Cory Maples, an inmate on Alabama​’s death row, may pay for a sim­ple cler­i­cal error with his life. When copies of an Alabama court rul­ing in his case were sent to the New York law firm han­dling his appeals, both copies were returned unopened because the fir­m’s attor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Maples had left the firm. By the time the error was dis­cov­ered, Maples’s time to appeal had expired. So far, the firm has failed to per­suade a fed­er­al appeals court to waive the dead­line for fil­ing an appeal. Maples’s new attor­ney is argu­ing that Maples should not be penal­ized for a mis­take he did not com­mit. Prof. Deborah Rhode, an author­i­ty on indi­gent defense and legal ethics at Stanford, said, ​“Maples’s case is a text­book illus­tra­tion of why the doc­trine of imput­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty to the client for a lawyer’s mis­take is so out of touch with real­i­ty.” Alabama is the only state that does not pro­vide lawyers for all indi­gent death row inmates to chal­lenge their con­vic­tions. Hence, defen­dants rely on vol­un­teer attor­neys, often from out of state, to fill the gap, and that con­tributed to the confusion.

(A. Liptak, ​“A Mailroom Mix-Up That Could Cost a Life,” New York Times, August 2, 2010). See Arbitrariness and Representation.

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