Source: https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/frye-and-lafler-no-big-deal
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 10:16:03+00:00

Document:
Nor is there reason to believe that the decisions will present administrative problems for federal habeas courts. Most of the Circuits have recognized such claims for years, and the lower courts have experienced no more difficulty assessing plea-bargaining ineffective assistance of counsel claims than similar claims regarding trial performance.
Indeed, the Supreme Court has already recognized—and regulated—this system. Prosecutorial promises that induce guilty pleas are enforceable,7 and incompetent advice that leads a defendant to plead guilty when he would otherwise go to trial violates the Sixth Amendment.8 The question decided in Frye and Lafler is only whether that same Sixth Amendment right is violated when ineffective assistance leads a defendant who would have taken a plea offer to go to trial instead.
From the standpoint of the actual system, this is, or should be, a no-brainer. Since virtually all defendants plead guilty, usually in return for some sentencing concession as compared with the “going rate” after trial, the right recognized in Frye and Lafler is in fact more important than the converse right recognized in Hill v. Lockhart.9 While Justice Scalia argues that a defendant cannot be prejudiced by going to trial because, having ultimately been fairly convicted and tried and given a lawful sentence, he got only what he deserved,10 that objection is premised on the essentially fictive notion that the sentencing outcomes after trial are in fact just. In reality, post-trial sentencing exposures are excessive by design and serve almost exclusively to induce defendants to plead. Lawyerly dereliction that causes a defendant to go to trial rather than accept a favorable plea offer results in the imposition of a de facto sentencing penalty on that defendant, as compared with the normal sentence that would be imposed on the ninety-five percent of his peers whose conviction results from a plea of guilty.
Similarly, it will be easy for disgruntled convicts to claim, falsely, that they were not told of the plea offer. But again, this issue is similar to many claims of trial ineffectiveness. Like plea bargaining, much of the work essential to trial success takes place outside the courtroom, off the record. Convicted defendants often claim that trial counsel was ineffective in failing to investigate witnesses of whose possible value the client advised the lawyer. Even more closely analogous, prisoners very commonly claim that their lawyers coerced them not to testify, or did not tell them of their right to take the stand in their own defense. Courts routinely adjudicate these claims, and whatever can be said about such cases, they certainly have not led to widespread defendant victories.
Finally, we know that the heavens will not fall as a result of Frye and Lafler, because the cases’ rule is “new” only to the Supreme Court. The Second Circuit has held, at least since 1996, that defense lawyers must give their clients competent advice about whether to accept a plea.13 So, indeed, have virtually all the other Circuits.14 From the very first 1996 case, the Second Circuit has been prepared to give relief in the form of enforcing the offer, where the defendant can show that his lawyer failed to behave professionally and that he would have taken the offer if it had been given. I have been able to readily locate about a dozen cases in our court in which the issue has been litigated (but not many in which a defendant has succeeded).15 No doubt there are more that have been dealt with summarily, or decided in the district courts and not appealed. Those numbers are not insubstantial, but they are dwarfed by the number of cases in which, as in Hill v. Lockhart, defendants who pled guilty complained of their counsel’s ineffective advice and claimed they would have been better advised to go to trial, and even more so by the number of claims of ineffective assistance at trial. The court has been comfortably able to deal with those cases, which have rarely provoked much controversy. The heavens are still up, at least over New York, Connecticut, and Vermont.
Gerard E. Lynch is a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Paul J. Kellner Professor of Law at Columbia University. The opinions expressed in this Essay are the author’s personal views only.
Preferred citation: Gerard E. Lynch, Frye and Lafler: No Big Deal, 122 Yale L.J. Online 39 (2012), http://yalelawjournal.org/forum/frye-and-lafler-no-big-deal.
See Gerard E. Lynch, Our Administrative System of Criminal Justice, 66 Fordham L. Rev. 2117 (1998).
Frye, slip op. at 7 (majority opinion); Lafler, slip op. at 11 (majority opinion).
Lafler, slip op. at 13 (Scalia, J., dissenting).
See Lynch, supra note 3, at 2129-36.
See Santobello v. New York, 404 U.S. 257 (1971).
See Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U.S. 52 (1985).
Lafler, slip op. at 11 (Scalia, J., dissenting).
The Supreme Court has already said as much. See Premo v. Moore, 131 S. Ct. 733 (2011).
See Boria v. Keane, 99 F.3d 492 (2d Cir. 1996).
No. 10-444 (U.S. Mar. 21, 2012), http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-444.pdf (to be reported at 132 S. Ct. 1399).
No. 10-209 (U.S. Mar. 21, 2012), http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-209.pdf (to be reported at 132 S. Ct. 1376).
See, e.g., Mask v. McGinnis, 233 F.3d 132 (2d Cir. 2000) (holding that the defense lawyer’s failure to inform the prosecutor that the defendant was not a persistent violent felon subject to enhanced penalties, where the prosecutor’s harsh plea offer was predicated on a mistaken belief that the defendant was, constituted ineffective assistance of counsel).
See, e.g., Williams v. Jones, 571 F.3d 1086, 1090 n.3 (10th Cir. 2009) (citing cases in ten circuits with similar holdings).
See, e.g, United States v. Raysor, 647 F.3d 491 (2d Cir. 2011); United States v. Brown, 623 F.3d 104 (2d Cir. 2010); Puglisi v. United States, 586 F.3d 209 (2d Cir. 2009); Davis v. Greiner, 428 F.3d 81 (2d Cir. 2005); United States v. Feyrer, 333 F.3d 110 (2d Cir. 2003); Pham v. United States, 317 F.3d 178 (2d Cir. 2003); Aeid v. Bennett, 296 F.3d 58 (2d Cir. 2002); Mask, 233 F.3d at 132; United States v. Carmichael, 216 F.3d 224 (2d Cir. 2000); Purdy v. United States, 208 F.3d 41 (2d Cir. 2000); Cullen v. United States, 194 F.3d 401 (2d Cir. 1999); United States v. Gordon, 156 F.3d 376 (2d Cir. 1998); Boria, 99 F.3d at 492.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.