pinklady
Drama Llama
Posts: 5,528 
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Post by pinklady on May 23, 2022 15:28:14 GMT
The court has got to be expanded and we need term limits. Democracy is really over. Thanks republicans, you suck!
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casii
Drama Llama
Posts: 5,464
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Post by casii on May 23, 2022 15:49:43 GMT
Seeing what The Innocence Project has to say.
This is without a doubt a result of having a highly politicized court. There's no pretense left.
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Post by lucyg on May 23, 2022 19:26:09 GMT
Trump may be gone (ish) but we are still doomed, apparently.  |
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Post by epeanymous on May 23, 2022 19:53:38 GMT
It's extremely, extremely frustrating.
When I was a defense attorney, as is the case with pretty much all defense attorneys, I would have clients who were convicted who would file state habeas/post-conviction claims, saying I was ineffective as trial counsel. It's routine to call in the former defense attorney as a witness at the habeas hearing. My state provided appointed counsel for habeas hearings (not all states do). But let me tell you a thing -- would you like to know the number of times that appointed counsel contacted me to interview me as a witness? Actually, literally zero. Most of the time, I would show up for the hearing, and the appointed counsel would have done little to no prep for the hearing at all.
It's deplorable what passes for justice, and what sometimes passes for "representation." And the people who get screwed are the ones who cannot afford attorneys they pick, and have to make do with what the state gives them, or no representation at all. Sometimes, state funded attorneys are awesome! Public defenders (trial and appellate counsel) are a mixed bag, but many of the best attorneys out there are public defenders. But the attorneys who get appointed to handle habeas, and paid peanuts for it? In many states, those are some of the least competent lawyers out there, and it is awful the extent to which having a bad attorney ends up procedurally waiving legitimate claims.
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Post by mom2jnk on May 23, 2022 22:01:53 GMT
The court has got to be expanded and we need term limits. Democracy is really over. Thanks republicans, you suck! Can someone please translate this for me? Or give an example? I am trying to understand the "legalese" but failing. In layman's terms, what does this mean? Thank you. |
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Post by mom on May 23, 2022 23:05:00 GMT
The court has got to be expanded and we need term limits. Democracy is really over. Thanks republicans, you suck! Can someone please translate this for me? Or give an example? I am trying to understand the "legalese" but failing. In layman's terms, what does this mean? Thank you. What it means is that in a case involving ineffective counsel, the federal courts cannot use evidence if it was not introduced at the state level. If a prisoner is trying to argue that the legal counsel they received wasn't helpful, or failed to represent them, they have to present their evidence before the case reaches federal court. |
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Post by aj2hall on May 23, 2022 23:40:15 GMT
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/23/supreme-court-ineffective-counsel-postconviction-appeals/The Supreme Court on Monday made it harder for defendants to seek relief from federal courts on claims that their convictions in state court were tainted by ineffective counsel.
The 6-to-3 decision divided the court’s majority conservatives from its liberals. It will have the most direct effect on two of Arizona’s death row inmates, one of whom claims his state-appointed lawyer failed to pursue evidence that could have proven him innocent, and another who says his lawyer did little to try to prove the inmate’s intellectual disability.
But advocates say the ruling will resonate more widely, and implicates a subset of cases where defendants had bad lawyers both at their trials and in post-conviction appeals.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a stinging rebuttal, calling Thomas’s opinion “perverse” and “illogical,” and said that it “reduced to rubble” previous Supreme Court findings that the constitutional right to effective counsel is a “bedrock principle” in an adversary system of criminal justice.
Innocence Project Executive Director Christina Swarns wrote in an op-ed column in the New York Times that Jones “lost the lawyer lottery twice.” Her organization said the ability of federal courts to conduct evidentiary hearings into such claims was crucial.
Washington lawyer Robert Loeb, who argued the case for Ramirez and Jones at the Supreme Court, said in a statement that the decision “means that a federal court can have evidence that someone, like Barry Jones, did not commit the crime supporting the death sentence, but that the court then is helpless to offer any relief.”
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Post by aj2hall on May 23, 2022 23:41:23 GMT
www.nytimes.com/2021/12/03/opinion/supreme-court-death-row-shinn-ramirez.htmlOn Dec. 8, the Supreme Court will consider arguments from two men sentenced to death in Arizona. They argue that they should be allowed to present evidence in federal court that their trial lawyers badly mishandled their cases, landing them on death row.
