Supreme Court Ruling Makes It Harder For Prisoners To Argue They Had Ineffective Counsel

[In It to Win It]

The Root via Yahoo News

In a ruling this morning, the Supreme Court said state prisoners may not present new evidence in federal court to support a claim that their post-conviction counsel in state court was ineffective in violation of the Constitution, according to CNN. The 6-3 decision will make it harder for inmates across the country to prevail on claims that they received ineffective counsel at the state court level in post-conviction proceedings.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the opinion, stated for such claims to go forward would “cause unnecessary delays,” and he said that federal courts “must afford unwavering respect to the centrality of the trial of a criminal case in state court.”

Justice Thomas also said federal courts “years later” lack the “competence and authority to relitigate a state’s criminal case.” The Innocence Project claims nearly 3,000 people have been wrongly convicted of crimes since 1989, and since 1973, 186 people condemned to death have been exonerated. In Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent, she called the decision “perverse” and said that the court had gutted precedent. She wrote that the majority opinion “reduces to rubble” many inmates’ constitutional rights.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. As an attorney, I find the USSC decision to be reckless.

In NJ, part of your "contract" with the state bar association is that you allow yourself to be assigned to clients in criminal and civil proceedings.

When I first started practicing law and I got my first assignment, I argued that I had no experience both in substantive law and procedure, that I could inadvertently put my client in jail for inexperience and put myself as the target of malpractice. My pleas fell on deaf ears. They simply said, "Learn."

I always hoped that I'd never be assigned a capital case (death penalty).

My point: If I were assigned a case that put my client in further peril with the judicial system, I'd take the blame but would always hope that s/he could appeal to the USSC. Not after today.