On the bench
Chapel, Strubhar, Johnson, Lumpkin, Lane
Cited by
99 cases
Authority
More cited than 6.7%

Overruled by statute, as recognized in Davis v. State

holding that “Flores simply reiterated and enforced long standing case law and statutory rules” and that a pre Flores failure to challenge a “presumed not guilty” instruction was waiver

How later courts described this case

  • holding that “Flores simply reiterated and enforced long standing case law and statutory rules” and that a pre Flores failure to challenge a “presumed not guilty” instruction was waiver
  • reiterating Oklahoma's rule that ineffective assistance of trial counsel is generally waived if not presented on direct appeal and stating that "post-conviction petitioners desire full review of technically waived substantive claims, and they have discovered that an ineffective assistance of appellate counsel allegation may achieve this goal”
  • rejecting ineffectiveness claim for lack of evidence that counsel “purposefully omitted meritorious appeal issues because he wished to avoid angering [the trial] Judge”
  • “[T]he post-conviction statutes have always provided applicants with only very limited grounds upon which to attack their ‘final’ judgments.” (citing Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 295, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989), for the proposition that “final means a case where the judgment of conviction was rendered, the availability of appeal exhausted, and the time for petition for certiorari had elapsed” (internal quotations and citations omitted))

Written by the judges who cited it.

Later courts went against this

  • Overruled by statute, as recognized in Davis v. State

    933 P.2d 327 (Okla.Crim.App.1997), overruled by statute on other grounds, as recognized in Davis v. State, 123 P.3d 243, 245 (Okla.Crim.App.2005), decided four months before the disclaimer was filed, the OCCA had not required that claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel based on facts outside the trial record be raised on direct appeal, and the Capital Direct Appeals Division of the state public defender (w…
    Court of Criminal Appeals of OklahomaOct 27, 2005by statuteother groundsmedium confidenceRead it
  • Overruled on other grounds by Davis v. State, 2005 Okla. Crim. App. LEXIS 17 (2005)

    Walker v. State, 1997 OK CR 3, 933 P.2d 327, 334, overruled on other grounds Davis, 123 P.3d at 246.
    Court of Criminal Appeals of OklahomaOct 27, 2005other groundsmedium confidenceRead it

The opinion

LANE, Judge,

dissenting:

I disagree with the majority in its decision as to two of the issues raised by the petitioner: the issue of improper instruction that was decided in Flores v. State, 896 P.2d 558, 562 (Okl.Cr.1995), cert. denied, — U.S.— , 116 S.Ct. 548 , 133 L.Ed.2d 450 (1996), and the issue of the standard of proof needed in a competency hearing as determined by Cooper v. Oklahoma, — U.S.—, 116 S.Ct. 1373 , 134 L.Ed.2d 498 (1996). Both of these cases were determined in the time frame between Petitioner filing his direct appeal brief and the filing of this post conviction action.

The majority finds that both of these issues were waived because they were not raised on direct appeal. I believe that the majority has incorrectly interpreted 22 O.S.Supp.1995 § 1089(C)(2) which states that a claim comes under the purview of the capital post conviction act if it involves a claim that “was not recognized by or could not have been reasonably formulated from a final decision of the United States Supreme Court, a court of appeals of the United States, or a court of appellate jurisdiction of this state....” The majority does not cite, nor do I find any cases that determined either of these issues prior to the time that Petitioner filed his appellate brief. As to the burden of proof issue, even though it was after Petitioner had filed his brief in chief, we held that the “clear and convincing” standard applied in Cooper v. State, 889 P.2d 293 (Okl.Cr.1995). Therefore, it would be very difficult for us to say that the claim could have been reasonably formulated from one of our prior decisions.

If we were to consider the instruction issue, we would reverse and remand for a new trial. If we were to consider the standard of proof issue, we would remand the case to the trial court for a proper competency resolution.

Recently, at oral arguments in death eases we have complemented appellate counsel for cutting down on the number of propositions that they have raised. There has been a trend for them to eliminate propositions that we have repeatedly decided in prior eases. However, most of them have not yet been determined by the U.S. Supreme Court. Today, we are telling counsel that even though we have decided the issue, they should raise adjudicated issues in all future cases in order to prevent waiver in ease our opinions are overturned in the federal system.

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.

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