Bad Plea Bargain Claim Gets Cert
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to accept a case that claims a lawyer’s advice to his client to turn down a plea bargain amounted to ineffective assistance of counsel.
The plea deal would have would have spared Idaho inmate Maxwell Hoffman the death penalty for the murder of a police informant, Reuters reports. He was later convicted and sentenced to death.
The court agreed to review the ineffective assistance claim and added a question of its own, SCOTUSblog reports. “What, if any, remedy should be provided for ineffective assistance of counsel during plea bargain negotiations if the defendant was later convicted and sentenced pursuant to a fair trial?”
The court will not reach that issue, however, if it disagrees with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the advice constituted ineffective assistance. The lawyer mistakenly believed a death sentence would be overturned on appeal
The state argues the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit used a lenient standard to decide ineffective assistance claims that favors the defense.
SCOTUSblog posted the cert petition (PDF) in the case, Arave v. Hoffman.
