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Do You Have the Right to Plead Not Guilty When Your Lawyer Disagrees?

rrggrr 9y ago
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.
- Filligree 9y ago
  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.
gjmarsh 9y ago
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.
- Bjartr 9y ago
  If I understand correctly, it's more a script that gets followed than a genuine inquiry https://www.popehat.com/2017/05/08/the-elaborate-pantomime-of-the-federal-guilty-plea/ https://www.popehat.com/2017/05/08/the-elaborate-pantomime-o...
  - gjmarsh 9y ago
    Might depend on the Judge. I have witnessed Judges ask "You understand what you are doing, this will never go away, etc". Genuine inquiry to make them comfortable that the defendant knows precisely what they are doing. But you are correct, there is also a scripted line of questioning.
  - pdabbadabba 9y ago
    I can confirm that at least some judges take it seriously. The judge I clerked for paid careful attention every time, looked for nonverbal hints that the defendant had reservations, asked follow-up questions and, in at least one case that I saw, adjourned so that the defendant has more time to think it over and discuss with his lawyer.
ErrantX 9y ago
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?
- amarkov 9y ago
  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.)
emodendroket 9y ago
I would certainly hope so. > "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.
- jasonlotito 9y ago
  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.
  - jerf 9y ago
    I don't think that was intended as an analogy, but another example of when no matter how professional someone may be, we do not force their decisions upon the people being affected.
    - jasonlotito 9y ago
      Well, then the example fails even more so as an example, but I can see what you are saying.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    As far as I can see, changing the plea midway through is more like an intervention. And further weakening the lawyer's position, it appears he flubbed the procedure in several ways while doing so.
- tokenizerrr 9y ago
  If you choose to have your hand cut off because you think it would be awesome, I'd hope your doctor would refuse to do it.
  - 9y ago
rootusrootus 9y ago
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.
- ralmeida 9y ago
  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.
  - fjsolwmv 9y ago
    He didn't delegate his strategy. He hired counsel and counsel went beyond counseling and took over decision making without the defendant's consent, which isn't obviously legal.
    - ralmeida 9y ago
      I understand the principle, and agree with it in general. In this particular case, though, the legal system understands he did delegate his strategy by delaying his change of lawyer in a way that could be interpreted as exploiting a loophole to keep his trial being delayed in order to avoid the death penalty. So, in one extreme, you have the right of the individual to choose how the counsel should act, and in another extreme, if you let an individual abuse that right, you create a loophole by which a guilty criminal can postpone their trial basically indefinitely. Basically, if this was software engineering, they found a strange behavior of the system, and are trying to define if this is a bug or a feature. That’s why the case is in the Supreme Court - it’s them who will decide if this is legal or not.
  - mcguire 9y ago
    The original change of lawyers resulted in nearly a year's delay of the trial. The judge warned English and McCoy that further delays would not be appreciated. As one of the appeal filings puts it, the right to swap out your representation is not absolute.
JoeAltmaier 9y ago
If your lawyer disagrees, simply say the words "you're fired" followed by "Not Guilty, Your Honor"
- ralmeida 9y ago
  That’s exactly what the guy did, but there seems to be a gray area about that, explained in the article.
- roywiggins 9y ago
  > "Throughout the trial, McCoy kept interrupting his lawyer's concessions of guilt, even trying to fire him... Because McCoy did not try to fire his lawyer until just days before the trial, the state contends, he had let the lawyer dictate legal strategy." So... either it's not that simple, or something else went wrong here.
  - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
    Oh! I'm speaking from white privilege. That would certainly work for me. Seeing the man, I understand. (Not the video at the top of the article; the picture on the 2nd page) http://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/lawyer-submits-guilty-murder-plea-despite-clients-claim-they-are-innocent/news-story/f8bdb87381e3c6ba616de3e966a96df9 http://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/lawyer-submits-gu...
  - cjensen 9y ago
    It's not that simple. You can't go around firing your lawyers every time you feel like it and causing trial delays and mistrials. The state has a right to try you, and you cannot avoid that through shenanigans. Client had already had trouble and fired his Public Defender. Client had hired counsel and retained him without complaint until trial started. If you allow shenanigans to stop a trial in process, you are essentially giving the Defendant veto power over a trial when it doesn't go his way. At some point the Judge has to make the case happen. When and how is a tough question I'm pleased I don't have to answer.
    - 9y ago
matte_black 9y ago
Not only do you have the right, I don’t think it’s even legal for your lawyer to force you to plead one way or another. They can only suggest.
- jerf 9y ago
  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.
  - matte_black 9y ago
    The thing that should stop a defense lawyer from working against their client is the chance of it harming their business. In this case, maybe this lawyer just doesn’t want to be a lawyer anymore.
    - roywiggins 9y ago
      It was a public defender, the client didn't have a choice to pick a different lawyer. It was this lawyer, or representing himself- unless he had the money for his own, which he didn't, because he had a public defender appointed.
