> "This is a very difficult issue," he says. "Obviously most of us would think that the lawyer should just do what's in the best interest of the client in the view of the lawyer."
That doesn't seem very "obvious" to me, any more than it seems "obvious" that a doctor should just go ahead and carry out a medical procedure he recommends after I refuse it.
Your lawyer should advise you but ultimately follow your instructions. If he feels (or knows) you are guilty and you want to plead otherwise, he should decline to represent you.
> Your lawyer should advise you but ultimately follow your instructions.
... or resign.
There are lots of instances in professional services where you simply have to say 'no'. If you're not willing or able to represent your client in the way they want to be represented, the correct response is, "I'm sorry, but I'll be unable to continue to advise and represent you on this matter."
In the doctor example above, the doctor will—and should—absolutely refuse to follow your instructions to cut off your arm. (If you are insistent, you can probably find someone in the body modification community to do it for you, though a) it's probably illegal for them to do so and b) don't confuse that with legitimate medical intervention.)
Exactly that! I could swear that part wasn't in there when I started responding, but I guess I honed in on the first sentence and my reading comprehension suffered. Mea culpa.
I mean, the local Bar would have a lot to say about lawyers that don't do what the client tells them to do. And, at least in the Common Law system it is typical that lawyers will argue that guilty people are not guilty all the time. Like, the news is full of these types of cases. And the ethics of representing the guilty have been worked out pretty well by now; it's really necessary. Most Bar Associations are pretty strict and hand out disbarments all the time for scummy lawyers.
In the UK a lawyer has duties towards both his client and the court. For a lawyer to lie to the court is a serious breach of his professional ethics. To represent a client he knows to be guilty on a not guilty plea is to lie to the court.
In reality there is usually wriggle room concerning motive or the suitability of the charge, say. But I know a lawyer who has turned away clients who have flat out confessed to him.
I'm no expert, but that doesn't sound right. Specifically, it contradicts my model of Anglo-American jurisprudence, where I expect:
1) Defendants have the right to a trial, regardless of how "obviously guilty" they are in anyone's eyes.
2) Trials are, in part, about whether the state has met its burden to prove the elements of the case, regardless of the lay truth of the accused's guilt. [A]
3) Given the above, the work of a lawyer (in a trial) does not inherently involve the representation that "this defendant is innocent", but only that "there is insufficient evidence of that element of the case", which needn't be a fraud on the court, even if the prosecution's claim is true.
(With that said, more specific lies can be off limits.)
[A] A Man for All Seasons: "The world must judge according to its wits; this court must judge according to the law."
1) Yes. The lawyer can only know the client is guilty if the client tells him.
2) Yes.
3) Yes. The difficulty arises when the lawyer has been provided with evidence by the client which supports the charge.
Ultimately it's the lawyers job to present the client's case, however implausible. However, "I did it but I want to pretend I didn't" isn't a case, it's a lie.
So... you're agreeing or disagreeing that a lawyer can ethically represent a client who he believes "did it" by arguing that the evidence is insufficient?
If you agree, that's walking back on your original comment; if you disagree, that seems to go sharply against 1/2/3.
Edit: As the others note, this is going sharply against well-known legal principles. Do you have any authoritative citation that UK lawyers can't represent clients at all on a not-guilty plea while believing them to have "done it"?
Isn't there a famous movie scene where the murderer approaches a lawyer, who cuts him off and advises him on what a lawyer can do. (Anatomy of a Murder? Jimmy Stewart). He covers the issue of what the lawyer knows, and what he can do in each case. Pretty good writing.
I seem to recall another scene from Rumpole, where the character has taken on a student intern or something. While interviewing the client, the student asks, "But did you do it?" and Rumpole drags him aside and tells him, "Never ask that."
The guilt doesn't matter in a sense. For example, if the client tells the lawyer he robbed the bank, the lawyer cannot try to persuade the court that the client was somewhere else because he knows it isn't true.
But how does the lawyer know it isn't true? Is the lawyer supposed to pass judgement on the evidence? Isn't that what the trial is for in the first place?
What reason would the attorney have for not believing the information that the client confesses voluntarily under the veil of attorney-client privilege?.
I'm thinking how what you say relates to this case specifically. The client insisted in his innocence. Even if the attorney considers the evidence overwhelming, he could plead his client innocent without lying.
> But he was continually at odds with his public defenders, eventually firing them for refusing to file subpoenas he prepared for a dozen witnesses, who he said could support his alibi defense and other claims. He briefly acted as his own lawyer until his parents hired Larry English to defend him, and even then, the defendant continued to file motions in his own defense.
> English repeatedly advised McCoy to plead guilty in exchange for life in prison instead of the death penalty or to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, but McCoy repeatedly refused, insisting that he was innocent.
This is an unenviable position, to be innocent but everybody else assumes you're guilty and you don't have the resources to mount a proper defense so the "best" advice you can get is to lie and say that you are guilty so maybe the state won't kill you.
