Source: https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/conlaw/sixth-amendment/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 23:09:46+00:00

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In its opinion in United v. Obak, the Ninth Circuit rejected a criminal defendant's argument that Article III §2 cl. 3 and the Sixth Amendment negated the jurisdiction of the United States District Court for the District of Guam over his trial.
In the panel opinion by Judge M. Margaret McKeown, the court "quickly dispense[d]" with the challenge to the district court's subject matter jurisdiction, noting that under the Organic Act of Guam, the District Court of Guam has the same jurisdiction as a district court of the United States.
Under Article III, Section 2, clause 3, “Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.” U.S. Const. Art. III § 2, cl. 3. The Sixth Amendment guarantees a right to a jury trial in “the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law.” U.S. Const. amend. VI.
The issue, however, is whether such constitutional rights extend to the residents of Guam, an "unincorporated territory," because apart from "certain 'fundamental rights,' constitutional rights do not automatically apply to unincorporated territories such as Guam" and Congress must extend other constitutional rights by statute.
The court held that under the Organic Act of Guam Congress had not extended Article III §2 to persons residing in Guam, citing a 1954 Ninth Circuit case which the court stated "still stands."
To give effect to the congressional extension of the Sixth Amendment to Guam, it makes no common sense to claim that Guam is not a state or a district such that venue cannot be laid in Guam. Otherwise, having the same “force and effect” in Guam as “in any State of the United States” would strip away part of the amendment as extended to Guam.
To hold differently would require us to ignore the constitutional and statutory framework established for Guam, overturn established precedent, and effectively strip federal district courts located in unincorporated territories of the ability to hear certain cases.
Yet while the court's conclusion seems correct, it does illustrate the continuing diminished constitutional status of United States citizens residing in United States territories.
Judge Irene Berger of the Southern District of West Virginia issued a Memorandum Opinion and Order clarifying and amending but essentially reaffirming her extensive "gag" order in United States v. Blankenship, the criminal prosecution (which some say is unprecedented) of CEO Don Blankenship (pictured below) of Massey Energy for his alleged responsibility for the the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster. Recall Blankenship as the outsized contributor to the campaign of Brent Benjamin for the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals; as a Justice Benjamin ruled in a case involving Massey Coal. The 2009 sharply divided Supreme Court opinion in Caperton v. Massey Coal held that the failure of Benjamin to recuse himself violated due process. The case is the subject of the book The Price of Justice.
To say that Blankenship is controversial - - - given the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster and Caperton with its underlying facts - - - is probably an understatement. And Judge Berger has a difficult task attempting to protect Blankenship's rights to an impartial jury and fair trial. But do Judge Berger's orders go too far?
The objections to Berger's original orders were filed as a motion to intervene by the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, Charleston Gazette, National Public Radio, Inc., and the Friends of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, Inc.. Judge Berger allowed the intervention for the limited purpose of challenging the previous orders and found that the press organizations had constitutional standing.
the discretion and, more importantly, the duty to take specific, reasonable steps to guard against prejudice at the outset where it has knowledge, given prior publicity, that continued publicity, regarding the facts underlying the indictment, is likely to taint prospective jurors. Courts do not exist or operate in a vacuum. In the Southern District of West Virginia, we live in coal country. Many of our families depend on coal mining for their livelihood. Many families and communities within the Southern District of this state were impacted by the deaths of the miners in the Upper Big Branch mine explosion referenced in the indictment. Interest in this case is, understandably, heightened by that loss of life. In short, the environment matters.
Judge Berger stressed that the court's order "is not directed toward the press." Instead, it limits the "parties" from communicating with press (and "only limits the subject matter") and keeps documents filed in the court case sealed.
Yet three questions remain about the orders.
potential witnesses, including actual and alleged victims, investigators, family members of actual and alleged victims as well as of the Defendant.
Later, she states that allowing " a potential trial participant to speak through his or her family member would eviscerate the protective measures, and is further evidence of the need for the inclusive order."
Yet "family" here could potentially be quite broad, especially in the context of rural West Virginia.
any documents that do not contain information or argument related to the facts and substance of the underlying case do not fall within the purview of the [original] order, and should be publicly accessible.
