Title: A.M. v. State
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: 19S-JV-603
State: Indiana
Issuer: Indiana Supreme Court
Date: November 12, 2019

I N  T H E
Indiana Supreme Court 
Supreme Court Case No. 19S-JV-603 
A.M., 
Appellant (Defendant), 
–v–
State of Indiana, 
Appellee (Plaintiff).  
Argued: February 28, 2019 | Decided: November 12, 2019 
Appeal from the Kosciusko Superior Court 1, 
No. 43D01-1708-JD-292 
The Honorable David C. Cates, Judge 
On Petition to Transfer from the Indiana Court of Appeals, 
No. 18A-JV-618 
Opinion by Justice Goff 
Chief Justice Rush and Justices David and Massa concur. 
Justice Slaughter concurs in judgment with separate opinion. 
FILED
C L E R K
Indiana Supreme Court
Court of Appeals
and Tax Court
Nov 12 2019, 10:54 am
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Goff, Justice. 
More than half a century ago, the Supreme Court of the United States 
avowed that a child’s right to counsel is neither “a formality” nor “a 
grudging gesture to a ritualistic requirement,” but rather “the essence of 
justice.” Kent v. United States, 383 U.S. 541, 561 (1966). Since then the 
settled law has been that children enjoy a constitutional due process right 
to the effective assistance of counsel during juvenile delinquency 
proceedings.  
The law remains unsettled, however, on the standard to evaluate claims 
from children alleging ineffective assistance of counsel. Here, A.M. asserts 
that his attorney rendered him ineffective assistance during a disposition-
modification hearing. Reflecting the uncertainty in the law, A.M. and the 
State offer two competing standards for deciding the claim—one founded 
in the Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel for a criminal proceeding and 
one founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause.  
We hold today that a due process standard governs a child’s claim that 
he received ineffective assistance in a disposition-modification hearing 
during his delinquency proceedings. In assessing these claims, we 
consider counsel’s overall performance and determine whether that 
performance ensured the child received a fundamentally fair hearing 
resulting in a disposition serving his best interests. Given the facts of this 
case, A.M. has failed to demonstrate he received ineffective assistance of 
counsel, so we affirm the trial court.   
Factual and Procedural History  
Born in June 2002, A.M. has a long history with the juvenile justice 
system. At the age of ten, he had already committed three delinquent acts 
amounting to Class D felony battery with bodily injury if committed by an 
adult. He attended an alternative schooling program for several years, 
where he received special education and outpatient services for an 
emotional disability. During his time at the school, A.M. received multiple 
suspensions and several referrals to the juvenile court for fighting, 
violence against school staff, destruction of property, and possession of 
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marijuana. Eventually, the school expelled him for “fail[ing] to comply,” 
finding no relationship between his behavior and his disability and only 
slight progress in his outpatient program. Appellant’s App. Vol. II, p. 128.  
In July 2017, A.M. and his friends approached a younger boy at the 
Kosciusko County fairgrounds, forcing him into an abandoned tent so that 
A.M. could fight him. A.M. beat the other boy and kicked him repeatedly 
in the head while he was down, leaving him with severe injuries requiring 
medical treatment. A.M. later threatened the boy with a text message 
stating, “You better not tell the cops about this.” Id. at 15, 53–54. 
This incident ultimately led to a true finding of disorderly conduct, a 
Class B misdemeanor if committed by an adult. The juvenile court placed 
A.M. on supervised probation until the age of eighteen. But in the months 
that followed, he consistently failed to abide by the terms of his 
probation—leaving home without permission, threatening his family, 
skipping school, staying out past curfew, spending time with another 
juvenile delinquent, and missing his mental-health evaluations. Police also 
suspected his involvement in the burglary of a classmate’s home.  
Because his actions posed a danger to others, and out of concern for 
A.M.’s safety and best interests, the probation department recommended 
his placement with the Department of Correction (DOC). In its 
modification report, the probation department also opined that placement 
in the DOC would ensure A.M. received the necessary education and 
services. 