It is undisputed that the two men may raise claims of ineffective counsel in federal court. A 2012 Supreme Court case, Martinez v. Ryan, established just that. But Arizona now argues that a federal law, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, bars federal courts from considering evidence supporting those claims unless it was first presented in state court. How the justices rule — how they reconcile the A.E.D.P.A. and Martinez — will have important consequences for how far federal courts can go in remedying inadequate lawyering at the state level.
Consider the case of Barry Jones, one of those two men on death row in Arizona. After he was charged with murdering the 4-year-old daughter of his girlfriend at the time, he was represented at his 1995 trial by a lawyer who did no meaningful investigation into the evidence against him. The jury never heard the medical, forensic and witness testimony that would have destroyed the prosecution’s case. Left without a reason to reach a different conclusion, the jury convicted Mr. Jones of murder, and the court then sentenced him to death.
After his conviction, Arizona appointed an attorney to handle Mr. Jones’s postconviction review. This state court review was critically important because, under Arizona law, these proceedings are the first and only chance in state court for people to prove that they were wrongfully convicted because of incompetent representation. Therefore, the attorney assigned to handle his postconviction petition should have argued that because of his trial lawyer’s failures, Mr. Jones did not receive a fair trial.
But the postconviction lawyer never made that argument. Mr. Jones lost the lawyer lottery twice.
As the executive director of the Innocence Project, I know that gutting Martinez will make it all but impossible for people like Mr. Jones to regain the freedom that they so profoundly deserve. As the Supreme Court recognized in Martinez, “the right to counsel is the foundation for our adversary system.” Defense counsel is supposed to test the prosecution’s case rigorously to ensure the accurate adjudication of guilt and to safeguard the right to a fair trial. Arizona’s position would gravely erode the foundation of that system, further harming those who have already suffered the devastating and unjust consequences of incompetent lawyering.
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Post by onelasttime on May 24, 2022 18:13:05 GMT
It is shameful.
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lizacreates
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,856
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Post by lizacreates on May 24, 2022 18:28:26 GMT
SC-blessed homicide by state is what this is. That may come across as hyperbolic, but that’s what I really feel. Another perversion by a 6-3 court. Another proof that conservative justice nominees who extol the virtues of stare decisis during their confirmation hearings are full of it and should not be believed.
Additionally, the Sixth Amendment right to counsel means the right to the EFECTIVE ASSISTANCE of counsel. What, therefore, is ineffectiveness? The benchmark appeals courts have used is: whether counsel's conduct so undermined the proper functioning of the adversarial process that the trial cannot be relied on as having produced a just result. (Strickland v Washington) This is what’s called the Strickland test comprised of two prongs that must be satisfied, which btw, was created by the SC itself!: (1) Counsel's performance fell below an objective standard of reasonableness; and (2) Counsel's performance gives rise to a reasonable probability that if counsel had performed adequately, the result would have been different.
It is simply breathtaking that the SC, of all judicial bodies, would undermine all these to side with Arizona! Why?! Even knowing there’s nothing I can do, I still want to know why. Why did Roberts even assent to granting certiorari to this case? The SC could have left this alone and the appeals court’s decision would stand—release the prisoner or retry him with the new evidence.
And with all the cockamamie opinions I’ve read, this still leaves my mouth agape--the majority thinks that federal habeas proceedings “override the States’ core power to enforce criminal law” and it’s the defendant’s fault if counsel was ineffective. What the bloody hell. States retain their power to enforce their criminal laws due to state sovereignty UNLESS they do not remedy errors discovered post-conviction that clearly implicate the Sixth Amendment rights of the defendant.
Even though in habeas corpus law a state defendant has to raise a deficiency at the state level before he can seek the help of federal court, the precedent—Martinez v Ryan (decided by the SC!)—provides that he can do so in a habeas proceeding if he was denied the opportunity to do it at state level because of ineffective counsel. In other words, federal habeas corpus proceedings exist as the REMEDY. Why? Because as a civilized society, it is generally understood that we should not take away the freedom of or kill defendants if there is exculpatory evidence that may indicate their innocence.
Dear god in heaven...what the hell is with this Supreme Court.
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