Posted on 05/14/2018 1:27:47 PM PDT by Mariner
On Monday, a divided Supreme Court said a court in a Louisiana murder case couldn’t accept a lawyer’s admission of his own client’s guilt over his client’s objections.
In McCoy v. Louisiana, the Court considered a basic question about the proper role of attorneys in murder cases. Robert McCoy originally filed his own appeal directly to the Supreme Court about two questions related to his conviction on three murder charges. McCoy was sentenced to death in the case.
McCoy was accused of killing three people in 2008 in a dispute with his then-wife and he was arrested after fleeing to Idaho. McCoy clashed with public defenders, briefly represented himself, and then hired an attorney, Larry English, to argue his case.
The client and his attorney disagreed about McCoy’s defense strategy, and English told the court he had doubts about McCoy’s competency due to “severe mental and emotional issues. During trial, English introduced a defense that conceded McCoy’s role in the killings as a tactic to avoid the death penalty, by stressing McCoy’s mental condition. Under testimony, McCoy insisted he wasn’t guilty and he was the victim of a conspiracy. The jury found McCoy guilty of three first-degree murder counts. The jury then recommended the death penalty.
In the 6-3 decision, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that the trial court should not have accepted English’s concession of guilt for his client.
“Larry English was placed in a difficult position; he had an unruly client and faced a strong government case. He reasonably thought the objective of his representation should be avoidance of the death penalty,” Ginsburg said. “But McCoy insistently maintained: ‘I did not murder my family.’ Once he communicated that to court and counsel, strenuously objecting to English’s proposed strategy, a concession of guilt should have been off the table.”
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
same here
The lawyer was clearly in a ‘No win’ situation. But he shouldn’t ever have admitted his client’s guilt above the client’s wishes...................
Yes.
It doesn’t pain me to say it - a stuck clock is right twice a day regardless!
It’s the right call - just wish they’d be more consistent and apply these same rationales to their political ideologies too.
One bad dude. Hope they send him to the chair.
So now we need 2 more sane Justices to go with the other three.
I would agree with Ginsburg, if I quit reading where the excerpt stopped. But if you read the article, you’ll see that his lawyer didn’t acknowledge his client’s guilt in the trial, only in the sentencing. He was arguing in the sentencing phase that his client lacked mens rea (the mental capacity to be fully guilty of the crime).
“In his dissent, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, said that the Supreme Could should not have decided the case since English didn’t really admit McCoy’s guilt in trial court.”
Sounds like Ginsburg is theorizing that had McCoy insisted he was innocent, the jurors may not have chosen the death penalty, but because his lawyer insisted he wasn’t fully culpable, the jurors did chose the death penalty. That seems to be Ginsburg presuming the jurors were acting vindictively, a presumption she has no right to make.
This will NOT result in more mercy for less culpable perps. Rather, lawyers will be stripped of the ability to over-rule perps who think it is in their best interest to refuse acknowledging their guilt even after being found guilty; deluded perps will be hammered under the full severity of the law.
“Hope they send him to the chair.”
The state has another chance to do just that.
“Faced with overwhelming evidence that petitioner shot and killed the three victims, English admitted that petitioner committed one element of that offense, i.e., that he killed the victims. But English strenuously argued that petitioner was not guilty of first-degree murder because he lacked the intent (the mens rea) required for the offense,” Alito said.
It says nothing of sentencing phase.
And argument on First Degree Murder would normally occur in the trial.
“But if you read the article, you’ll see that his lawyer didn’t acknowledge his client’s guilt in the trial, only in the sentencing. He was arguing in the sentencing phase that his client lacked mens rea (the mental capacity to be fully guilty of the crime).”
Two weeks before the trial the lawyer told him his plans and in his opening statement at the trial he told the jury his client did it.
IN this case...yes he did indeed do the crime, though as a matter of principle, the attorney representing him should have never conceded guilt against his client’s wishes.
The accused is entitled to a defense, and his guilt should never be admitted to by his attorney seeking to take the death penalty off the table on his behalf. The client has the complete right to take his chances on the defense he chooses to present. Comes up craps, he goes to the chair.
In this case, I’m OK with Life without the possibility of parole.
I am good with the chair.
In his dissent, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, said that the Supreme Could should not have decided the case since English didn’t really admit McCoy’s guilt in trial court.”
**********************************************
Well, the THREE RELIABLE CONSERVATIVES have once again identified themselves.
Never trust a lawyer.
“At the beginning of his opening statement at the guilt
phase of the trial, English told the jury there was “no way
reasonably possible” that they could hear the prosecution’s
evidence and reach “any other conclusion than Robert
McCoy was the cause of these individuals’ death.” “ (Opinion page 4).
Guilt phase is the trial on the merits. Sentencing phase is after a guilty verdict has been reached and there is a short “trial” to consider the death penalty (must be unanimous) or life (any non-unanimous verdict).
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-8255_i4ek.pdf
Of course she is right, but like a stopped clock being correct twice a day I wouldn’t hold much to her being right on the rare occasion that she is. 8>)
Right decision. If the client insists on a strategy you disagree with, paper the file accordingly and do the best you can with what the client has left you.
well, he can now proceed to a trial where prosecutors can present their evidence .. and he will again be convicted and possibly given the death penalty.
The description of the dissent in the article is lacking in accuracy.
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