> This is an unenviable position, to be innocent but everybody else assumes you're guilty
A lawyer advising you to plea guilty is not necessarily assuming you are guilty any more than a lawyer saying that you have a solid basis for a not guilty plea necessarily assumes you are factually not guilty.
The lawyer is advising you on their opinion of where you will get the best (which may merely be “least terrible”) result from the legal system.
Now, they may or may not be doing a decent job of that, but that's a different issue.
Not from my experience. In the US I personally know a couple of public defenders, and while their case loads are big, the reason they plead guilty so much is because that's the game that the prosecutors play. The prosecutors want a slam dunk, but a trial may find the defendant not guilty. So the prosecutor trades certainty for reduced sentences. If you're lucky, you can trade down to a misdemeanor to avoid felony charges, in which case pleading guilty is a no brainer since felonies take away a lot of liberties.
As a side note, I've been told that public defenders will actually tend to get better deals from prosecutors than private counsel because they have to work together so much that they tend to know when the prosecutor will bend.
Also, I do not condone plea bargaining. I think it generally distorts justice in ways that are very corrupt, and create very mis-aligned incentives.
> "This is a very difficult issue," he says. "Obviously most of us would think that the lawyer should just do what's in the best interest of the client in the view of the lawyer."
Absolutely freaking not. This is not how professional services works. I hope this is not actually an endemic perspective in the legal community?
That is highly contextual. A coworker of mine called that the "Physician <-> Prostitute Spectrum." Certain service providers will pretty much do whatever you pay them to. Other service providers will filter their request through their expert knowledge. This also depends on the nature of the request, of course. It's not like a Doctor is going to give you a sex change you didn't ask for, if things are working correctly.
Whether to plead guilty should be up to the client, unless they aren't competent.
I get where you're coming from, but, there's a difference between not wanting to do a particular thing that your client wants you to do, and doing something different from what a client wants you to do.
A better analogy would be going to a prostitute and insisting on a condom, but then the prostitute pokes some holes in it and becomes pregnant "because you seemed lonely so I thought a child might be best for you". That would be a case of requesting one service (protected sex not resulting in pregnancy) but getting an undesirable one (unprotected sex resulting in pregnancy) solely because the service professional disagreed with "what's in the best interest of the client in the view of the [prostitute]". Which, to put it mildly, is not what you paid for. :-)
If a hired professional disagrees with a course of action that a customer has explicitly requested, the appropriate action is to decline to enter into a professional services arrangement, or break an existing one. Not just go ahead with whatever you wanted to do anyway because you think its better.
A better analogy would be going to a prostitute and insisting on a condom, but then the prostitute pokes some holes in it and becomes pregnant "because you seemed lonely so I thought a child might be best for you".
Not a better analogy. The same analogy. It's a counterpart to the unwanted sex change from the Doctor. (From what I've read, it's certain that an unasked for sex change was performed by some doctors on some infants.)
It gets difficult when you are determined to be mentally competent to stand trial, but you are clearly not mentally competent enough to make legal decisions.
> State psychiatric experts found McCoy mentally competent to stand trial.
> McCoy suffered from diminished mental capacity
> people who represent themselves in major criminal trials often have enormous mental health problems and imperception of reality.
It is a very, very high bar these days in order to be found mentally incompetent, and as there is no social safety net, the mentally incompetent are disproportionately prosecuted via the legal system.
I thought one of the bars for being mental competence _was_ something about being competent enough to play a role in your legal defense?
This seems more like the court thought he was fine and the lawyer decided the guy was mentally incompetent himself, which, given the article lists several other mistakes the lawyer apparently made, this sounds like he just was kind of a crappy/lazy lawyer.
In case anyone thinks I'm not considering the difficulties faced by overworked public defenders, I here ya, but the lawyer that screwed all this up was retained by his parents.
> He briefly acted as his own lawyer until his parents hired Larry English to defend him, and even then, the defendant continued to file motions in his own defense. English repeatedly advised McCoy to plead guilty in exchange for life in prison, but McCoy repeatedly refused, insisting that he was innocent. Finally, English embarked on a strategy of conceding his client's guilt, in hopes of avoiding the death penalty."
>>"Obviously most of us would think that the lawyer should just do what's in the best interest of the client in the view of the lawyer."
I doubt the lawyer has his client's interests in mind all the time: A new trial with more money coming up, media exposure, "25 years is jail isn't that bad, could've been life," "if we wrap it up by Tuesday, I can still make for Jeff's birthday party" etc etc. Lawyers are human and representing clients is a business. The most important period in your life is just another trial to him.
Bottom line: Unless the lawyer is willing to do his client's time, he should be overruled by the person that really stands to lose, the client.
It's not like he's gonna send you a certified letter stating those things. Especially public defenders that have another 100 cases having to attend to...it's math, x total hours a week and lots clients mean accept that freaking plea. Or lawyers that just found out that they will not get paid properly.
