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Supreme Court expands defendant's rights in plea deals
In two 5-4 decisions, the Supreme Court rules that defendants in criminal cases have a constitutional right to a competent lawyer's advice when deciding whether to accept a plea deal.

By David G. Savage, Washington Bureau
March 21, 2012, 7:48 p.m.
Reporting from Washington— Defendants in criminal cases have a constitutional right to a competent lawyer's advice when deciding whether to accept a plea bargain, the Supreme Court ruled, providing a significant expansion of rights that could have a broad impact on the justice system.

"Ours for the most part is a system of pleas, not a system of trials," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said for the majority in a pair of 5-4 decisions. Noting that about 97% of federal convictions and 94% of state convictions result from guilty pleas, Kennedy wrote that "in today's criminal justice system, the negotiation of a plea bargain, rather than the unfolding of a trial, is almost always the critical point for the defendant."


The ruling drew a sharply worded dissent from Justice Antonin Scalia, who took the unusual step of expressing his disagreement in the courtroom. He angrily called the court's rulings a "judicially invented right to effective plea bargaining."

The decisions were "a vast departure from our past cases" and would lead to endless litigation, he warned.

"Until today, no one has thought that there is a constitutional right to a plea bargain," Scalia added.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined in dissent.

Until now, the vast majority of the high court's decisions on the constitutional rights of criminal defendants had involved trials. Since plea deals are part of the daily routine in courthouses across the nation, expanding the Constitution's reach into that arena could affect a large number of cases. But legal experts, like the justices themselves, differed on the precise impact.

"These are big and important decisions," said Orin Kerr, a criminal law expert at George Washington University. "Plea negotiations have been mostly unregulated, and as a result, they have been informal. That will have to change, at least at the margins."

Others said the justices did not want to second-guess routine plea deals, only those in which a lawyer's blunder or clearly bad advice had caused his client serious damage.

Stanford law professor Jeffrey Fisher said the high court's decision was significant because it put the "imprimatur of the Supreme Court" on the rule that defendants have a right to competent legal advice during negotiations over a plea deal. That position "is basically consistent with the predominant view in the lower courts over the past several years," he said, but had not previously been declared a nationwide rule by the highest court.

Since the 1980s, the court has said defendants have a right to "effective assistance of counsel," and this guidance is crucial to protecting the right to a fair trial.

On Wednesday, Kennedy joined with the court's four liberals — Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — and made clear for the first time that a defendant's right to a competent lawyer extends to decisions to accept or reject a plea offer from prosecutors.

Both cases involved men who were sent to prison for lengthy terms — one for assault and the other for drunk driving — who could have had much lighter sentences but for their lawyers' mistakes.

No one suggested the attorneys must offer brilliant advice. Similarly, they cannot be faulted if their predictions about how a trial will go are proved wrong. But the lawyers must meet a standard of basic competence, the court said.

At minimum, Kennedy said, the lawyer has a duty to tell his client of any formal offers from a prosecutor that would result in a favorable deal.

In the drunk driving case, from Missouri, the lawyer had failed to tell his client that prosecutors had given him a written offer to recommend a 90-day sentence if the defendant pleaded guilty. The offer expired without the defendant, Galin Frye, being aware of it. Frye pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison.

"The court now holds that, as a general rule, defense counsel has the duty to communicate formal offers from the prosecution to accept a plea deal on terms and conditions that may be favorable to the accused," Kennedy said in Missouri vs. Frye.

Whenever there is a "reasonable probability" that bad advice resulted in a longer prison term, the defendant is entitled to a new hearing or a lesser sentence, he added.

In the second case, from Michigan, Anthony Cooper was charged with attempted murder and was willing to admit his guilt. But, relying on advice from his lawyer, he turned down an offer from a prosecutor to plead guilty in exchange for a recommended sentence of between five and seven years in prison. His lawyer had told him he could not be convicted of intent to murder because he had fired a gun at a woman's legs, not above her waist — an assertion that was flatly wrong, as a matter of law and common sense.