Yet the standard does seem murky, and of course the press will have a difficult time objecting to the non-release of pleadings or other documents.
Third and last, Judge Berger's rejection of change of venue (as well as voir dire) as lesser restrictions of the First Amendment rights of the press (and public) as "not feasible options at this time" is interesting. Berger outlines the preference for an accused to be tried in the district in which the crime is alleged to have been committed. She writes that transfer of venue "takes place after pretrial publicity has tainted the jury pool such that a jury cannot be seated within the district." Thus, she essentially elevates the "right" to be tried in the alleged-crime's district over both the First and Sixth Amendment rights.
Judge Berger has crafted a delicate balance which will most likely need continuing calibration. Her task to prevent a "Roman holiday" for the media (as the Court said in Sheppard) is not only operative during the pre-trial publicity stage but will undoubtedly be pronounced during the trial itself.
A divided three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit this week upheld Arizona's Proposition 100, a ballot measure passed by Arizona voters that amended the state constitution to preclude bail for persons charged with certain serious felonies if the person entered or remained in the United States without proper authorization.
The ruling gives states some space for regulating unauthorized immigrants through the state criminal justice system, even as it reaffirms federal authority over immigration matters generally. What makes Prop 100 valid, according to the court, is that (1) it's not punitive (it's regulatory), (2) it's reasonably related to the state's interest in preventing flight of individuals charged with crimes, and (3) it piggy-backs on federal immigration determinations (and doesn't make those determinations itself).
The court in Valenzuela v. County of Maricopa ruled that Prop 100 didn't violate due process, Eighth Amendment excessive bail, or the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, and that it wasn't preempted by federal immigration law.
As to due process, the court held under the two-prong test in United States v. Salerno (1987) (1) that there was no punitive purpose (the purpose was regulatory) and (2) that Prop 100 wasn't excessive in relation to its legitimate alternative purpose (because states often categorically deny bail for classes of charges). The court upheld Prop 100 as reasonably related to the state's (more than) legitimate interest in controlling flight risk. (The court upheld Prop 100 against the Eighth Amendment challenge based on the same balance.) The court also upheld Prop 100 against a procedural due process challenge.
As to the right to counsel, the court held that the initial appearance isn't a critical stage of prosecution triggering the right, and that "[b]oth we and the Supreme Court of Arizona have held that there is no constitutional right to an attorney at initial appearances." Op. at 27.
Finally, with regard to preemption, the court held that Prop 100 doesn't regulate immigration or impermissibly create a state-law immigration classification (because it piggy-backs on the federal determination of immigration status); that Prop 100 isn't field-preempted, because it deals with bail determinations for state-law crimes (that Congress didn't intend to preempt); and that Prop 100 isn't conflict-preempted, because pretrial detention without bail does not impose incarceration for federal immigration law violations--"such detention is not meant to punish an alleged immigration violation but rather to ensure presence in Arizona to stand trial for alleged state-law crimes." Op. at 35.
Judge Fisher dissented, arguing that Prop 100 is clearly punitive and is too rough a cut at achieving the state's interest: Without any evidence that unauthorized immigrants released on bail have been or are less likely to appear for trial compared to arrestees who are lawful residents, the majority accepts Arizona's unsupported assertion that all unauthorized immigrants necessarily pose an unmanageable flight risk." Op. at 37.
In her column in the NYT last week, Linda Greenhouse wonders whether the federalism argument in the challenge to DOMA in United States v. Windsor is a "Trojan horse."
Nor is this ancient history. In 2000, the court struck down a state law in Washington that gave grandparents the right to visit their grandchildren over the parents’ objection. Justice O’Connor wrote the court’s opinion, Troxel v. Granville, which was joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist.
As usual, Linda Greenhouse is worth a read, for ConLaw Profs and ConLaw students.
The Supreme Court ruled this week in Chaidez v. United States that the rule announced in Padilla v. Kentucky (2010)--that a criminal defense attorney has to advise his or her client of the deportation risks of a guilty plea--does not apply retroactively to cases already final on direct review.
