Plea Bargains and Effective Assistance of Counsel

Over at Volokh, Orin Kerr takes a look at the US Supreme Court's recent decisions about effective assistance of counsel in the context of plea bargaining. The two cases deal with scenarios that are familiar in the context of legal malpractice cases arising out of civil litigation. In one, Missouri v. Frye, the prosecutor offered a deal for a limited time but the defense counsel failed to communicate the deal on time. The accused claims that he would have accepted the deal. In the other, Lafler v. Cooper, the accused claims that defense counsel offered bad advice about whether to accept the deal or go to trial. Read the post by Kerr and, for that matter, there lots of discussion of these two important cases around the blawgosphere.