On the “This Morning Show” I saw a story about a guy who was convicted of murder in Texas.
It turns out his court-appointed lawyer, throughout the trial, kept dozing off!
The defendant aired his grievances with the Texas court system and they said that “the law states that defendants are entitled to a lawyer… not a conscious one”. And now, the man is scheduled to be executed.
Now no one is saying this man is innocent, but is he not entitled to a fair trial?
Do the words EQUAL JUSTICE FOR ALL mean nothing anymore (in Texas)?
Am I missing something… seems a little messed up to me.
While this may not help the man in question it would seem to me his family has a good case for a malpractice lawsuit and possibly a case to get the guy de-barred. Maybe if a few lawyers lose their practice and have to pay hefty settlements other attorneys will take their duties more seriously.
I’m also kinda shocked that a judge would allow such a thing in his/her courtroom.
A bit different but along these lines comes from an article I read yesterday in the Chicago Tribune. Some guy’s attorney advised him to plead guilty with no plea bargaining or anything. The guy received a death sentence for his trouble. The guy retained another attorney to appeal the case on this basis but the new attorney misread the procedures and filed the appeal six days late. The Illinois Appeal court rejected the man’s claim since it wasn’t filed in the appropriate time.
The man did what he was supposed to do but due to the incompetence of two attorneys he his facing lethal injection. There is pressure for the appeals court to give this guy a break and hear the case despite its late filing (6 whole days) but AFAIK the court isn’t budging.
Perhaps the law specifying a right to an attorney should be amended to a right to a competent and conscious attorney.
When did Illinois lift its moratorium on the death penalty? I thought they suspended it a year or so ago exactly BECAUSE of crap like this. Has it been reinstated already, even though the problem hasn’t been fixed? Jeez.
For anyone who’s interested, you can find the Fifth Circuit panel’s opinion Burdine v. Johnson (5th Cir. 2000). The last I had heard, the court had agreed to rehear the case en banc, so we’re still waiting to see whether the whole court will reverse the decision of the three-judge panel.
It’s a terrible decision, based largely on the fact that the defendant couldn’t demonstrate in the record when the lawyer had been sleeping. Therefore, the majority reasoned that the defendant couldn’t prove prejudice. I’m personally in favor of the death penalty, but I fail to see how having counsel who slept through long portions of the trial could possibly be construed as adequate representation.
Incidentally, one of the two votes against the defendant was Edith Jones, an ultra-, ultra-conservative judge who’s allegedly on Bush’s short list for Supreme Court nominees.
I haven’t read minty’s link yet, but wouldn’t it be somewhat incumbent on a judge to notice that counsel is asleep, and maybe wake him up or something? Couldn’t a lawyer be slapped with a contempt charge for something like that?
And re: Whack-a-Mole’s idea of a malpractice suit. Somehow, I think the defendant is a little more concerned about not getting executed than being adequately compensated. Moreover, the sleeping attorney is long dead.
I said in my post that a malpractice suit wouldn’t be much help to the defendant. I was merely suggesting one way to put the screws to attorneys who do not adequately represent their clients. I also had no clue the attorney was dead. Can someone go after his estate in a case like this or once you are dead can people no longer collect on a worng done them (obviously the man can’t defend himself anymore for one thing).
IIRC the death penalty still exists in Illinois. The moratorium is on actually carrying out the sentence. As a result I believe you can still be found guilty and sentenced to death in Illinois even today. You just won’t actually be put to death till the moratorium is lifted.
The answer, not surprisingly, is that it depends. It is, at the least, more difficult to sue a dead man’s estate rather than a living defendant, in part because of “dead man’s statutes” that make it hard to admit the deceased’s statements into evidence. Nevertheless, such suits are generally not barred merely because the defendant is dead, although it may be barred for other reasons. Since the sleeping attorney died in 1988 (IIRC), the statute of limitations on any malpractice claim has long since expired.
Moreover, malpractice claims for representation in a criminal trial are extremely difficult to win, because the plaintiff has to affirmatively show there would have been a better outcome except for the malpractice. I don’t think Mr. Burdine disputes his guilt, so all he could claim is that he wouldn’t have been sentenced to death with better representation. I can’t imagine the Texas jury that would be receptive to that claim, even if they thought the lawyer was a certified loser.
IANAL but I worked on a court in Texas for a few months. The judges I dealt with would most definitely consider it contempt. Of course one of these judges was of the ‘if you aren’t licking my boots and polishing my car you are in contept’ sort of egomaniacs but even the other two would have given the attorney a little while in lock-up to think about staying awake.
Again IANAL but basically they told me anything that ‘goes against the dignity of the court’ is contempt. I saw a defendant show up drunk for a hearing (all he was going to do was plead guilty to a PI anyway) and he got a few days on contept charges for that.
Judge: Mr XXX - do I smell alcohol on your breath?
Mr. XXX - yessir
Judge: I believe this mans drunk. Baliff, send this man downstairs for contempt. Three Days ought to be time to sober up.