Appellate Law

CA1: typical defendant v. lawyer mess

By S. COTUS

USA v. Hicks, No. 06-2731 (6/26/08)  The defendant wants to withdraw his guilty plea.  The First has to figure out how to prevent him from doing this.  What is strange about this is that the defendant is complaining his lawyer not really giving him a chance to review a proposed plea agreement.  Apparently the proposed plea agreement was an ?exploding offer.?  The judge kept telling the defendant that his lawyer was one of the ?top five? lawyers in the state (Rhode Island), and eventually he was convicted.  More after the jump.

Sort of interesting is the First saying that collateral attacks on the conviction are the best way to address the argument that a ?refusal to heed counsel's advice to plead guilty created a conflict of interest that only deepened every time Hicks expressed his dissatisfaction with counsel.?    (Unless, all the facts appear in the record.)  There is some review over when the First claims it would remand for an evidentiary hearing.

The First rejects the argument that the judge was coersing a plea agreement, looking at the transcript in which the judges says of trial counsel, ?He's given you advice. You can rest assured it's sound and good legal advice."  This is different than ?take his advice.?  And, whatever the case, those remarks came after the offer expired.

The First says that it wasn?t an abuse of discretion to deny counsel?s motion to withdraw, because the inquiry the District Court conducted didn?t show that communication had broken down completely ? just that there were some disagreement about who to subpoena. 

Finally, the First says that IAC claims are really based on the underlying claims, so they fail.

Full post as published by Appellate Law and Practice on June 30, 2008 (boomark / email).