Cooper went to trial, the jury convicted him on all counts, and he was sentenced to between 15 and 30 years in prison. In Lafler vs. Cooper, the court agreed that the defendant had been denied his right to a competent attorney and sent the case back to a Michigan judge to decide on a new sentence.

The Obama administration and lawyers for 32 states had essentially agreed with Scalia's view. They took the position that if a defendant chooses to plead guilty or is convicted in a fair trial, he has no right to object about earlier bad advice from a lawyer.

Lawyers for the Constitution Project lauded the decisions for recognizing the reality of America's criminal justice system. Since plea deals have largely replaced jury trials, "we are pleased the court has recognized that the right to counsel during plea negotiations is just as important as at trial," said Virginia Sloan, the group's president.

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Humility said:
This is better but the legal system is bullshit.

I mean fully bullshit.

There is *no* actual justice in today's American legal system.  Sometimes justice happens, but it's by accident in those rare occurrences.

Everything is about withholding evidence, twisting words and ideas and playing semantics with people's lives.  So many people are involved in locking so many other non-violent people into boxes and cages it's mind-boggling.

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Whenever there is a "reasonable probability" that bad advice resulted in a longer prison term, the defendant is entitled to a new hearing or a lesser sentence, he added.

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Humility said:
I don't see how this changes that at all.  This basically says that if your lawyer is so incompetent as to not take a  plea deal that would have benefited you, you can get a new trial/that plea deal again/some other kind of redress.

What's needed is a return to "let the punishment fit the crime" type mentality.  I am currently facing a year in prison for refusing to roll down my window from 75% to lower than that when an officer stated that he wanted to "speak with me".

My options are to accept probation for a year or face up to a year in prison.

I was charged with "resisting arrest" for saying that my window was down far enough for us to speak and for me to hand him my documents, that I was in a rush to go and that i didn't feel like I needed to lower my window any further.




This does nothing to change over-charging, disparate sentencing for minor charges, extremely intricate and complex legal language that makes understanding what's legal and what's not nearly impossible, etc.

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Humility said:
This is better but the legal system is bullshit.

I mean fully bullshit.

There is *no* actual justice in today's American legal system.  Sometimes justice happens, but it's by accident in those rare occurrences.

Everything is about withholding evidence, twisting words and ideas and playing semantics with people's lives.  So many people are involved in locking so many other non-violent people into boxes and cages it's mind-boggling.

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Lord_McLovin said:
Humility, I completely agree that A LOT more needs to be done, but it surely is a step in the right direction.

Damn, I'm so glad that I don't live in the US (anymore).
Honestly guys, get out of this country as soon as you can. If 4 out of 9 supreme court judges say that a defandant does not have to be offered competent legal advice prior to making a decision that could land him in jail for years or even decades, then I would know that it's time to leave.

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Coolwhip said:
This is going to help when your lawyer advices you to take a shitty deal when you should have held out for a better one or gone to trial...such as in cases where there was something wrong with the arrest or investigation, for example improperly weighing the drugs, or violating your rights. Something that a competent lawyer should have seen.

In the past, if you accepted a plea deal, that was it, you were done. Basically no chance to appeal. Now if your lawyer fucked you, you get a second chance.

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Enlil said:

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Humility said:
This is better but the legal system is bullshit.

I mean fully bullshit.

There is *no* actual justice in today's American legal system.  Sometimes justice happens, but it's by accident in those rare occurrences.

Everything is about withholding evidence, twisting words and ideas and playing semantics with people's lives.  So many people are involved in locking so many other non-violent people into boxes and cages it's mind-boggling.

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That depends on how you define "justice"...but I can tell you that evidence witholding is extremely rare...the vast majority of prosecutors are honest and ethical in the way they work...And I have worked with a bunch of them.

And why do defendants always pretend like they don't have a choice?  The decision of whether or not to take a deal is always the defendant's choice...the lawyer doesn't get a say in it.  Take his advice or don't...That's your call.