During a modification hearing in February 2018, A.M.’s counsel, who 
had defended the juvenile against past delinquency allegations, 
negotiated with the prosecutor to redact certain allegations from the 
Petition to Modify, including allegations that A.M. committed unrelated 
acts constituting residential burglary and theft of a handgun if committed 
by an adult. A.M.’s counsel also prevented A.M. from having to admit 
allegations that he consumed alcohol on the school bus. A.M. did, 
however, admit to allegations that he battered a random boy at the bus 
stop and that he committed various status offenses. A.M.’s counsel also 
made the following statement to the court: 
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I am befuddled by the action of [A.M.]. I think he’s a good kid. I 
think he’s got a bright future ahead of him. He’s smart, has some 
real opportunities, but the path he’s going down is leading him 
to prison and he’s just going to end up wallowing away there, 
probably spend most of his life there. You don’t break into 
people’s houses, you don’t steal guns, don’t follow the rules, get 
kicked out of school. You don’t get an education and that’s going 
to end up being his downfall. I think except for being kicked out 
of Gateway, he could have had an opportunity here. He could 
have been on home detention and shown everybody that he 
could do right. Instead he’s going to go to the DOC, go to 
Logansport for an evaluation, do his six months, eight months 
or a year, as long he does right, and hopefully will come back 
and have learned a lesson. I have a lot of hope for [A.M.]. I hope 
he understands that what’s going to happen here is not a 
punishment but rather a chance to get a leg up in life and try to 
do the right thing. I hope he does good, and when he comes back 
he can really grow and be a good kid. 
Tr. pp. 6–7.  
In adopting the probation department’s recommendation, the juvenile 
court committed fifteen-year-old A.M. to the DOC for an indeterminate 
period.  
A.M. appealed, arguing that he received ineffective assistance of 
counsel. Our Court of Appeals unanimously denied A.M.’s claim in a 
published opinion. A.M. v. State, 109 N.E.3d 1034 (Ind. Ct. App. 2018). We 
now grant transfer, thereby vacating the Court of Appeals opinion in part1 
 
1A.M. also claimed that the juvenile court abused its discretion by failing to obtain and 
consider all information relevant to his unique and varying circumstances, and by failing to 
adequately explain its reasons for imposing the most severe disposition, despite the existence 
of intermediary dispositional alternatives that had not yet been utilized. Our Court of 
Appeals rejected these arguments, which we summarily affirm. See Ind. Appellate Rule 
58(A)(2).  
 
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to decide the following unanswered question of Indiana law: What review 
standard controls juvenile ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims?2   
Standard of Review  
A juvenile’s constitutional and statutory rights to effective counsel are 
issues of law, which we review de novo. R.R. v. State, 106 N.E.3d 1037, 
1040 (Ind. 2018); see generally Bridges v. State, 260 Ind. 651, 299 N.E.2d 616 
(1973); Ind. Code §§ 31-32-2-2, -4-1. 
Discussion and Decision  
The parties agree the United States Constitution guarantees A.M. the 
right to effective assistance of counsel. They even agree that the 
Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause affords A.M. that right. They 
disagree, however, over the proper standard courts should employ when 
evaluating whether counsel renders ineffective assistance to a juvenile, 
like A.M.   
A.M. contends his ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim must be 
evaluated under the Supreme Court’s well-established Sixth Amendment 
standard in Strickland v. Washington—i.e., deficient attorney performance 
that prejudices the client’s criminal defense.3 See 466 U.S. 668, 687 (1984). 
The State counters that, because his right to counsel flows from the 
 
2 Since A.M. challenges his counsel’s performance in the disposition-modification hearing 
only, and not the prior adjudicative or dispositional phases, we confine this opinion to claims 
of ineffective assistance of counsel during a disposition-modification hearing. As the State 
acknowledged at oral argument, the adjudicative and dispositional phases differ from 
disposition modification and the question of what constitutes ineffective assistance in those 
phases may not be the same. But, more importantly, the State noted how the question of 
ineffectiveness in those phases is not properly before us. See Oral Argument at 17:50–18:50, 
34:20–34:35. Therefore, we leave for another day the decision of what ineffective-assistance-of-
counsel standard governs in the adjudicative and initial dispositional phases, particularly 
whether our opinion in S.T. v. State, 764 N.E.2d 632 (Ind. 2002), was rightly decided.    
3A.M. makes no separate ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim under the Indiana 
Constitution.  
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Fourteenth Amendment, A.M.’s claims of ineffectiveness must be 
evaluated under a due process standard governing civil proceedings, not 
Strickland’s standard for criminal proceedings.    
