Adam Liptak reports in the New York Times about two cases the Supreme Court will hear today regarding effective assistance of counsel in plea bargaining. Anthony Cooper shot a woman in Detroit in 2003 and then received laughably bad legal advice. Because all four of his bullets had struck the victim below her waist, his lawyer said, Mr. Cooper could not be convicted of assault with intent to murder. Based on that advice, Mr. Cooper rejected a plea bargain that called for a sentence of four to seven years. Later he was convicted, and he is serving 15 to 30 years.
At least Mr. Cooper heard about his plea offer. Galin Frye’s lawyer never told him that prosecutors in Missouri were willing to let him plead guilty to a misdemeanor and serve 90 days in prison for driving without a license. When Mr. Frye did plead guilty after the offer expired, a judge sentenced him to three years.”
The question presented in Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye is whether a defendant who rejects a plea offer because of ineffective assistance of counsel is entitled to relief if the defendant later receives a longer sentence than the prosecution had offered under the plea. In Lafler, the Sixth Circuit held that Cooper’s attorney provided ineffective assistance in advising Cooper to reject a plea bargain, and it ordered “specific performance” of the rejected plea even though Cooper had later been convicted at trial. In Frye, the Missouri Court of Appeals did not order “specific performance,” reasoning that it lacked the power to order the state to reduce the charges against Frye. Instead, the court ordered that the guilty plea be withdrawn, and it remanded to allow Frye to either insist on trial or plead guilty to either the felony offense or whatever amended charge the state deemed appropriate.
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