Retroactivity is governed by the rule in Teague v. Lane (1989). Under that case, a person whose conviction is already final may not benefit from a "new rule" announced in a subsequent case. That is: If the Court crafts a "new rule," it doesn't apply retroactively. Only the application of a settled rule applies retroactively. Thus the question here was whether the Padilla rule--that an attorney provides ineffective assistance of counsel under Strickland v. Washington by failing to advise the client that he or she could be deported if he or she pleads guilty--is "new."
The Court in Chaidez said that the usual Strickland/IAC case does not produce a new rule, and therefore would apply retroactively. But it also said that Padilla was a different sort of IAC case. It was different because the Court in Padilla had to first determine whether the Strickland/IAC analysis applied at all to a case like that--a case involving collateral, not direct, consequences of an attorney error. That was an open question before Padilla--and one that many states had resolved against the criminal defendant. Therefore when the Court announced its rule in Padilla, it broke new ground: it answered an open question, and it answered it in a way that cut against a good deal of state and lower federal court jurisprudence. This, it said in Chaidez, meant that Padilla set out a new rule, and that it would not apply retroactively.
Justices Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ginsburg, dissented, arguing that Padilla did not set out a new rule, but instead simply applied the Strickland rule to a new set of facts.
A split three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in Stankewitz v. Wong that a death row inmate's attorney failed to provide effective assistance of counsel at the penalty phase of his trial, in violation of his Sixth Amendment right to counsel, because his attorney failed to present certain mitigating evidence. The court ordered the state of California to either vacate and set aside the inmate's death sentence, unless the state initiates proceedings to retry his sentence within 90 days, or to resentence him to life without parole.
The case comes just three years after the Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit in Wong v. Belmontes (2009), another IAC-at-sentencing case. That case held that Belmontes could not show that his attorney's performance at the penalty phase failed the prejudice prong of Strickland v. Washington because additional mitigating evidence would have been merely cumulative and because additional mitigating evidence would have opened the door to aggravating evidence that Belmontes was responsible for a second murder. The case says that a court in assessing an ineffective assistance of counsel claim at the penalty phase needs to examine both the pros and cons of introducing additional mitigating evidence, and that sometimes this evidence can be a two-edged sword.
The split on the panel, just three years after Belmontes, suggests that there's still some disagreement on the Ninth Circuit on how to assess an IAC claim at sentencing. Or, as Judge O'Scannlain wrote in dissent, "The Supreme Court took notice and repudiated [the majority's] reasoning in Wong v. Belmontes. Yet our circuit is already showing signs of backsliding." The case may give the Supreme Court yet another chance to clarify the standard.
Stankewitz is the longest-serving inmate on California's death row. He was convicted of killing a woman in a 1978 carjacking and sentenced to death. He argued on habeas that his attorney was ineffective at the penalty phase for failing to present mitigating evidence. The district court agreed, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed.
The majority (Judges Fisher and Bybee) wrote that Stankewitz showed prejudice for failure to introduce mitigating evidence at sentencing, because the available evidence was indeed mitigating, and any harm that might have come from it (i.e., the second edge to its sword) was merely cumulative of other aggravating evidence that the prosecution already introduced. According to the majority, the case thus looked more like Wiggins v. Smith and Williams v. Taylor (2000)--both finding IAC at sentencing based on counsel's failure to investigate and prepare--than Belmontes.
Judge O'Scannlain wrote in dissent that the majority may have distinguished Belmontes, but that the distinctions didn't show prejudice. Judge O'Scannlain argued that the court should have remanded to the district court to apply the Belmontes standard.
Saturday Evening Review: What's the Difference Between Equal Protection and Fair Cross-Section?
What's the difference between the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause and the Sixth Amendment's Fair Cross- Section protection?
But in other words: "not much," at least according to most courts.
Nina W. Chernoff (pictured right) tackles this issue in Wrong About the Right: How Courts Undermine the Fair Cross-Section Guarantee by Imposing Equal Protection Standards, available on SSRN and forthcoming in Hastings Law Journal. She demonstrates the consistent mistake courts make by not honoring the doctrinal distinction between equal protection (requiring intent) and fair cross-section (not requiring intent) when considering impartial jury claims. The cost of this mistake is a high one paid by criminal defendants.