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Humility said:
Defendant's lawyers and defendants are barred from raising MANY important facts that will often make a jury more sympathetic towards a defendant.  The simple fact that there are so many stipulations on what one may say during a trial to defend oneself is a clear abrogation of the law.  It's become beyond impossible to mount an effective defense by oneself using common sense means of argument.

That isn't justice.  It's already clear though that you make your money from the criminal justice system, so you're going to have a very interesting opinion of what defines "justice".

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Humility said:
I said the words Jury Nullification.

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Enlil said:

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Humility said:
I said the words Jury Nullification.

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Jury nullification isn't evidence...and the reason that lawyers can't argue it has everything to do with the fact that the prosecution can't argue against it...If they could, many, many cases would become philosophical arguments about why a law is right or wrong...That is exactly the phenomenon that the rule against arguing jury nullification is meant to avoid..

All juries know that they have the right to vote not guilty...They don't need to be given permission.

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Lord_McLovin said:
Imagine a person knowing nothing about jury nullification, yet believing that law A is unjust. If he is convinced the defendant violated the law, he will vote guilty, because technically he is (in his mind). This is a reality and it is very hard to deny this.

I also think that's what humility is critcizing: The arising discrepancy between legal practice and common sense and - with all due respect - this is part of the tremendous criminal justice problem the US has today.

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After thinking about this for awhile, I guess what I was trying to say is that I see the law as a systematic codification of common sense...an expression of common sense taken to the societal level.

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Lord_McLovin said:
Since you ask so kindly, I give you two examples:
City of Los Angeles v. Lyons
Alexander v. Sandoval

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First, remember that jury nullification is a right that the juror has...not that the defendant has.  A juror who has a consciencious objection to the law isn't going to convict...period...one who doesn't care one way or the other would...In any case, a defendant really isn't screwed because a defense attorney wasn't allowed to make the juror question the wisdom of the law.

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Humility said:

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First, remember that jury nullification is a right that the juror has...not that the defendant has.  A juror who has a consciencious objection to the law isn't going to convict...period...one who doesn't care one way or the other would...In any case, a defendant really isn't screwed because a defense attorney wasn't allowed to make the juror question the wisdom of the law.

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For one a clear cut case of evidence withholding is the vast amount of corrupt behavior involved in how often video evidence is made available to defendants vs. those same videos being available to law enforcement.  Every police car in America has a dash cam installed but you can't have access to the tapes in well over 60% of cases.



Making it illegal to inform the jury of their rights is tampering with the outcome of a trial.  Withholding knowledge from a jury or making it illegal for a defendant to notify a jury of means through which they can find the defendant not guilty is non-justice.

All that mess you're talking it just that.  That you would even argue that jurors with moral objections won't convict PROVES the lack of credibility in ALL of your arguments.  That's a LUDICROUS statement given that juries convict people for all sorts of reasons not relating to guilt or perceived guilt often. This is especially true when judges order juries under STRICT provisions to convict and all but make jury nullification conceptually unavailable.  "You must convict based on these standards"; "did X do Y or did they not do Y, has this argument been sufficiently made to the court, blah blah blah", often hinging entire cases on strict legal definitions and technicalities.


I don't want to talk about this any more with you.  You're not worth having a conversation with. Before I even woke up I was just thinking about how terrible it is to make one's living off of twisting words around in common parlance to mean completely different things and pretending like this complex and intricate list of arbitrary rules is somehow "just" or "logical" when in fact it's neither of the two.


People who rely on "the law" to make their points are in a very, very bad place.  What are you binding yourself to?  Where do you draw your arguments?  From what other men write down on paper?



One thing is clear, and that's that you don't actually know shit about the law.  You know what you've been taught, and you parrot it like any medical student parrots the harms of "marijuana".

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Humility said:
There is no "fixing" 1936 Germany.  Not in the way you propose.


The political and governmental system is corrupt at its root.  It must be stricken at the root.

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