You don't need a certified letter to file a bar complaint. Or even to get yet another lawyer and succeed in a malpractice suit, though the latter (unlike the former) may require some money up front.
Let's rate representation from 0-100, with 0 or a negative being a drunk lawyer, sleeping through the trial, and 100 being the dream team, 10+ lawyers with unlimited funds.
What if your lawyer rates a 15 (scale 0-100) and simply says that that's what I really believed, given the evidence and resources avail ? Who is going to disbar /blame him when he recounts the challenges he faced?
I mean, any lawyer less than 70 WILL be disbarred in nearly any city larger than 1,000. Yeah, there are speed trap towns in Nevada and Alabama where this isn't happening. But 99.99% of Americans have at least a C- worth of representation.
PDs are overworked, true, but they do care deeply about the people and the job. It's not too hard to go get a much easier position with a JD. Most, if not all, PDs are there because they care (the loan forgiveness helps, but is not really worth it)
I do not want a lawyer that was either hired by me or assigned to me making decisions unilaterally for me. They are there to interpret the law for me and to present me options. I then choose what to do. If they still want to represent me, that's up to them.
There are cases of body integrity identity disorder (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_integrity_identity_disord...) being treated by amputation. It's a rare condition, but the discussion about the ethics of voluntary amputation as treatment is quite extensive:
in the first example the doctor is compelling the patient to do something and the patient exercises her right to refuse. In the second example the patient is compelling to the doctor to do something and the doctor exercises her right to refuse. You never have a 'right' to compel another person to do anything. You may have legal, ethical or moral reasons to compel someone to do something, but you never have a right to.
I think this is mostly right but it is worth noting that in some cases doctors are obligated to act. If I run into the ER with a serious issue and a doctor says "sorry, I can't treat you right now, it's my coffee break" that can be malpractice.
You walk into my house. I have the right to compel you to leave. You try to stab me. I have the right to compel you to stop with reasonable force. You arbitrarily try to deny my passport application because you don't like my face. I get a Writ of Mandamus issued against you and compel you to do your job. We enter into an agreement which you breach. I obtain an order mandating specific performance and compel you to personally do what we agreed upon. You're wanted for arrest and I'm a peace officer. I compel you to come down to the station.
I can go on all day.
The poster above you does not understand what a 'right' is and is trying to make a point about positive vs negative rights, but doesn't actually understand the distinction.
You just listed a bunch of examples where people are legally compelled to do something, which I mentioned.
> The poster above you does not understand what a 'right' is and is trying to make a point about positive vs negative rights, but doesn't actually understand the distinction.
I think it's fitting. In the US, we tend to side with supporting the rights of either party to choose not to preform an action.
Patient has the right to not undergo treatment.
Doctor has the right to not preform treatment.
It stems from respecting a persons right to liberty, and when trying to respect some other rights of one party involves the forced action of another party, it often may incroach on right to liberty of the latter party.
The idea of when it's acceptable to encroach on someones liberty using some type of forced complience is a complicated dance, as it should be. Personally, I usually lean on the side of respecting liberty above others. This necessarily involves respecting everyone's right to excercise their liberty in order to be an asshole, idiot, bigot, etc.
I think this is contained within "do no harm". There is an inherent risk in all treatment, even if it's 0.01% or 99%. We can't force that risk on the patient, even if the odds and upsides are objectively great.
In the latter there's no clear upside other than "for fun", and definite harm.
The line is drawn between "do no harm" and "force good".
I think you've hit on the nub of the problem: what "causes no harm" to the client in the lawyer-client relationship, and are lawyers supposed to act like doctors?
It's in the interests of the judicial system that each client is entitled to a vigorous defense on a level playing field. That's the only thing that keeps the system working (as broken as it is). It's in the interests of the clients to do various things. Those things do not necessarily involve a vigorous defense or the best possible outcome for them.
If I signed a paper absolving my lawyer from damages, then asked him to punch me in the nose, should he? I don't see why not. If I did the same thing with my doctor, should he? Absolutely not.
This is the study of ethics, that is, the types of behaviors that professionals expect of one another as part of their profession. Ethically, I think the lawyer felt he should enter and defend the guilty plea. Whether or not that is the correct ethical decision -- and whether or not that decision is in the best interests of the judicial system -- is the interesting part.
> Directly contradicting his client's instructions, he suggested that McCoy suffered from diminished mental capacity and should therefore only be convicted of second-degree murder. But as the prosecutor would soon explain to the jury, that defense was legally unavailable to McCoy because Louisiana only allows a diminished capacity argument if the defendant has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. It was one of many mistakes English appears to have made during the trial.
Seems like this might be a boutique definition of "vigorous defense."
Hey, deliberately setting your client up for a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel could be considered a vigorous, even self-sacrificing, defense approach, though it's quite unorthodox (as well as both unethical and unlawful.)