      - 9y ago
lr4444lr 9y ago
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.
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  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.
  - pc86 9y ago
    They're not arguing that he didn't have the right to fire English, they're arguing that he could have done it earlier than just a few days before the trial, and the fact that he didn't shows he was trying to stall the trial rather than actually get the counsel he wanted. I happen to disagree with them but that's their argument.
  - snuxoll 9y ago
    I'm having a hard time seeing how anyone could see the answer as "no". I hate hypotheticals, but let's do one here because the extreme helps frame potential issue. Let's say the man standing trial disagrees with the strategy of his counsel, he fires them and gets new counsel. Rinse and repeat, no counsel is willing to actually follow the clients wishes and put up a proper defense - this hypothetical defendant is literally unable to obtain counsel to help defend him in court. In reality, could he have likely found counsel willing to put up a defense? Likely. But factoring in financial burden or competence of his choice of counsel, it's entirely possible he would either A) be unable to pay for a more expensive lawyer actually willing to defend him and B) a lawyer he could afford is either unwilling to put up a defense or lacks experience to do it properly. I'm not a lawyer, but from a novice understanding of the American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct not abiding by a clients decision to enter a Not Guilty plea (which I would take to include defending that plea) is unethical - likely to prevent the model problem I described above from occurring. Specifically Rule 1.2(a).
fjsolwmv 9y ago
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.
- haZard_OS 9y ago
  I'm afraid I don't follow your reasoning here. Can you explain what you mean by NPR showing bias in this article?
logfromblammo 9y ago
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.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  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.
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    The venue being Louisiana, I find the defense's claim alleging that corrupt cops framed up a black patsy to be not entirely implausible. But it is more likely that if they were corrupt drug traffickers, and they wanted to discredit or otherwise silence him, they would have just killed him outright and placed a drop weapon next to the body. I am not familiar with the evidence presented at trial, but I am familiar with several investigative journalism reports that partially reveal some of the tactics and practices used by corrupt cops and prosecutors to secure convictions of apparently innocent people. Of course, the jury would have been made up of people who are not quite so skeptical of the emissaries from justiceland, and I'd wager they are ignorant of such tactics. So it isn't surprising that the defense attorney was desperate. By the way, it certainly sounds like the guy is guilty, but he does have a right to an adequate defense. On further investigation, the parts of the story where he tried to hang himself with a bedsheet prior to extradition, and where ballistics experts determined conclusively that the recovered bullets were fired from a particular model of weapon seem very suspicious to me. The former is strongly correlated (in my mind) with police beatings and the latter is CSI voodoo, like bite mark evidence.
notahacker 9y ago
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.
- philipodonnell 9y ago
  You have a good point. Even if you set aside all the stuff about the client and the lawyer disagreeing, if your only strategy was ruled legally inadmissible then you did a pretty poor job, whether it was your client's idea or yours.
  - Bartweiss 9y ago
    Certainly the duty of care ought to be in full force when one is acting against a clients wishes. Ignoring an illegal defense in favor of a legal one might be reasonable; ignoring an unlikely defense in favor of an illegal one looks like a clear absence of assistance of counsel.
pharrington 9y ago
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.
Zenbit_UX 9y ago
Plot twist: His lawyer is brilliant and did this on purpose to cause a mistrial years down the line knowing his client had no other alternatives.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  Arguably happens a lot already
pmcollins 9y ago
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.
mcguire 9y ago
Fillings from the case make interesting reading: http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/16-8255-opinion-below.pdf http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/16-8255...
analog31 9y ago
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.
- mcguire 9y ago
  I believe it does require judicial approval. I don't have references off hand, but I recall cases where judges have nullified deals.
- Sangermaine 9y ago
  >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.
  - analog31 9y ago
    That's fair. Perhaps what I'm thinking of is how to prevent abuse of plea bargaining -- allowing the police to bypass examination of the evidence by threatening an extreme punishment.
    - thephyber 9y ago
      > allowing the police to bypass examination of the evidence by threatening an extreme punishment Police can threaten any punishment they want. Police only get to assign punishment for a crime if they choose to end your life on the spot. The District/State Attorney (and their assistants) are the ones that have to prosecute and are the proxy for the state that choose the opening bid for punishment.
throwwwwaway9 9y ago
>>Do You Have the Right to Plead Not Guilty When Your Lawyer Disagrees? NO, if the lawyer does the time for me. Otherwise, F him, it's my life
mnm1 9y ago
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.
anigbrowl 9y ago
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.

