Amy Howe Independent Contractor and Reporter

Posted Mon, May 14th, 2018 11:42 am

howe.amy@gmail.com

Opinion analysis: Court rules for death-row inmate whose lawyer conceded guilt

{NOTE: This post will be updated with additional analysis later in the day.}

This morning the Supreme Court overturned a Louisiana inmate’s death sentence because the inmate’s lawyer – hoping to save his client’s life – had told the jury that the inmate was guilty, even though the inmate had expressly objected to that strategy. The 6-3 ruling reiterated that the Constitution gives a criminal defendant the fundamental right to make decisions about his defense and therefore bars a defense lawyer from going against his client’s instructions, even when the lawyer’s defense strategy might seem perfectly reasonable.


The decision came in the case of Robert McCoy, who in 2011 was on trial for the shooting deaths of his estranged wife’s son, mother and stepfather. McCoy clashed with his public defenders, so his parents hired a private attorney, Larry English, to represent him. McCoy insisted that he was innocent and was being framed in retaliation for revealing that local police were involved in a drug ring, but English believed that the evidence against his client was “overwhelming.” So English first encouraged McCoy to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence; as McCoy’s trial approached, English told McCoy that he planned to tell the jury that McCoy had committed all three murders, in the hope that doing so would convince the jury to sentence McCoy to life in prison, rather than death. McCoy was furious, but English went ahead with his plan, telling the jury that McCoy was “crazy” and “lives in a fantasy world.”

English’s strategy failed: The jury found McCoy guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death. State courts in Louisiana upheld McCoy’s conviction and death sentence, rejecting his argument that English’s decision to admit McCoy’s guilt, despite McCoy’s objections, violated the Constitution. Today the Supreme Court, in a relatively brief (13-page) decision by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, ordered the Louisiana courts to give McCoy a new trial.

The majority explained that even when a defendant is represented by an attorney, he does not give up all control over his case to the attorney. A criminal defendant’s lawyer may be responsible for what the court described as “trial management” – for example, what evidence to object to and what arguments to pursue – but the defendant himself has the sole right to make some decisions, such as whether to plead guilty or to waive the right to a jury trial. The decision to maintain one’s innocence, the court reasoned, falls within the category of decisions reserved for the defendant: If the defendant tells his attorney that “the objective of ‘his defence’ is to maintain innocence of the charged criminal acts,” the court continued, the attorney must follow that instruction and cannot “override it by conceding guilt.” This means, the majority concluded, that once English knew that McCoy objected to his proposed strategy of admitting McCoy’s guilt to the jury, it was not English’s place to override McCoy’s objection.

This post was also published at Howe on the Court.

Posted in McCoy v. Louisiana, Featured, Merits Cases

Recommended Citation: Amy Howe, Opinion analysis: Court rules for death-row inmate whose lawyer conceded guilt, SCOTUSblog (May. 14, 2018, 11:42 AM), http://www.scotusblog.com/2018/05/opinion-analysis-court-rules-for-death-row-inmate-whose-lawyer-conceded-guilt/