There's a gap here that the lawyer (and the expert quoted) is talking about. At some point, you are menally impaired enough that the state should treat you differently. You are incapable of knowing right from wrong. But just before that point, there are a ton of folks who are severely impaired who might either wish self-harm or take actions that consistently harm themselves. How should we treat those folks?
He was judged competent to stand trial, though. If he wasn't, it seems like the problem is with the way that determination is reached, not in his not taking his lawyer's advice.
Is there a difference between "standing trial" and managing your defense? If so, people could fall into the cracks. I think that's what the article is getting at. If not, then either you're able to stand trial or you aren't. If so, you should be able to make whatever decisions you'd like.
(I'm a big lover of freedom, so I'm in the second camp. If you're able to stand trial you're able to plea anything you'd like. But I guess there's some question here because of the public's desire not to let anybody be put to death by the courts that might have avoided it with a better defense?)
If they decide this lawyer did the right thing then it seems to me like we've created three tiers where there used to be two: competent and incompetent. Now there's competent to stand trial, competent to stand trial yet incompetent to defend themselves, and completely incompetent to stand trial. Things would get a lot more complicated.
Doctors often do not honor DNR orders because there is no penalty for disobeying them while they can face severe penalties for failing to save someone's life if their DNR order is invalid for some reason.
According to an article I found [0], a doctor may at least theoretically be subject to legal penalties for disregarding a DNR.
> Wrongful life. Theoretically, if a patient is resuscitated in the OR against the patient's wishes, a “wrongful, life” lawsuit could be filed. Under this suit, a patient could request compensation for ensuing expenses for continued life, negligence, and battery. An Ohio appellate court reviewed a case in which a patient was resuscitated after a DNR order was documented on his chart.12 Although the court in this particular case rejected the wrongful life theory, it did uphold the possibility that battery and negligence had occurred. This case has made it certain that the advance directive is an important component of a patient's chart.
The argument proffered through is that it is necessary for their mental health. Which then begs the question, what about people who compulsively get plastic surgery? Which is exactly why the DSM carefully says that "gender nonconformity is not in itself a mental disorder. The critical element of gender dysphoria is the presence of clinically significant distress associated with the condition". Body dysmorphic disorder on the other hand is itself pathological, so continued surgeries do not rank as humane treatment.
Surgery is not the only possible answer to psychological distress, if it is one at all. Some people have body dysphoria and surgeons aren't required to weigh their distress about having an arm above everything else.
It's not that you are refusing a procedure as much as you are choosing a procedure that the doctor thinks will cause you more harm. I'm not saying this means the lawyer is right or wrong, just that the analogy wasn't quite right.
As far as I can see, changing the plea midway through is more like an intervention. And further weakening the lawyer's position, it appears he flubbed the procedure in several ways while doing so.
I don't think that was intended as an analogy, but another example of when no matter how professional someone may be, we do not force their decisions upon the people being affected.
The medical care one depends on agency of the individual, if it is an emergency and, if an adult, has a DNR or living will. Generally, adults can refuse care but the hospital/doctor/medical group will take the parent(s) to court for the benefit of a child. You see this from time to time when parents try to claim a non-medical exemption.
If their client is unconscious and unable to communicate their wishes or is a child, then by all means let the lawyer use their own best judgement, but when the client is an adult who has been judged mentally competent, letting the lawyer override their client's express wishes is a disgusting infringement on their rights.
Interestingly, the guy saying that is supporting McCoy and claiming that the lawyer does need to respect the client's wishes. He's just claiming that it's an unintuitive legal requirement, where the rest of us seem to think it's a blatantly obvious obligation.
The defendant dismissed his first few lawyers, which is what should happen in this case. The suit is over his final lawyer, who rejected his direct instructions, announced his guilt to the court, and then sought clemency on a basis that wasn't even legally available.
This is more reminiscent of the doctor refusing to amputate your arm, and then instead cutting off your little finger while you ask him not to.
By the sounds of it the circumstances make it quite hard for the state to argue that he was given effective assistance by counsel, since it appears the counsel was not only unwilling to follow the defendant's strategy and unwilling to stand down from the case but also the only argument he was willing to make for his client was ruled legally inadmissible, meaning his only contribution to the case was to render the defendant's preferred line of defence impossible and argue for his conviction.
You have a good point. Even if you set aside all the stuff about the client and the lawyer disagreeing, if your only strategy was ruled legally inadmissible then you did a pretty poor job, whether it was your client's idea or yours.
Certainly the duty of care ought to be in full force when one is acting against a clients wishes. Ignoring an illegal defense in favor of a legal one might be reasonable; ignoring an unlikely defense in favor of an illegal one looks like a clear absence of assistance of counsel.