Consider this: a computer error excludes every African-American from the jury pool. If there was no human intent, then there is no equal protection violation. But the criminal defendant would nevertheless be denied the posibility of a jury drawn from a fair-cross section of the community. Chernoff discusses similar cases and shows how courts conflation of equal protection and fair cross-section doctrine denies defendants relief in such situations.
This article should be of special interest to ConLawProfs who teach Criminal Procedure. But it's worth reading for anyone interested in the limits of current equal protection doctrine. The article is further discussed as my selection for the Jotwell Equality section; it's the best article I've read on constitutional equality in the last year.
My selection last year for the Jotwell Equality section was Julie Nice's terrific article on Christian Legal Society (CLS) v. Martinez.
In a pair of cases this week, Missouri v. Frye and Lafler v. Cooper, a sharply divided Supreme Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel extends to the consideration of plea offers that lapse or are rejected. The rulings are a victory for defendants in criminal systems where upwards of 97% of all federal convictions and 94% of all state convictions are the result of guilty pleas.
Still, under the rulings, criminal defendants will have no easy time in showing that their attorneys are ineffective. That's because the Court requires them to show a reasonable probability that they would have accepted a lapsed plea, that the prosecutor wouldn't have revoked it, and that the court would have accepted it. They also have to show a reasonable probability that the end result of the criminal process would have been more favorable by reason of a plea to a lesser charge or a sentence of less prison time.
And even if a defendant can jump through these hoops, there's still the question of the remedy. Under Cooper, the trial court could simply reinstate the final conviction and sentence, leaving the defendant no better than he was before the Supreme Court's rulings.
Frye arose out of a defense attorney's failure to tell his client about the prosecution's plea offer. The defendant went on to enter an open plea and received a higher sentence than the offer. The Court ruled that the attorney's failure to share the plea offer constituted deficient performance, satisfying the first prong of the Strickland test. But the Court remanded the case to the state court to determine the state law questions whether there was a reasonable probability that the prosecutor wouldn't have revoked the offer and that the court would have accepted it. If the defendant can't show a reasonable probability, there's no prejudice under the second prong of the Strickland test.
Cooper arose out of a defendant's rejection of a plea offer based on his attorney's erroneous advice that the prosecution would be unable to convict him of the charged crime. The defendant was convicted after trial and sentenced to a term 3.5 times longer than the term in the plea offer. The parties agreed that counsel's performance was deficient under Strickland's first prong, and the Court ruled that the defendant's higher sentence at trial constituted prejudice. As a remedy, the Court ruled that the state must reoffer the plea. The trial court can then vacate the convictions and resentence pursuant to the plea, vacate only some of the convictions and resentence accordingly, or leave the convictions and sentences undisturbed.
The Court in both cases emphasized that criminal justice is largely a process of plea, not trial, and that the plea process, including consideration of plea offers, is a critical stage triggering the right to effective assistance of counsel. The dissent in both cases emphasized that there's no right to a plea offer, and that the defendants in both cases were convicted after a free and fair open plea (in Frye) and a fair trial (in Cooper).
Justice Kennedy wrote for himself and Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan in both cases. Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito dissented in both.
Act 2011-535 [H.B. 56] is TEMPORARILY ENJOINED, and may not be executed or enforced. In entering this order the court specifically notes that it is in no way addressing the merits of the motions. The court will issue detailed Memorandum Opinions and Orders ruling on the merits of the pending Motions for Preliminary Injunction no later than September 28, 2011. This temporary injunction shall remain in effect until September 29, 2011, or until the court enters its rulings, whichever comes first.
The Order comes in the consolidated cases of Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama v. Bentley; Parsley v. Bentley, and United States v. Bentley. We've previously discussed each of these three lawsuits have been brought against the controversial HB 56.
The Hispanic Interest Coalition case began with a 118 page complaint filed early in July raises eight constitutional claims including claims under the Supremacy Clause (arguing that the state law is pre-empted); Fourth Amendment; Equal Protection Clause; Due Process Clause; First Amendment claims including speech, assembly, and petition clauses, the Contracts Clause, and two Sixth Amendment claims.
Parlsey v. Bentley is the clergy complaint centering on the First Amendment Free Exercise Clause.
