Nearly two years ago I wrote an article reflecting on whether the Supreme Court’s increased attention to lawyering issues during the 2009 term was mere coincidence, or something more. (By my count, in the 2009 term seventeen cases involved concerns related to lawyer ethics and professional conduct.) Last term the Court decided eight lawyering cases, which might cause one to dismiss 2009 as mere coincidence unless we consider that over the previous decade the Court typically took up less than a handful of such cases each year. So perhaps there is something more going on...
The 2011 term opens Monday, with the Court already having granted certiorari to seven cases involving the law of lawyering (by the way, the 2009 term also opened with seven lawyering cases and the Court added ten more). Here’s a preview:
- October 4. Maples v. Thomas. In Maples (otherwise known as the mailroom mix-up case), the Court will consider whether a death row prisoner's failure to appeal a decision because it was sent to his attorneys at an address where they no longer worked constitutes cause to excuse procedural default.
- October 4. Martinez v. Ryan. This case questions whether a criminal defendant, prohibited under state law from raising an ineffective assistance claim on direct appeal but allowed to raise the claim in a first post-conviction proceeding, has a federal constitutional right to effective assistance from his first post-conviction counsel's handling of his ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim. Steve Vladeck offers a helpful summary over on SCOTUSblog, link here.
- October 31. Missouri v. Frye and Lafler v. Cooper. These cases involve separate appeals but are linked together because they address similar issues: whether bad advice from a lawyer during plea negotiations may impact a subsequent guilty verdict. Frye's attorney neglected to inform him about two deals offered by prosecutors before he pled guilty. Cooper was advised against taking a plea deal by his attorney only to be found guilty.
- November 8. Smith v. Cain. This case gives the Court another opportunity to weigh in on prosecutorial misconduct out of the District Attorney's office in Orleans Parish (the same source in Connick v. Thompson, where last term the Court overturned an $18 million jury award granted to Mr. Thompson after he was acquitted having served 18 years in prison).
- December 6. Martel v. Clair. At issue in Martel is whether a death row prisoner is entitled to a new court-appointed lawyer when the first fails to pursue critical evidence (here the evidence included exonerating DNA tests).
- Unscheduled. Filarsky v. Delia. The question presented by this case is whether qualified immunity extends to a private lawyer hired as outside counsel by local government to conduct an internal affairs investigation.