On the way to work this morning I listened to commentary regarding this case. After reviewing it, I have trouble with the ruling. Particularly after reading the dissent of Stevens and Souter (I haven’t read Breyers’ yet). I’m interesdted in hearing your opinions and why the majority decision was correct ( I don’t believe it was).
Here’s a link to the decision and dissents.
I have no clue, but I’ll C & P some of the syllabus–not everybody is interested (or bored 
) enough to click on a link…
There’s nothing particularly new here. It’s long been the rule that in order to show ineffective assistance of counsel, a claimant must be show both that the representation he received fell below a reasonable, objective standard, and that, but for the failing, there is a reasonable likelihood that the outcome of his trial would have been different. In other words, he must show both actual ineffective assistance, and how he was prejudiced by it. It’s not enough to say, “My lawyer fell asleep during the trial.” Perhaps the jury was out and the judge had left the bench for a moment - it’s unprofessional, but not damaging. On the other hand, if you can show that your lawyer fell asleep during the key witness’ testimony, and, had he been awake, he could have cross-examined the witness about inconsistencies A and B, and impeached the witness by mention a previous perjury conviction, then you’re likely to win a new trial.
In this case, lawyer Saunders represented accused murderer Mickens, who was accused of killing one Tiomothy Hall – who Saunders also once represented.
Mickens was convicted, and then argued that his lawyer’s previous representation of the victim created a per se prejudicial situation – one, he said, that was so obvious and blatantly unfair that he should not have to demonstrate any prejudice.
The Supreme Court disagreed. They held to the rule that, except in cases where counsel is completely denied to an accused during a critical stage of the proceedings, an accused must show both a lack of competence and prejudice to his case. They agreed that the conflict should have been disclosed, but that only satisfies the first prong of the test.
In other words… nothing new here.
A somewhat related case was NYC policeman Charles Schwarz, who was convicted of holding Abner Louima down, while another policeman tortured him. There’s a valid question of whether Schwarz was really guilty of this act, but that question of fact shouldn’t play a role in the appleal.
The conviction was overturned because Schwarz’s lawyer had a conflict of interest, since he/she also represented other policemen.
In this case, the conflict was known at the time of trial. Schwarz specifically accepted this lawyer, despite the conflict.
IMHO this was a bad decision. It may or may not be justice; we’ll never know for sure what Schwarz did or didn’t do. But, legally, it doesn’t make sense to me.
OK, but considering the punishment and finality of a death penalty conviction, does it not make sense to consider the possibility of a conflict of interest? I think that when taking someone’s life, the standard should perhaps be different than in a non-capital case.
actually, Bricker according to this there was more than simply ‘he’d represented the victim before’.
First,
it is not explained in this article why Mr. Saunders did not tell the jury this piece of info, but I think that it’s entirely possible that it would have changed the penalty (not absolute, but distinctly possible).
Second
again, if this info had been presented to the jury, it certainly could have altered their stance on the death penalty.
Now were these ommissions because of his prior relationship w/the victim? we cannot know. We know that these ommissions happened. We know that he had a prior professional relationship w/the victim. It’s certainly possible (no one can prove that it would or wouldn’t at this point) that either piece would have resulted in a prison vs. dp sentence.
The court decided, apparently, since there was no specific proof that Mr. Saunders neglected to bring these issues to the jury because of his prior relationship, that the burden of proof was not established.
however, there certainly were issues.
My understanding is that the law is not quite as clear as Bricker suggests. Had the lawyer objected at trial then there would have been no need to show actual prejudice. The defendant is thus placed in a worse position because his lawyer concealed his own conflict of interest.
The dissenting opinions also note that the judge who assigned the lawyer was aware of the conflict and failed to make any enquiry. Given the judge’s responsibility to ensure a fair trial I think it reasonable to treat actual notice of a conflict as equivalent to an objection.
From Breyers disent:
So it’s not so vague as “he once defended”, up until the business day before, he was a lawyer for the victim.
I just can’t see anyway that this is not a clear conflict of interest.
well, 'cause a ‘prior connection’ (even that recent) does not automatically equal ‘conflict of interest’.
in some jurisidictions, given the demographics involved, it’s not at all uncommon that a single lawyer would have prior connections to multiple people w/in the case.
However, I think in this case there were, in fact, a couple of issues that the Lawyer failed to bring up that were related to the victim, and it’s entirely possible that such failure did result in the DP sentence.
OTOH, it’s difficult to prove that the reason that the lawyer failed to bring out these issues were related to the prior relationship (which was the crux of the issue).
I think that the court, in this sort of thing, given the specific failings and prior relationship, should have erred on the side of caution and required that the prior relationship have been disclosed to the defendant.
Obviously 5 of 'em disagreed.
These Supreme Court justices have an answer for everything.
From Justice Scalia’s opinion:
Given that, I think it would be a stretch to suggest that Saunders failed to explore Hall’s willingness as a sexual partner based on a lingering duty to his now-deceased former client.
I’m not a big fan of the existing state of law regarding a showing of ineffective assistance of counsel. Too often I’ve read appellate opinions in which two or three truly substantive issues are reviewed only for plain error because they were procedurally defaulted at trial … and the appeals court then goes on to dismiss an ineffective assistance claim for failure to show actual prejudice.
But the point of my message is that this is not new law – if you don’t like how these kinds of claims are treated, your beef is with Strickland v. Washington, not Mickens v. Taylor.
december, at issue in the Schwarz case was that the attorney was representing, through the PBA, officers who would/could be sued in civil litigation in the Louima case. It was in those officers’ financial interest for Schwarz to be found guilty - the more of the blame that could be fixed on Schwarz, the less liability they had. That was the cause of the conflict of interest.
And, in one of those rules intended to protect both clients and the legal profession as a whole, certain conflicts of interest, even if fully known to the client, cannot be waived. It is certainly very arguable that the rule is overbroad, but “bright-line” rules at least have the benefit of certainty.
Sua
Thanks for the explanation.
It leaves me wondering why the original trial judge allowed this lawyer in the first place. Is there some ambiguity about this conflict-of-interest rule? Otherwise, shouldn’t the judge have prohibited Schwarz’s lawyer on account of the non-waivable conflict? Why have a trial under circumstances such that a guilty verdict will be automatically overturned?
december, the details are somewhat fuzzy, but I think that the ambiguity here was caused by Schwarz’s attorney representing the PBA, rather than the other officers directly. The conflict was that the PBA would be paying the attorneys’ fees of the other officers (and may have insured the other officers to some extent against job-related civil liability). The PBA certainly would have benefited from a guilty verdict against Schwarz, but it wasn’t as obvious or as clear as is Schwarz’ attorney was representing the other officers directly.
So the trial judge probably felt that, since it wasn’t a direct conflict of interest, it was waivable. I don’t know what the case law was to determine whether this was a conceivably defensible determination (I do know that the prosecutors were strongly opposed to the attorney representing Schwarz). So the appellate court either clarified the law or slammed the trial judge for ignoring the already-clear law.
Sua