On January 20 the U.S. Supreme Court (7 – 2) grant­ed Missouri death row inmate Mark Christeson new attor­neys to assist him in pur­su­ing his fed­er­al appeal. Christeson’s appoint­ed attor­neys missed a cru­cial fil­ing dead­line for his fed­er­al appeal, not even meet­ing with him until a month after the dead­line. New attor­neys offered to rep­re­sent Christeson, argu­ing that his cur­rent attor­neys had a con­flict of inter­est, since advo­cat­ing for him would mean admit­ting their own error. The District Court and Court of Appeals both denied the request for sub­sti­tu­tion of coun­sel, and Christeson’s exe­cu­tion date was set for Oct. 29, 2014. The Supreme Court grant­ed a stay, and, in decid­ing the case, wrote, “[Christeson’s orig­i­nal attor­neys’] con­tentions here were direct­ly and con­ced­ed­ly con­trary to their clien­t’s inter­est, and man­i­fest­ly served their own pro­fes­sion­al and rep­u­ta­tion­al inter­ests.” Fifteen for­mer judges filed a brief in sup­port of Christeson, say­ing, “[O]ur sys­tem would be bro­ken indeed if it did not even pro­vide him with an oppor­tu­ni­ty, assist­ed by con­flict-free coun­sel, to present his case to a federal court.”

(M. Coyle, ​“Death Row Prisoner May Fire Lawyers Who Missed Deadline,” National Law Journal, January 20, 2015). See U.S. Supreme Court and Representation. Read the Court’s deci­sion in Christeson v. Roper, No. 14 – 6873 (Jan. 20, 2015) (per curi­am, grant­i­ng cert., revers­ing and remanding).

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