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.

Filligree 9y ago
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.

gjmarsh 9y ago

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.

Bjartr 9y ago
If I understand correctly, it's more a script that gets followed than a genuine inquiry https://www.popehat.com/2017/05/08/the-elaborate-pantomime-of-the-federal-guilty-plea/ https://www.popehat.com/2017/05/08/the-elaborate-pantomime-o...
- gjmarsh 9y ago
  Might depend on the Judge. I have witnessed Judges ask "You understand what you are doing, this will never go away, etc". Genuine inquiry to make them comfortable that the defendant knows precisely what they are doing. But you are correct, there is also a scripted line of questioning.
- pdabbadabba 9y ago
  I can confirm that at least some judges take it seriously. The judge I clerked for paid careful attention every time, looked for nonverbal hints that the defendant had reservations, asked follow-up questions and, in at least one case that I saw, adjourned so that the defendant has more time to think it over and discuss with his lawyer.

ErrantX 9y ago

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?

amarkov 9y ago
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.)

emodendroket 9y ago

I would certainly hope so. > "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.

jasonlotito 9y ago
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.
- jerf 9y ago
  I don't think that was intended as an analogy, but another example of when no matter how professional someone may be, we do not force their decisions upon the people being affected.
  - jasonlotito 9y ago
    Well, then the example fails even more so as an example, but I can see what you are saying.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  As far as I can see, changing the plea midway through is more like an intervention. And further weakening the lawyer's position, it appears he flubbed the procedure in several ways while doing so.
tokenizerrr 9y ago
If you choose to have your hand cut off because you think it would be awesome, I'd hope your doctor would refuse to do it.
- 9y ago

rootusrootus 9y ago

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.

ralmeida 9y ago
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.
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  He didn't delegate his strategy. He hired counsel and counsel went beyond counseling and took over decision making without the defendant's consent, which isn't obviously legal.
  - ralmeida 9y ago
    I understand the principle, and agree with it in general. In this particular case, though, the legal system understands he did delegate his strategy by delaying his change of lawyer in a way that could be interpreted as exploiting a loophole to keep his trial being delayed in order to avoid the death penalty. So, in one extreme, you have the right of the individual to choose how the counsel should act, and in another extreme, if you let an individual abuse that right, you create a loophole by which a guilty criminal can postpone their trial basically indefinitely. Basically, if this was software engineering, they found a strange behavior of the system, and are trying to define if this is a bug or a feature. That’s why the case is in the Supreme Court - it’s them who will decide if this is legal or not.
- mcguire 9y ago
  The original change of lawyers resulted in nearly a year's delay of the trial. The judge warned English and McCoy that further delays would not be appreciated. As one of the appeal filings puts it, the right to swap out your representation is not absolute.

JoeAltmaier 9y ago

If your lawyer disagrees, simply say the words "you're fired" followed by "Not Guilty, Your Honor"

ralmeida 9y ago
That’s exactly what the guy did, but there seems to be a gray area about that, explained in the article.
roywiggins 9y ago
> "Throughout the trial, McCoy kept interrupting his lawyer's concessions of guilt, even trying to fire him... Because McCoy did not try to fire his lawyer until just days before the trial, the state contends, he had let the lawyer dictate legal strategy." So... either it's not that simple, or something else went wrong here.
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  Oh! I'm speaking from white privilege. That would certainly work for me. Seeing the man, I understand. (Not the video at the top of the article; the picture on the 2nd page) http://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/lawyer-submits-guilty-murder-plea-despite-clients-claim-they-are-innocent/news-story/f8bdb87381e3c6ba616de3e966a96df9 http://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/lawyer-submits-gu...
- cjensen 9y ago
  It's not that simple. You can't go around firing your lawyers every time you feel like it and causing trial delays and mistrials. The state has a right to try you, and you cannot avoid that through shenanigans. Client had already had trouble and fired his Public Defender. Client had hired counsel and retained him without complaint until trial started. If you allow shenanigans to stop a trial in process, you are essentially giving the Defendant veto power over a trial when it doesn't go his way. At some point the Judge has to make the case happen. When and how is a tough question I'm pleased I don't have to answer.
  - 9y ago

matte_black 9y ago

Not only do you have the right, I don’t think it’s even legal for your lawyer to force you to plead one way or another. They can only suggest.

jerf 9y ago
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.
- matte_black 9y ago
  The thing that should stop a defense lawyer from working against their client is the chance of it harming their business. In this case, maybe this lawyer just doesn’t want to be a lawyer anymore.
  - roywiggins 9y ago
    It was a public defender, the client didn't have a choice to pick a different lawyer. It was this lawyer, or representing himself- unless he had the money for his own, which he didn't, because he had a public defender appointed.
    - 9y ago

lr4444lr 9y ago

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.