According to the State, the distinction between these two standards is 
important because the latter applies to civil proceedings (as in the juvenile 
justice context), which impose a less stringent standard. The due process 
standard for evaluating ineffective assistance of counsel—though applied 
in various contexts and using varying language—essentially asks whether 
counsel represented the client in a procedurally fair proceeding that 
yielded a reliable judgment from the trial court. See, e.g., Baum v. State, 533 
N.E.2d 1200, 1201 (Ind. 1989) (declining to apply Strickland’s “rigorous 
standard” to assess the performance of counsel in post-conviction cases); 
Graves v. State, 823 N.E.2d 1193, 1196 (Ind. 2005) (applying Baum rather 
than Strickland to claims of ineffective post-conviction counsel); Baker v. 
Marion Cty. Office of Family and Children, 810 N.E.2d 1035, 1039–41 (Ind. 
2004) (declining to apply Strickland to assess counsel’s performance in 
cases involving termination of parental rights); Childers v. State, 656 N.E.2d 
514, 517 (Ind. Ct. App. 1995) (declining to apply Strickland to assess 
counsel’s performance in probation revocation case).  
On one hand, we agree with the State that the constitutional genesis for 
a child’s right to effective counsel differs from that for the criminal 
defendant—and different origins yield different tests. But on the other 
hand, we cannot endorse a less stringent standard for children, given their 
vulnerability and the special relationship children share with the State by 
way of the parens patriae doctrine. Looking both at the constitutional and 
statutory origins for a child’s right to counsel, along with the juvenile 
system in which that right manifests, we see that a child’s attorney 
assumes a role in a disposition-modification hearing that is altogether 
different from an attorney in a criminal proceeding. Accordingly, we 
conclude that a child’s ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim in a 
disposition-modification hearing is better evaluated under a Fourteenth 
Amendment due process standard, not the Sixth Amendment’s Strickland 
test.  
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Yet we also conclude that Baum’s standard, which basically asks only 
whether the attorney was present, provides too low a benchmark for 
measuring counsel’s performance in juvenile proceedings. So today we 
apply a due process test assessing the ineffective assistance of counsel that 
takes into account the distinguishing features of juvenile law. This test 
considers counsel’s overall performance and then focuses on whether that 
performance ensured the juvenile received a fundamentally fair hearing 
that resulted in a disposition serving the child’s best interests. 
I. A.M.’s right to effective counsel comes from the 
Fourteenth Amendment’s due process guarantee 
and, therefore, must be evaluated under a due 
process standard and not the Strickland standard.  
Over fifty years ago, the Supreme Court of the United States handed 
down its landmark decision in In re Gault, holding that juveniles have a 
constitutional right to counsel in delinquency proceedings. 387 U.S. 1, 36–
37 (1967), abrogated on other grounds by Allen v. Illinois, 478 U.S. 364 (1986). 
Recognizing that juvenile delinquents could potentially face a “loss of . . . 
liberty . . . comparable in seriousness to . . . felony prosecution[s],” the 
high Court concluded the due process clause of the Fourteenth 
Amendment requires that juveniles have counsel to ensure they receive 
fair proceedings. Id. at 36, 41. As with an adult criminal defendant, the 
Court explained, a “juvenile needs the assistance of counsel to cope with 
problems of law, to make skilled inquiry into the facts, to insist upon 
regularity of the proceedings, and to ascertain whether he has a defense 
and to prepare and submit it.” Id. at 36 (footnote omitted).   
Though at the time Gault was decided, Indiana had long “followed the 
‘fair treatment’ under ‘due process’ rule in dealing with juvenile 
problems,” this Court, in Bible v. State, expressly acknowledged the 
Supreme Court’s mandate that “Fourteenth Amendment standards of 
procedural due process are applicable to juvenile proceedings.” 253 Ind. 
