Supreme Court Says ABA Counsel Guidelines Can’t Help Ohio Death Row Inmate
In a summary disposition, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled a federal appeals court should not have judged a murder defendant’s representation based on ABA standards enacted 18 years after his trial.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Robert Van Hook, convicted of finding his murder victim at a Cincinnati bar catering to gay men. Prosecutors had accused Van Hook of luring the victim to his home, then strangling him and killing him with a kitchen knife. Van Hook was convicted and sentenced to death.
The Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that Van Hook’s lawyers were ineffective in their investigation and presentation of mitigation evidence during the sentencing phase of his trial. The 6th Circuit relied on ABA guidelines for capital cases passed in 2003 that expanded on 1980 standards broadly outlining defense counsel’s duties in all criminal cases.
“Judging counsel’s conduct in the 1980s on the basis of these 2003 guidelines—without even pausing to consider whether they reflected the prevailing professional practice at the time of the trial—was error,” according to the per curiam opinion (PDF). “To make matters worse, the court of appeals (following circuit precedent) treated the ABA’s 2003 guidelines not merely as evidence of what reasonably diligent attorneys would do, but as inexorable commands with which all capital defense counsel ‘must fully comply.’ ”
The court said Van Hook’s lawyers contacted witnesses on his behalf “early and often,” spoke with his mother nine times, and also talked to an aunt, his father and a family friend. They presented evidence that his early life was “a combat zone” and he had borderline personality disorder.
“There comes a point at which evidence from more distant relatives can reasonably be expected to be only cumulative, and the search for it distractive from more important duties,” the court said. And even if the lawyers had dug deeper, new witnesses would have added nothing of value.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote separately to say the opinion should not suggest that the ABA capital representation standards have “special relevance” when courts determine whether counsel were ineffective for purposes of the Sixth Amendment.
“The views of the association’s members, not to mention the views of the members of the advisory committee that formulated the 2003 guidelines, do not necessarily reflect the views of the American bar as a whole,” he wrote. “I see no reason why the ABA guidelines should be given a privileged position in making that determination.”
Hat tip to SCOTUSblog.