I wonder if there's a problem with the whole "plea" thing, mixed up with the death penalty. What if there were no pleading, every case went to trial, and the penalty was the one assigned to the circumstances of the case at the beginning of the trial. This would get rid of the abuse of plea bargaining, and the need for the defendant to strategize based on trying to manipulate the penalty.
Even if we keep the pleading stage, a guilty plea should require the approval of the judge based on his evaluation of the evidence. It should not be possible for the police to get away with punishing someone without having to present their evidence. The evidence should be submitted to the court before the pleading begins.
>What if there were no pleading, every case went to trial, and the penalty was the one assigned to the circumstances of the case at the beginning of the trial.
This is a misunderstanding of how things work and is begging the question. Part of the trial is determining what punishment is appropriate based on the facts and arguments presented in the trial. Indeed, determining the "circumstances of the case" is at the core of what a trial is.
That's fair. Perhaps what I'm thinking of is how to prevent abuse of plea bargaining -- allowing the police to bypass examination of the evidence by threatening an extreme punishment.
> allowing the police to bypass examination of the evidence by threatening an extreme punishment
Police can threaten any punishment they want. Police only get to assign punishment for a crime if they choose to end your life on the spot.
The District/State Attorney (and their assistants) are the ones that have to prosecute and are the proxy for the state that choose the opening bid for punishment.
> This would get rid of the abuse of plea bargaining
I would argue that there is little or no "abuse" of plea bargaining.
The current system has evolved from a fitness function which encourages more laws, fewer prosecutors and judges per capita, less time per defendant to plead their case in a courtroom, and more incentive for prosecutors to appear to "win" the vast majority of their cases.
There is no place in that fitness function for justice or ethics. Those who appear to get those luxuries get them entirely because they have the means to leverage the legal system (usually before/during the crime, not after the arrest).
It's unrealistic to expect that mere mortal humans to know all of the laws that govern them (I doubt most people have read more than a paragraph of state laws that govern them), let alone to understand them with the expertise of a lawyer.
There's not enough resources for cities or states to allow more than ~5% of people to plead innocence in a courtroom so the plea bargaining system isn't being "abused", it's a necessary evil in order for the extremely expensive society we have.
IANAL but yeah. It seems to me that the onus here was on English to withdraw from the case. Once the guy was ruled competent it was the defense lawyer's moral obligation to do the best he could with the version of the facts offered by the defendant, however lacking in credibility that was.
I don't know about ethics standards in the practice of law in Louisiana particularly. Every state is different and Louisiana seems a bit more different than most because of the influence of the French legal tradition.
The lawyer here is (poorly) seeking to preserve his client's rights to as a possibility-mentally-ill person, notwithstanding the earlier competency findings. This is not so uncommon in death penalty trials, and again competence adjudication seems to vary by state. But in seeking to preserve his client's life, he's sacrificing his client's agency, which is a sort of liberty interest most defendants want to retain even if they are in physical custody.
It might seem to the lawyer that his client has a death wish and just can't bring himself to admit it, and suicidal intent is de facto evidence of incompetence in many jurisdictions. Also, it's not unusual for a defendant to turn on the attorney post-conviction; eg if English argued the defendant's version of events, and he was convicted and sentenced to death, the new lawyer might have sued him anyway by arguing 'my client is obviously crazy and yet English helped him to throw his life away in front of the jury instead of getting him the help he needs."
It's yet another reason I think we should get rid of the death penalty.
This seems scary. While the guy may be foolish to disregard his attorney's well-considered advice, it should absolutely be his choice on how to defend himself in court. Even if that means an inconvenient rescheduling of his trial.
Well-considered advice? The lawyer completely messed up and more or less guaranteed a first degree murder conviction and a very harsh sentence that goes with it:
"Finally, English embarked on a strategy of conceding his client's guilt, in hopes of avoiding the death penalty. Indeed, in his closing argument, he told the jury that not only was his client guilty but that he had taken any burden for this conclusion off of the prosecutor and the jury."
"Directly contradicting his client's instructions, he suggested that McCoy suffered from diminished mental capacity, and should therefore only be convicted of second-degree murder. But as the prosecutor would soon explain to the jury, that defense was legally unavailable to McCoy because Louisiana only allows a diminished capacity argument if the defendant has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. It was one of many mistakes English appears to have made during the trial."
I suppose maybe it was an overstatement to suggest it was well-considered. I was thinking more along the lines that a guilty plea to take the death penalty off the table in what appears to be a slam-dunk case is definitely a solid piece of advice. But I think I misunderstood, it appears that what he did was plead innocent and then concede that he was guilty, which did not have the benefit of sparing his life.
Still, my conclusion is the same -- the defendant should always have the right to steer his own defense, and if his lawyer actually countermands him then it should be grounds for a mistrial. And disbarment of the lawyer IMO.
Irrelevant side-effect. Or are you arguing that was intentional strategy on the part of the lawyer?