373, 385, 387–88, 254 N.E.2d 319, 325, 326 (1970). In evaluating the due 
process demands for juveniles (in the context of a child’s right to a jury 
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trial), this Court—citing the State’s parens patriae power—rejected an 
approach of grafting criminal standards wholesale onto juvenile matters 
because significant differences separate juvenile from criminal 
proceedings. Id. at 321–23 (discussing the history of juvenile law in 
Indiana). Unlike their criminal counterparts, Indiana’s juvenile courts 
provide a child “the closest scrutiny and care in order to help him to avoid 
a life of crime.” Id. at 323. To that end, under Indiana law, juvenile 
delinquency hearings are “conducted free from the formalities, procedural 
complexities, and inflexible aspects of criminal proceedings.” Id. 
Considering these differences this Court concluded that “the 
constitutional safeguards vouchsafed a juvenile in [delinquency] 
proceedings are determined from the requirements of due process and fair 
treatment, and not by the direct application of the clauses of the 
Constitution which in terms apply to criminal cases.” Id. at 326 (internal 
quotation marks omitted) (quoting Pee v. United States, 274 F.2d 556, 559 
(D.C. Cir. 1959)). 
In the years since Bible, we’ve elaborated on the differences between the 
juvenile and criminal systems, namely how the parens patriae doctrine 
animates the former system, setting it apart from the latter in both theory 
and practice. We’ve explained that Indiana’s juvenile justice system gives 
“the court the power to step into the shoes of the parents” in order to 
“further the best interests of the child.” In re K.G., 808 N.E.2d 631, 635, 636 
(Ind. 2004). This foundation for juvenile law distinguishes it from criminal 
law because, while children generally enjoy the same constitutional 
guarantees against governmental deprivation as adults, “the State is 
entitled to adjust its legal system to account for children’s vulnerability 
and their needs for ‘concern, . . . sympathy, and . . . paternal attention.’” Id. 
at 636 (quoting Bellotti v. Baird, 443 U.S. 622, 635 (1979)). Reflecting this 
goal, our statutory law gives judges “broad discretion” over juvenile 
proceedings. Id.  
Almost half a century removed from Gault and Bible, we heed their 
lessons still. Though parallels exist between Indiana’s criminal and 
juvenile systems, there remain significant differences separating the two, 
not least of which are the constitutional origins for criminal and juvenile 
rights. Since a juvenile’s constitutional rights arise from the Fourteenth 
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Amendment’s due process guarantee, they must be applied and assessed 
through a due process lens. Nevertheless, as we discuss below, we do not 
see the Baum standard as a suitable test to evaluate A.M.’s (and similarly 
situated juveniles’) ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims.  
II. A test founded in due process that ensures the 
juvenile fundamental fairness must be applied to 
assess counsel’s effectiveness in a disposition-
modification hearing.  
Though we decline to adopt the Sixth Amendment’s rigorous Strickland 
standard, we do not believe due process provides juveniles—vulnerable 
as they are—with “lesser standard[s].” See Baum, 533 N.E.2d at 1201. As 
the Supreme Court of the United States said in Gault, the child needs 
counsel’s “guiding hand” to navigate “every step in the proceedings 
against him.” 387 U.S. at 36 (citation omitted). We do not see Baum’s 
standard—which essentially asks only whether the attorney appeared to 
represent her client in a fair proceeding that resulted in a judgment—as an 
adequate measure of counsel’s performance in juvenile matters. We, 
therefore, elect to bypass Baum’s test and apply a different due process 
standard to assess whether counsel rendered the juvenile ineffective 
assistance in the disposition-modification hearing. 
We find that standard in cases evaluating parents’ right to counsel in 
termination-of-parental-rights (TPR) proceedings. On first impression, it 
may seem inapt to compare a parent’s right to effective assistance of 
counsel in a TPR matter to a child’s right to effective counsel in a 
delinquency-modification proceeding. But these two groups of litigants 
share striking similarities. First, both the parents’ and the child’s rights to 
counsel share the same statutory and constitutional origins. I.C. § 31-32-4-
1; see U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1. Second, these statutory and 
constitutional rights are vindicated in parallel proceedings that are 
“dramatically different from criminal proceedings” because they focus on 
the best interests of the child and not the child’s guilt or innocence. See 
Baker, 810 N.E.2d at 1037, 1039. 