fjsolwmv 9y ago
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.
- pc86 9y ago
  They're not arguing that he didn't have the right to fire English, they're arguing that he could have done it earlier than just a few days before the trial, and the fact that he didn't shows he was trying to stall the trial rather than actually get the counsel he wanted. I happen to disagree with them but that's their argument.
- snuxoll 9y ago
  I'm having a hard time seeing how anyone could see the answer as "no". I hate hypotheticals, but let's do one here because the extreme helps frame potential issue. Let's say the man standing trial disagrees with the strategy of his counsel, he fires them and gets new counsel. Rinse and repeat, no counsel is willing to actually follow the clients wishes and put up a proper defense - this hypothetical defendant is literally unable to obtain counsel to help defend him in court. In reality, could he have likely found counsel willing to put up a defense? Likely. But factoring in financial burden or competence of his choice of counsel, it's entirely possible he would either A) be unable to pay for a more expensive lawyer actually willing to defend him and B) a lawyer he could afford is either unwilling to put up a defense or lacks experience to do it properly. I'm not a lawyer, but from a novice understanding of the American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct not abiding by a clients decision to enter a Not Guilty plea (which I would take to include defending that plea) is unethical - likely to prevent the model problem I described above from occurring. Specifically Rule 1.2(a).

fjsolwmv 9y ago

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.

haZard_OS 9y ago
I'm afraid I don't follow your reasoning here. Can you explain what you mean by NPR showing bias in this article?

logfromblammo 9y ago

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.

s73ver_ 9y ago
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.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  The venue being Louisiana, I find the defense's claim alleging that corrupt cops framed up a black patsy to be not entirely implausible. But it is more likely that if they were corrupt drug traffickers, and they wanted to discredit or otherwise silence him, they would have just killed him outright and placed a drop weapon next to the body. I am not familiar with the evidence presented at trial, but I am familiar with several investigative journalism reports that partially reveal some of the tactics and practices used by corrupt cops and prosecutors to secure convictions of apparently innocent people. Of course, the jury would have been made up of people who are not quite so skeptical of the emissaries from justiceland, and I'd wager they are ignorant of such tactics. So it isn't surprising that the defense attorney was desperate. By the way, it certainly sounds like the guy is guilty, but he does have a right to an adequate defense. On further investigation, the parts of the story where he tried to hang himself with a bedsheet prior to extradition, and where ballistics experts determined conclusively that the recovered bullets were fired from a particular model of weapon seem very suspicious to me. The former is strongly correlated (in my mind) with police beatings and the latter is CSI voodoo, like bite mark evidence.

notahacker 9y ago

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.

philipodonnell 9y ago
You have a good point. Even if you set aside all the stuff about the client and the lawyer disagreeing, if your only strategy was ruled legally inadmissible then you did a pretty poor job, whether it was your client's idea or yours.
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  Certainly the duty of care ought to be in full force when one is acting against a clients wishes. Ignoring an illegal defense in favor of a legal one might be reasonable; ignoring an unlikely defense in favor of an illegal one looks like a clear absence of assistance of counsel.

pharrington 9y ago

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.

Zenbit_UX 9y ago

Plot twist: His lawyer is brilliant and did this on purpose to cause a mistrial years down the line knowing his client had no other alternatives.

anigbrowl 9y ago
Arguably happens a lot already

pmcollins 9y ago

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.

mcguire 9y ago

Fillings from the case make interesting reading: http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/16-8255-opinion-below.pdf http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/16-8255...

analog31 9y ago

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.

mcguire 9y ago
I believe it does require judicial approval. I don't have references off hand, but I recall cases where judges have nullified deals.
Sangermaine 9y ago
>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.
- analog31 9y ago
  That's fair. Perhaps what I'm thinking of is how to prevent abuse of plea bargaining -- allowing the police to bypass examination of the evidence by threatening an extreme punishment.
  - thephyber 9y ago
    > allowing the police to bypass examination of the evidence by threatening an extreme punishment Police can threaten any punishment they want. Police only get to assign punishment for a crime if they choose to end your life on the spot. The District/State Attorney (and their assistants) are the ones that have to prosecute and are the proxy for the state that choose the opening bid for punishment.

throwwwwaway9 9y ago

>>Do You Have the Right to Plead Not Guilty When Your Lawyer Disagrees? NO, if the lawyer does the time for me. Otherwise, F him, it's my life

mnm1 9y ago

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.

anigbrowl 9y ago

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.