In any case, a lawyer is supposed to act as one's agent, and in this case, it certainly appears that the attorney in question was acting incompetently when not directly contradicting the defendant's desires.
As frequently happens, this will probably turn on what amounts to courtroom etiquette. Should the defendant have fired the lawyer "earlier", given no clear definition of "earlier"?
Edit: was told my irony was too subtle. That last sentence could be rewritten as, "should a defendant whose council is not actually representing the defendant correctly be required to sufficiently understand legal procedure as to accurately intuit undefined deadlines that have emerged through caselaw on their own, from prison, in order to replace the rogue council?" Kafka would only grade this a C, I think.
The case in question is that he does, but he “chose” to not exert that right while it was available to him, so he delegated legal strategy to his lawyer. What seems to be being discussed (case is in the Supreme Court) is if he has the choice to revoke his decision or fire his lawyer at any time.
He didn't delegate his strategy. He hired counsel and counsel went beyond counseling and took over decision making without the defendant's consent, which isn't obviously legal.
I understand the principle, and agree with it in general. In this particular case, though, the legal system understands he did delegate his strategy by delaying his change of lawyer in a way that could be interpreted as exploiting a loophole to keep his trial being delayed in order to avoid the death penalty.
So, in one extreme, you have the right of the individual to choose how the counsel should act, and in another extreme, if you let an individual abuse that right, you create a loophole by which a guilty criminal can postpone their trial basically indefinitely.
Basically, if this was software engineering, they found a strange behavior of the system, and are trying to define if this is a bug or a feature. That’s why the case is in the Supreme Court - it’s them who will decide if this is legal or not.
The original change of lawyers resulted in nearly a year's delay of the trial. The judge warned English and McCoy that further delays would not be appreciated.
As one of the appeal filings puts it, the right to swap out your representation is not absolute.
To make a long story short: black man in Louisiana.
The defense attorney's decision to relieve the prosecutor and jury of the burden of establishing guilt by unilaterally proclaiming it against the wishes of the defendant and contrary to the "not guilty" plea seems so incredibly irresponsible that I think disbarment should be considered.
Indeed, the judge should have paused the trial at that moment to have a little discussion with all the lawyers about what happens to people that intentionally try to cause a mistrial in their court.
I am not a lawyer, and I am not familiar with how they police their own, but if I were working for someone that wanted me to deploy untested software full of bugs and security holes straight to production, I would restrict my efforts to vigorously attempting to talk them out of it, resigning, or just doing exactly as they asked. I definitely would not independently publish a proof-of-concept malware designed to exploit said bugs and security holes. If someone is aiming a gun at their own foot, you do not stop them from doing it by blowing off their entire leg with a bigger gun, loaded with dum-dums.
The defendant was facing the death penalty, and their only defense was that they weren't there, and the whole thing was a setup by cops because he had information on them being drug traffickers. The lawyer was attempting to save his client from the death penalty, which is the best he thought he could do given the circumstances.
The venue being Louisiana, I find the defense's claim alleging that corrupt cops framed up a black patsy to be not entirely implausible. But it is more likely that if they were corrupt drug traffickers, and they wanted to discredit or otherwise silence him, they would have just killed him outright and placed a drop weapon next to the body.
I am not familiar with the evidence presented at trial, but I am familiar with several investigative journalism reports that partially reveal some of the tactics and practices used by corrupt cops and prosecutors to secure convictions of apparently innocent people. Of course, the jury would have been made up of people who are not quite so skeptical of the emissaries from justiceland, and I'd wager they are ignorant of such tactics. So it isn't surprising that the defense attorney was desperate.
By the way, it certainly sounds like the guy is guilty, but he does have a right to an adequate defense. On further investigation, the parts of the story where he tried to hang himself with a bedsheet prior to extradition, and where ballistics experts determined conclusively that the recovered bullets were fired from a particular model of weapon seem very suspicious to me. The former is strongly correlated (in my mind) with police beatings and the latter is CSI voodoo, like bite mark evidence.
I absolutely do not buy his conspiracy theory, so I'm coming at it from that angle. I've also not seen any evidence that the bullet forensics were tainted, so that's another mark against it being a setup. The idea of presenting that as their defense seems to be incredibly misguided, and seems to be an express ticket to death row. Given that, the actions of the lawyer make a lot of sense if the goal is to minimize the punishment.
A. He did it; he is guilty.
B. The justice system in Louisiana is corrupt and biased against black people and poor people.
Both can be true at once. This results in a situation where he is guilty, everyone knows he is guilty, and then everyone--including the public defenders' office--tramples over his right to due process in a rush to execute him.
The public defender had nothing to do with it. This was a lawyer his parents hired. A lawyer that was trying to save him from death row, and who saw that the client's desired strategy was coocoo crazy pants.
Does the attorney have more of an obligation to pursue the desired strategy, or to try and save the client's life?