United States v. Bentley marks the DOJ's entry into the controversy, raising Supremacy Clause arguments as might be expected.
The law was scheduled to go into effect September 1.
As New York City braces for Hurricane Irene, with the transit system being halted since noon today, and 300,000 people ordered to evacuate low-lying areas in the five boroughs, according to NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg there are absolutely no plans to address the situation of inmates at the city's main detention center on Rikers Island.
Rikers Island (pictured right) is indeed an island; it is located in the East River between Queens and the Bronx, due east of Manhattan. It practically touches the runways of LaGuardia airport, from which all flights have been suspended today and Sunday.
more than three-quarters of Rikers Island’s 400 acres are built on landfill–which is generally thought to be more vulnerable to natural disasters. Its ten jails have a capacity of close to 17,000 inmates, and normally house at least 12,000, including juveniles and large numbers of prisoners with mental illness–not to mention pre-trial detainees who have yet to be convicted of any crime. There are also hundreds of corrections officers at work on the island.
Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) urged the City to act immediately to protect the prisoners.
In Lessons from Hurricane Katrina: Prison Emergency Preparedness as a Constitutional Imperative, published in University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform and available on ssrn, Professor Ira Robbins considers the fate of the more than 8,000 residents of the Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) when Hurricane Katrina struck. Robbins notes that despite a "mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, these men and women, some of whom had been held on charges as insignificant as public intoxication, remained in the jail as the hurricane hit, and endured days of rising, toxic waters, a lack of food and drinking water, and a complete breakdown of order within OPP. When the inmates were finally evacuated from OPP, they suffered further harm, waiting for days on a highway overpass before being placed in other correctional institutions, where prisoners withstood exposure to the late-summer Louisiana heat and beatings at the hands of guards and other inmates"
Robbins argues that the situation was not merely tragic, but was unconstitutional - - - violating the prisoners Sixth and Eighth Amendment rights, as well as international human rights standards. He advocates that change should occur through a mix of litigation and legislation, including the establishment of emergency courts "to enable the administration of justice to resume promptly following serious natural or man-made disasters."
In his 2008 article, Robbins urged government officials to "internalize the lessons of Hurricane Katrina, which demonstrated the consequences of inadequate preparation and planning for prisoners' safety during and after a major emergency."
New York City does not seem to be heeding Professor Robbins' advice.
In Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362 (2000), the Court considered an ineffective assistance of counsel claim under Strickland v. Washington in the penalty phase of a capital case tried in Virginia. The trial court granted the state post-conviction relief, the state Supreme Court reversed, and in subsequent federal habeas proceeding, the district judge granted habeas relief and the Fourth Circuit reversed.
With such a history, it is perhaps no surprise that the United States Supreme Court opinions were fractured. Justice Stevens delivered the Opinion for the Court, except for Part II of his Opinion.
The legislative history of § 2254(d)(1) also supports this interpretation. See, e.g., 142 Cong. Rec. 7799 (1996) (remarks of Sen. Specter) (``[U]nder the bill deference will be owed to State courts' decisions on the application of Federal law to the facts. Unless it is unreasonable, a State court's decision applying the law to the facts will be upheld''); 141 Cong. Rec. 14666 (1995) (remarks of Sen. Hatch) (``[W]e allow a Federal court to overturn a State court decision only if it is contrary to clearly established Federal law or if it involves an `unreasonable application' of clearly established Federal law to the facts'').
While this may not seem worthy of a disagreement, this is not the first time Justices Scalia and O'Connor could not reach an accord over a footnote. In the next segment of "footnote of the day," April 17, a more substantive disagreement between the Justices.
In need of a handy list (with citations) of the provisions of the Bill of Rights incorporated against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause?
The Court's opinion in McDonald v. City of Chicago, decided June 2010, is an obvious place to look and its footnotes do not disappoint.
With respect to the First Amendment, see Everson v. Board of Ed. of Ewing, 330 U. S. 1 (1947) (Establishment Clause); Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296 (1940) (Free Exercise Clause); De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U. S. 353 (1937) (freedom of assembly); Gitlow v. New York, 268 U. S. 652 (1925) (free speech); Near v. Minnesota ex rel. Olson, 283 U. S. 697 (1931) (freedom of the press).