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In Baker, this Court, when considering the method of assessing an 
ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim in TPR proceedings, rejected both 
the Strickland and Baum standards. Id. at 1036–37. The Court opted instead 
to tweak Baum’s due process test to address the important interests at 
stake:  
Where parents whose rights were terminated upon trial 
claim on appeal that their lawyer underperformed, we 
deem the focus of the inquiry to be whether it appears 
that the parents received a fundamentally fair trial 
whose facts demonstrate an accurate determination. The 
question is not whether the lawyer might have objected 
to this or that, but whether the lawyer’s overall 
performance was so defective that the appellate court 
cannot say with confidence that the conditions leading 
to the removal of the children from parental care are 
unlikely to be remedied and that termination is in the 
child’s best interest.  
Id. at 1041 (footnote omitted).4 In articulating this test, this Court reasoned 
that, “[b]ecause of the doctrine of Parens Patriae and the need to focus on 
the best interest of the child, the trial judge, who is the fact finder, is 
required to be an attentive and involved participant in the process.” Id. 
(quoting In re Adoption of T.M.F., 573 A.2d 1035, 1042–43 (Pa. Super. 1990)). 
We observed that, since TPR and juvenile proceedings require “judicial 
involvement that is much more intensive” than in most criminal cases, 
“the role of the lawyer, while important, does not carry the deleterious 
impact of ineffectiveness that may occur in criminal proceedings.” Id. 
(quoting In re Adoption of T.M.F., 573 A.2d at 1042–43).  
 
4 The Baker Court labeled its ineffective-assistance-of-counsel test as a “similar approach” to 
Baum. 810 N.E.2d at 1041 n.6. And in Graves, this Court described our Baker test as “something 
akin to the Baum standard.” 823 N.E.2d at 1196 n.4.  
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We find Baker’s reasoning instructive and relevant to the question 
before us now. Indeed, because of the similarities between parents’ and 
children’s due process rights, and between the roles of the court and 
counsel in TPR and juvenile proceedings, we draw on Baker to establish an 
ineffective-assistance-of-counsel standard for cases like the one before us 
today.  
So, when a juvenile raises an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim 
following a modified disposition, we focus our inquiry on “whether it 
appears that the [juvenile] received a fundamentally fair [hearing where 
the] facts demonstrate” the court imposed an appropriate disposition 
considering the child’s best interests. See id.; I.C. § 31-37-18-6. In assessing 
fundamental fairness, a court should not focus on what the child’s lawyer 
might or might not have done to better represent the child. Rather, the 
court should consider “whether the lawyer’s overall performance was so 
defective that the . . . court cannot say with confidence that the” juvenile 
court imposed a disposition modification consistent with the best interests 
of the child. See Baker, 810 N.E.2d at 1041. 
We now turn our attention to the facts before us to determine whether, 
under this standard, A.M.’s counsel performed ineffectively.  
III. A.M. received effective assistance of counsel 
during his disposition-modification hearing.    
A.M. believes his attorney failed to effectively assist him during the 
modification hearing because his counsel expressed confusion at A.M.’s 
downward-spiraling behavior rather than advocate for a placement other 
than the DOC. See Oral Argument at 1:15–2:02. But counsel’s argument, 
when considered in context, reflected what everybody else in the 
courtroom already knew—that this was A.M.’s last chance. Parsing 
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through the record,5 and considering counsel’s overall performance, we 
see that counsel collaborated with the judge, the probation officer, and the 
prosecutor to ensure A.M. received a fundamentally fair proceeding that 
resulted in an appropriate disposition serving A.M.’s best interests.  
The record shows that counsel negotiated an agreement in which the 
burglary and drinking allegations against A.M. were dropped. What’s 
more, counsel’s statement at the hearing acknowledged A.M.’s strengths 
and weaknesses, offering a candid assessment of A.M.’s situation. Without 
glossing over A.M.’s faults, counsel advocated for his client, calling him “a 
good kid” with “a bright future ahead of him.” Tr. pp. 6–7. Counsel also 
noted that A.M.’s best interests required that he attend school, which 
meant receiving an education through the DOC since he’d been expelled 
from the alternative program. Ultimately, counsel expressed hope that, 
through a modified disposition to the DOC, A.M. could be rehabilitated 
from a juvenile delinquent to a law-abiding adult. 
