Media Contact: Ira Pilchen
Phone: 312-988-5743
Email: ira.pilchen@americanbar.org
ABA Backs Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye Respondents; Supreme Court to Hear Cases on 10/31
CHICAGO, Oct. 27, 2011 – The American Bar Association’s amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Supreme Court supports the respondents in the companion cases of Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye, scheduled for oral arguments on Oct. 31. The ABA urges the court to uphold the lower courts’ rulings that a criminal defendant has a constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel at the plea stage.
In Cooper, the defendant rejected the government’s plea offer based on his lawyer’s incorrect advice on the standard for attempted murder and was convicted at trial. In Frye, the defendant’s lawyer failed to inform him of the government’s misdemeanor plea offer, after which he pleaded guilty to a felony. Both defendants received sentences that were much higher than the plea offers.
Citing standards for competent representation in the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct and the ABA Criminal Justice Standards, the ABA argues that subsequent constitutionally sufficient proceedings, such as a fair trial in Cooper’s case or a court’s acceptance of a guilty plea in Frye’s case, do not remedy a violation of a defendant’s constitutional rights at the critical plea stage.
The brief also asserts that when ineffective assistance causes a defendant to lose the benefit of an advantageous plea bargain, the court should have discretion to fashion a remedy that is reasonably calculated to place the defendant insofar as possible in the position he would have been in had his Sixth Amendment rights not been violated.
“The fact that nearly 95% of criminal convictions now result from guilty pleas makes it all the more important that defendants considering a guilty plea should have competent counsel,” the brief states.
The brief is available here.
With nearly 400,000 members, the American Bar Association is the world’s largest voluntary professional membership organization. As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law.
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5:35 PM November 22, 2011
I hope this case goes through. For anyone convicted of a crime, if you don’t plead guilty , you are considered”difficult”(even if you didn’t do the crime!). Most of us understand that it is presumed by the whole legal community that if one is arrested, one must plead guilty!It is making our legal system a big sham! And thus becomes a game of wits as the complexities that the law system has grown to, is of monsterous proportions! Who it hurts most is the poor, who cannot afford, but need most the best lawyers! As they become the victims of this insane system. None of the legal language is anything even the average college educated person can comprehend, no less even the lawyers and Judges themselves who are well versed in the subject! If a person, (particularly hit hardest,are Native Americans at the very bottom of the pole, )is arested, charged and convicted,and they do not plead guilty, they are in essence in limbo until doomsday, as there is little chance of ever getting relief via appeal(only about 8% even make it to appellate court,) and then on Post comviction Relief if they are Lucky, it even gets reviewed usually it’s thrown out on a technicality, and then the only possible way out is Project Innocence, for the very few years later. God help the poor soul who says they “didn’t do it: and honestly didn’t!!Certainly the average person cannot so much as read legal terms, briefs , fill out forms or even know when those things are timely. This leaves the average person out at sea , lost in the Legal Judicial maze, that could easily be simplified!! Before even entering into the court system! The amount of time prisoners wait rotting in jail, is akin to be held a prisoner of war!! And seems to me is against all our talk of a so called”free” country.If the lawyer one has is ineffective, a person may end up for decades or even to die in jail,because the lawyers are so overwelhmed and cannot serve people properly. Our courts ,too are twisted up in the mire often sloppy rulings are made just to get on to the next quota case.And worst of all is the poor soul, who has inefective counsel and a weak or sloppy Judge!! He or she has no recourse what so ever , especially in the rural areas, where no one is watching these lawyers and Judges, the convicted becomes a piece of meat, a money maker for prisons to toss around,gnaw on until they chew the life out of them, and spit out their bones!!!