If the public defenders had not somehow turned him against using them, he would have had at least one capital-qualified attorney from that office working his case in conjunction with the private lawyer. We're not privy to the details, but I think the likely scenario is that they were just telling him what they were going to do and ignoring his input. His input may have been cuckoo crazypants, but they still have a professional ethical obligation to take that into account. I.e. when the client says "no guilty plea", the lawyer has to discard all strategies that involve an admission of guilt.
It's probably all because his preferred strategy was 99% likely to result in a guilty verdict, with capital punishment.
As I have learned from movies and television, sometimes the defendant demands that all the obvious winnable strategies are completely off the table, and their attorney then has to be incredibly clever, to not only secure a not guilty verdict, but also uncover the real killer by forcing them to admit guilt on the witness stand. This guy's lawyer maybe watched too many of those shows, and thought admitting guilt was actually the clever courtroom twist that would lead to the happy ending?
The attorney has an obligation to act in the interests of their client. When the client is issuing instructions to the attorney that are apparently contrary to their own interests, does the lawyer do what they say they want or do what the professional believes they need?
This feels like a freshman law school essay problem, given after the class has just covered the nature of and reasons for our use of an adversarial system. In fact I suspect this will be showing up in such problems in the near future. We chose a system where lawyers are to do their best to defend their client, regardless, for various good historical reasons.
In this situation, I would accept a defense lawyer basically immediately resting their case, if they truly have nothing with which to defend their client. But standing in front of the jury and actively pushing the same content as a guilty plea would contain is going to far. Alas, there is not a law against someone being an idiot in court, it isn't even obvious how one could possibly write that law, and if the client insists on an innocent plea, at the very least the defense is obligated to not actively contradict that plea, even if all that leaves them to do is say nothing.
If you think prosecutors already have too much power, probably a pretty popular opinion around here, we certainly do not also want the defense to get into the prosecution game! Let the prosecution do its job, if it's so obvious what the verdict should be.
The thing that should stop a defense lawyer from working against their client is the chance of it harming their business. In this case, maybe this lawyer just doesn’t want to be a lawyer anymore.
Incompetently trying to get him a lesser sentence. He straight out declared that his client was guilty in favor of a defense that legally was not allowed.
It was a public defender, the client didn't have a choice to pick a different lawyer. It was this lawyer, or representing himself- unless he had the money for his own, which he didn't, because he had a public defender appointed.
Article states that public defender was replaced by someone hired by his parents. I'm going to hazard a guess that they could not afford to hire from the top quartile of criminal defense attorneys in the state.
Apparently Louisiana is arguing "Because McCoy did not try to fire his lawyer until just days before the trial, the state contends that he had let the lawyer dictate legal strategy."
This is bizarre to me. They're not saying he didn't try to fire the lawyer, they're saying he did but it doesn't count. Can anyone explain that argument in any more detail?
Yes. In fact the Judge is very deliberate in asking that you want to plead guilty and were not coerced into doing so. At least in Federal Courts they have an entire, what appears to be prepared list of questions they ask just to make sure it is your will.
Might depend on the Judge. I have witnessed Judges ask "You understand what you are doing, this will never go away, etc". Genuine inquiry to make them comfortable that the defendant knows precisely what they are doing. But you are correct, there is also a scripted line of questioning.
I can confirm that at least some judges take it seriously. The judge I clerked for paid careful attention every time, looked for nonverbal hints that the defendant had reservations, asked follow-up questions and, in at least one case that I saw, adjourned so that the defendant has more time to think it over and discuss with his lawyer.
> "Throughout the trial, McCoy kept interrupting his lawyer's concessions of guilt, even trying to fire him... Because McCoy did not try to fire his lawyer until just days before the trial, the state contends, he had let the lawyer dictate legal strategy."
So... either it's not that simple, or something else went wrong here.
It's not that simple. You can't go around firing your lawyers every time you feel like it and causing trial delays and mistrials. The state has a right to try you, and you cannot avoid that through shenanigans. Client had already had trouble and fired his Public Defender. Client had hired counsel and retained him without complaint until trial started.
If you allow shenanigans to stop a trial in process, you are essentially giving the Defendant veto power over a trial when it doesn't go his way.
At some point the Judge has to make the case happen. When and how is a tough question I'm pleased I don't have to answer.
If the lawyer believes his client is not compos mentis, to the extent he is damaging his own right to a fair trial, surely he a can file some sort of motion to relieve him of his rights?
This not being possible is, I assume, the only excuse for what the lawyer has done here?
Correct. The lawyer in this case asked for permission to withdraw, and the court wouldn't let him. (The court wouldn't agree to reschedule the case, and the defendant neither found another lawyer nor agreed to waive his right to a lawyer.)
Offhand, I wonder what the ramifications would be if a Supreme Court would be able to rule that the legislative branch resolve an apparent contradiction in laws.
