In a forth­com­ing arti­cle in the American Journal of Criminal Law, John H. Blume of Cornell Law School explores recent Supreme Court deci­sions that affect the guide­lines for effec­tive coun­sel for cap­i­tal defen­dants. Blume notes in ​“It’s Like Déjà Vu All Over Again: Williams V. Taylor, Wiggins V. Smith, Rompilla V. Beard and a (Partial) Return to the Guidelines Approach to the Effective Assistance of Counsel” that despite the recog­ni­tion by researchers, lit­i­ga­tors, and judges of the prob­lem of poor rep­re­sen­ta­tion of cap­i­tal defen­dants, most post-con­vic­tion claims of inef­fec­tive coun­sel are denied.

Claims of inef­fec­tive coun­sel are typ­i­cal­ly judged by the stan­dards set forth in Strickland v. Washington (1984), which require a defen­dant to show that his lawyer did not per­form with­in a wide range of com­pe­ten­cy and that this poor per­for­mance gives prob­a­bil­i­ty that the out­come of the defendant’s case would have been dif­fer­ent. According to Blume, the Strickland stan­dards have been dif­fi­cult for defen­dants to sat­is­fy. The cas­es dis­cussed in Blume’s arti­cle, how­ev­er, offer promise for change because ​“while pur­port­ing to oper­ate with­in the Strickland frame­work, the [Supreme] Court in all cas­es held that tri­al coun­sel’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion was con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly inad­e­quate.” Instead, the Supreme Court in Williams V. Taylor, Wiggins V. Smith, and Rompilla V. Beard used the American Bar Association Standards for Criminal Justice as guide­lines for deter­min­ing effec­tive coun­sel and found the coun­sel in each case inef­fec­tive.


(Cornell Legal Studies Research Paper No. 07 – 019, 2007). Read the arti­cle abstract here. See also Resources, Representation, and U.S. Supreme Court.

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