(1) ineffective plea bargaining and (2) a court-ordered psych exam

This wikilog article is a draft, it was not published yet.

by: Ryan • February 26, 2013 • no comments

SCOTUS granted cert in two cases this week. Lots of details at SCOTUSblog.

The first case involves a defendant who had pleaded guilty to manslaughter under a plea bargain, but before she was sentenced, she got a new attorney and claimed innocence, and the lawyer told her to withdraw her guilty plea, thus nullifying the plea bargain. She was facing a sentence of seven to fifteen years on a manslaughter charge, and the attorney said that was too long. She was then tried on the more serious charge of murder, and was convicted of second-degree murder. She was then sentenced to twenty to forty years in prison.

From SCOTUSblog:

The Sixth Circuit Court ruled that her Sixth Amendment right had been violated by the attorney’s advice to withdraw the guilty plea, an action which led to her receiving the longer prison sentence for murder. That is the issue that state officials challenged in their petition to the Supreme Court. The key issue is the proof that must be offered to show that the accused would have accepted the offer if the advice from the defense lawyer had not been faulty. The case basically turns on the scope of two Supreme Court rulings last year enhancing the rights of the accused in the plea-bargaining context — Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye.

In the second case, the defendant was charged with capital murder in federal court for the shooting death of a sheriff. His lawyer raised pre-trial the defense of intoxication. The federal judge ordered a mental evaluation of Cheever.

From SCOTUSblog:

The federal case was later dismissed, and earlier murder charges under state law were reinstated because, in the meantime, Kansas’s death penalty law had been restored. At the trial, Cheever testified, admitting that he had killed the sheriff, but relied on a defense of intoxication. He called a witness to buttress that claim. In response, the prosecutors called to the stand the doctor who had examined Cheever in the federal case, and that doctor testified that Cheever was not impaired at the time of the crime.

The Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the admission of the testimony of the doctor violated Cheever’s Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.