It's really not even surprising anymore. When you don't have a court/justice system that works, any ridiculous situation is possible. And somehow we as citizens are supposed to have faith in a system that leads to this outcome? What's the incentive for the defendant to stick to the rules now? If he had the chance, why wouldn't he bribe or even have witnesses/jurors murdered to advance his defense in a system that does not even respect his plea? The absurdity of our laws and courts is beyond comprehension.
The problem is that if the lawyer's gambit had worked, the client would have happily benefitted from the result. Since it didn't work, he's crying foul. Private profits, public losses (or something). If this worked, it would be a novel strategy to try something radical like this, see if you benefit, and if you don't, claim the lawyer was not acting with your consent.
I don't understand: doesn't any individual counsel serve at the discretion of its client, barring mental incompetence? Title sounds like clickbait. You don't have the right to keep swapping out your county-appointed lawyer for a new one. It's a Hobson's choice.
Yes title is deceptive, and contradicts the article.
But your second statement is not accurate. The question is whether the defendant has the right to control his lawyers actions in court. Intuitively, the answer is obviously yes, but the lower courts disagree.
I'm having a hard time seeing how anyone could see the answer as "no".
I hate hypotheticals, but let's do one here because the extreme helps frame potential issue.
Let's say the man standing trial disagrees with the strategy of his counsel, he fires them and gets new counsel. Rinse and repeat, no counsel is willing to actually follow the clients wishes and put up a proper defense - this hypothetical defendant is literally unable to obtain counsel to help defend him in court.
In reality, could he have likely found counsel willing to put up a defense? Likely. But factoring in financial burden or competence of his choice of counsel, it's entirely possible he would either A) be unable to pay for a more expensive lawyer actually willing to defend him and B) a lawyer he could afford is either unwilling to put up a defense or lacks experience to do it properly.
I'm not a lawyer, but from a novice understanding of the American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct not abiding by a clients decision to enter a Not Guilty plea (which I would take to include defending that plea) is unethical - likely to prevent the model problem I described above from occurring. Specifically Rule 1.2(a).
They're not arguing that he didn't have the right to fire English, they're arguing that he could have done it earlier than just a few days before the trial, and the fact that he didn't shows he was trying to stall the trial rather than actually get the counsel he wanted.
I happen to disagree with them but that's their argument.
But the answer is already "no," at least in some cases. You generally don't have a right to make frivolous defenses (e.g., I'm not guilty because the POTUS is a lizard person in a secret alien conspiracy and they're framing me to stop me from telling the truth), and courts have no obligation to aid you in such a defense. As an extension, you don't have a right to demand that your lawyer participate in a frivolous defense. If you concede to your lawyer that you committed a crime, then you can't insist that your lawyer profess your innocence in that crime to the court.
What's at stake here is two issues:
1. Is the choice of whether or not to concede to elements of the crime (this isn't the same as entering a plea) one of the rights that defendants retain even with a lawyer?
2. Does the fact that this is a capital case color the decision? English's argument was that conceding to the murder could help reduce the sentence from execution, and that his duty to minimize his client's sentence trumps other concerns.
Personally, the answer to the first question does seem to be "yes" to me, but the second question does give me some pause.
Sorry - I didn't follow. What's inaccurate, that you can't fire your lawyer if you're (already) found mentally incompetent? Is that actually common in most states? I find it hard to believe.
The lawyer was being paid by the defendant's parents. And the lawyer was attempting to save the client from the death penalty. As it is, nobody believed the defendant's story about a drug deal gone bad and being framed by the cops, so he was convicted anyway.
A wealthy defendant wouldn't find themselves in this predicament because expert testimony would've been found to testify the defendant was insane. A plea deal would have been struck so the prosecution could avoid the expense of a lengthy trial and dueling expert witnesses. And, most defense counsel would have gladly argued the defendants innocence assertion to the last penny. Its a 6th Amendment case, but 14th Amendment issues haunt this case and many like it.
The insanity defense isn't used nearly as much as you seem to think it is, and never to the defendant's benefit. Do you think mental hospitals are nice places?
It isn't a "get out of jail free" card. It's a "stay in mental hospital instead, probably longer" card. Insanity pleas exist because the purpose of the justice system is, in principle, to improve society -- not to punish -- and prisons are in any case not equipped to incarcerate the insane.
The title is deceptive clickbait. The actual question is how much right the defendant had to block or cancel his lawyers' official actions (both public defenders and his own lawyers) he disagrees with before he fires them.
Thanks lawyer did block a not guilty plea (obviously since the case went to trial); the lawyer told the court the client was guilty during the trial, which was the lawyer's opinion.
I frequently find NPR rather biased in misrepresentation of details in its articles.
> "This is a very difficult issue," he says. "Obviously most of us would think that the lawyer should just do what's in the best interest of the client in the view of the lawyer."
That doesn't seem very "obvious" to me, any more than it seems "obvious" that a doctor should just go ahead and carry out a medical procedure he recommends after I refuse it.