> "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.
> "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?
>>"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] emodendroket|8 years ago|reply
> "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.
[+] [-] ams6110|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philipodonnell|8 years ago|reply
Absolutely freaking not. This is not how professional services works. I hope this is not actually an endemic perspective in the legal community?
[+] [-] throwwwwaway9|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] JustSomeNobody|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tokenizerrr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasonlotito|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sjg007|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bartweiss|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcguire|8 years ago|reply
Or go to an engineer or architect and ask them to design something manifestly unsafe.
One of the differences between a profession and a customer service job is telling the client "no" if the client is asking for something inappropriate.
[+] [-] notahacker|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zenbit_UX|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anigbrowl|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] analog31|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Sangermaine|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mcguire|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thephyber|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] anigbrowl|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rootusrootus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rndgermandude|8 years ago|reply
"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."
[+] [-] ralmeida|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] logfromblammo|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mcguire|8 years ago|reply
http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/16-8255...
[+] [-] s73ver_|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matte_black|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jerf|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Bartweiss|8 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] fjsolwmv|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gjmarsh|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bjartr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcguire|8 years ago|reply
http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/16-8255...
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ErrantX|8 years ago|reply
This not being possible is, I assume, the only excuse for what the lawyer has done here?
[+] [-] amarkov|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pharrington|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mnm1|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmcollins|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwwwwaway9|8 years ago|reply
NO, if the lawyer does the time for me. Otherwise, F him, it's my life
[+] [-] lr4444lr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mannykannot|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fjsolwmv|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] MaxLeiter|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] s73ver_|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rrggrr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Filligree|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] fjsolwmv|8 years ago|reply
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.