Christopher Price is on death row in Alabama for the mur­der of a church min­is­ter in 1991. His cur­rent attor­neys have asked the courts to enforce the rul­ing of Gideon v. Wainwright, the land­mark 1963 deci­sion guar­an­tee­ing the right to coun­sel for all defen­dants. According to Price’s appeal, his tri­al attor­ney failed to pro­vide even a rudi­men­ta­ry defense dur­ing a penal­ty tri­al that last­ed only 30 min­utes. The attor­ney neglect­ed to ​“inves­ti­gate his back­ground for poten­tial mit­i­ga­tion evi­dence,” to ​“speak pri­or to tri­al with his fam­i­ly mem­bers, friends and school­teach­ers,” and to ​“retain a men­tal health expert despite [the attor­ney’s] pre­vi­ous acknowl­edg­ment that a men­tal health report was essen­tial to pre­sent­ing a mit­i­ga­tion case.” The brief con­tin­ued, ​“The only mit­i­ga­tion wit­ness that tri­al coun­sel called was Petitioner’s moth­er, Judy Files. Trial coun­sel had not pre­vi­ous­ly inter­viewed Mrs. Files, nor had she pre­pared Mrs. Files to tes­ti­fy. Even more crit­i­cal­ly, tri­al coun­sel was unaware that Mrs. Files had phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly abused Petitioner through­out his life and had allowed sev­er­al men with whom she had roman­tic rela­tion­ships to rou­tine­ly phys­i­cal­ly, sex­u­al­ly, and emo­tion­al­ly abuse Petitioner as well.” The low­er courts have held that even if the attor­ney’s per­for­mance was defi­cient, it was not enough to war­rant relief. On March 4, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review Price’s case.

(A. Cohen, ​“When a Minister is Murdered, There is No Right to Counsel,” The Atlantic, March 7, 2013; Price v. Thomas, pet. for writ of cert.. (U.S., denied 2013); pho­to, Tuscaloosa News, 1993). See Representation and Supreme Court. Listen to DPIC’s pod­cast on Representation.

Citation Guide