With respect to the Fourth Amendment, see Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U. S. 108 (1964) (warrant requirement); Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643 (1961) (exclusionary rule); Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U. S. 25 (1949) (freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures).
With respect to the Fifth Amendment, see Benton v. Maryland, 395U. S. 784 (1969) (Double Jeopardy Clause); Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U. S. 1 (1964) (privilege against self-incrimination); Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co.v.Chicago, 166 U. S. 226 (1897) (Just Compensation Clause).
With respect to the Sixth Amendment, see Duncan v. Louisiana, 391U.S. 145 (1968) (trial by jury in criminal cases); Washington v. Texas, 388 U. S. 14 (1967) (compulsory process); Klopfer v. North Carolina, 386 U. S. 213 (1967) (speedy trial); Pointer v. Texas, 380 U. S. 400 (1965) (right to confront adverse witness); Gideon v. Wainwright, 372U.S. 335 (1963) (assistance of counsel); In re Oliver, 333 U. S. 257 (1948) (right to a public trial).
With respect to the Eighth Amendment, see Robinson v. California, 370 U. S. 660 (1962) (cruel and unusual punishment); Schilb v. Kuebel, 404 U. S. 357 (1971) (prohibition against excessive bail).
At issue in McDonald, of course, was the Second Amendment's right to "keep and bear arms."
In a 5-4 decision, the Court in McDonald held that this right belongs with the category of incorporated rights in footnote 12 and not with the unincorporated rights discussed in footnote 13.
The Supreme Court of India ruled last week in Ali v. State of Assam that a criminal defendant has a right to counsel under Article 21 of the Constitution of India.
The Court described Article 21 as the "heart and soul" of fundamental rights and "the most important feature of our Constitution." But the Court also cited Article 22(1), Protection against arrest and detention in certain cases; U.S. Supreme Court cases Powell v. Alabama, Gideon v. Wainwright, and Brewer v. Williams; its own precedent; and a treatise.
The Founding Fathers of our Constitution were themselves freedom fighters who had seen civil liberties of our people trampled under foreign rule, and who had themselves been incarcerated for long periods under the formula Na vakeel, na daleel, na appeal (No lawyer, no hearing, no appeal). Many of them were lawyers by professor, and knew the importance of counsel, particularly in criminal cases. It was for this reason that they provided for assistance by counsel under Article 22(1), and that provision must be given the widest construction to effectuate the intention of the Founding Fathers.
A fourth state criminal case came from California, and Justice Douglas for a six-three majority said poor prisoners were entitled to free counsel for their appeals. To any informed listener it was obvious that the same rule must apply at trials . . . . Those who had before them the printed opinions in the California case--page boys bring them around to a few newspaper reporters and the Solicitor General as they read--knew from the text that they were about to hear the Gideon case decided, because there was a reference to "Gideon v. Wainwright, decided today."
In either case, the evil is the same: discrimination against the indigent. For there can be no equal justice where the kind of an appeal a man enjoys "depends on the amount of money he has."
The Supreme Court today granted cert. in Turner v. Price, a case from the South Carolina Supreme Court rejecting petitioner's claim that he had a constitutional right to counsel in a civil contempt proceeding.
Petitioner Michael Turner appeared in South Carolina family court in 2008 on a rule to show cause why he should not be held in contempt for failure to pay child support. (He owed nearly $6,000 and hadn't made a payment in 18 months.) He was not represented by counsel. The court found him in willful contempt of the child support order and sentenced him to twelve months in a detention center, "which sentence he could purge himself of and avoid by full payment of his child support arrearage."
Here, the family court judge found Appellant in willful contempt of the support order and sentenced him to twelve months in a detention facility, stating, "He may purge himself of the contempt and avoid the sentence by having a zero balance on or before his release." This conditional sentence is a classic civil contempt sanction. Therefore, Appellant is not constitutionally entitled to appointment of counsel.
Because Appellant may avoid the sentence altogether by complying with the court's previous support order, he holds the keys to his cell door and is not subject to a permanent or unconditional loss of liberty.
The court acknowledged that it was adopting the minority position on the issue.

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