U.S. Supreme Court to Hear Ineffective Counsel Case

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case in which it will decide how appel­late courts are to eval­u­ate claims of inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel in plea nego­ti­a­tions. The case, Arave v. Hoffman (07 – 110), is the lat­est effort by the Justices to decide whether mis­takes made by a defense lawyer war­rant over­turn­ing a crim­i­nal’s con­vic­tion or sen­tence. The appeal stems from a Idaho 1987 mur­der com­mit­ted by Max Hoffman and two oth­er men. Five weeks before his tri­al, pros­e­cu­tors offered Hoffman a plea deal stat­ing they would not seek the death penal­ty in exchange for his plead­ing guilty to first-degree mur­der. His court-appoint­ed lawyer advised him that Idaho’s death penal­ty law was like­ly to be struck down as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because it was near­ly iden­ti­cal to an Arizona law that had recent­ly been over­turned by the state’s high court. Hoffman, who doubt­ed that he was guilty of first-degree mur­der giv­en his role in the crime, fol­lowed his attor­ney’s advice and reject­ed the state’s plea deal. In 1989, he was con­vict­ed of first-degree mur­der and sen­tenced to death — a sen­tence that was reaf­firmed when the Idaho Supreme Court upheld the state’s death penalty statute. 

In 2006, a three-judge pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit over­turned Hoffman’s death sen­tence because of the ​“defi­cient per­for­mance of his coun­sel.” In the opin­ion, the court found that Hoffman’s court-appoint­ed attor­ney had nev­er before han­dled a mur­der case and failed to con­duct ​“rea­son­able research into the legal land­scape” before advis­ing his client to reject the guilty plea. Judge Harry Pregerson wrote that reject­ing the plea bar­gain was a ​“risky propo­si­tion with a sub­stan­tial down­side.” He added that were it not for the ​“flawed advice” giv­en to Hoffman by his defense attor­ney, ​“there is a more rea­son­able prob­a­bil­i­ty that he would have accept­ed the plea.”

The state is appeal­ing the 9^th Circuit’s deci­sion that found Hoffman’s defense attor­ney had been inef­fec­tive in telling his client to turn down the plea based on incom­plete research and that the defense lawyer was inef­fec­tive in insist­ing that the state prove its case, based on a belief that it could not prove a first-degree mur­der charge. The peti­tion states that the 9^th Circuit judges relied on ​“imper­mis­si­ble hind­sight” in reach­ing its con­clu­sion. The Justices will con­sid­er that chal­lenge, as well as a ques­tion of their own, when it hears the case ear­ly next year. The ques­tion added by the Justices will deter­mine what should be the rem­e­dy be for bad legal advice dur­ing plea nego­ti­a­tions if the defen­dant is lat­er con­vict­ed and sen­tenced after a fair tri­al.

(New York Times, November 6, 2007; SCOTUS Blog, November 5, 2007; Los Angeles Times, November 6, 2007). See U.S. Supreme Court and Representation.