When the judge sits in a parental role over a collaborative setting, good 
advocacy may not include adversarial argument that highlights the 
juvenile’s positive traits alone. In proceedings that turn on the best 
interests of the child given the past and present circumstances, effective 
assistance of counsel that ensures fundamental fairness may take different 
forms and tones. Considering counsel’s overall performance here, we 
cannot say he performed so defectively that we lose confidence in the 
juvenile court’s disposition modification. Given A.M.’s inability to 
rehabilitate in less-restrictive settings, his expulsion from school, and his 
increasingly violent behavior, placement in the DOC proved consistent 
with his best interests. In our view, A.M.’s counsel helped ensure A.M. 
received a fundamentally fair hearing where the court reached an accurate 
disposition that furthered his best interests.    
 
5 Because A.M. brought this ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim on direct appeal rather 
than a Trial Rule 60(B) motion, we have a limited record before us. For example, we do not 
have the benefit of testimony revealing how the parties, probation, A.M.’s parents, and the 
court arrived at the decision to make A.M. a ward of the DOC.  
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Conclusion 
For these reasons, we affirm the juvenile court’s order that modified 
A.M.’s disposition to the DOC.  
Rush, C.J., and David and Massa, JJ., concur. 
Slaughter, J., concurs in judgment with separate opinion. 
A T T O R N E Y S F O R A P P E L L A N T 
Cara Schaefer Wieneke 
Joel C. Wieneke  
Wieneke Law Office, LLC 
Brooklyn, Indiana  
A TT O R N E YS F O R  AM IC I CU R IA E  J UV EN I LE LA W CE N TE R  A N D 
N A TI O NA L J UV E NIL E D EF E N DE R CE NT E R  
Amy Karozos, 
Greenwood, Indiana  
Marsha L. Levick 
Juvenile Law Center 
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 
A TT O R N E YS F O R  A P P EL LE E  
Curtis T. Hill, Jr. 
Attorney General  
Stephen R. Creason 
Angela N. Sanchez 
Lee M. Stoy, Jr.  
Deputy Attorneys General 
Indianapolis, Indiana  
Slaughter, J., concurring in judgment. 
I agree with the Court that A.M.’s ineffective-assistance-of-counsel 
claim lacks merit. I also agree that A.M.’s claim is not governed by the 
rigorous standard announced in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 
(1984). Only cases implicating the Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel 
trigger Strickland scrutiny. Instead, for non-criminal cases, counsel’s 
effectiveness is subject to the minimal procedural-due-process standard 
under the Fourteenth Amendment, which requires fundamental fairness. 
As we have held, counsel meets this standard “if counsel in fact appeared 
and represented the [client] in a procedurally fair setting which resulted in 
a judgment of the court”. Baum v. State, 533 N.E.2d 1200, 1201 (Ind. 1989). 
Relief to the client is thus available only “in the ‘extraordinary 
circumstances’” that the lawyer “abandoned the case and prevented the 
client from being heard”. Graves v. State, 823 N.E.2d 1193, 1196 (Ind. 2005) 
(quoting Harris v. United States, 367 F.3d 74, 77 (2d Cir. 2004)). See also 
Waters v. State, 574 N.E.2d 911, 912 (Ind. 1991) (“Counsel, in essence, 
abandoned his client and did not present any evidence in support of his 
client’s claim.”). This is, to be sure, a low bar for assessing whether 
counsel was constitutionally ineffective. 
We have previously invoked Baum, or a standard like Baum, in other 
fundamental-fairness inquiries. See Graves, 823 N.E.2d at 1196; Baker v. 
Marion Cty. Office of Family & Children, 810 N.E.2d 1035, 1041 n.6 (Ind. 
2004). But the Court today announces a heightened “Baum-plus” standard 
for assessing counsel’s effectiveness in this juvenile, non-criminal 
proceeding: whether counsel’s overall performance at the disposition 
hearing “was so defective that . . . [we] cannot say with confidence that the 
juvenile court imposed a disposition modification consistent with the best 
interests of the child.” (Internal citation omitted). 
My objection to the Court’s approach is that I do not perceive any 
meaningful difference between the “Baum-plus” standard the Court 
embraces today and the Strickland standard it purportedly rejects. 
Strickland asks whether counsel’s performance fell below some minimal 
level of competence, and whether the sub-par performance was 
prejudicial. Today’s “Baum-plus” standard also is a two-prong inquiry, 
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asking whether counsel’s performance was deficient and, if so, whether 
the client was prejudiced. Prejudice under Strickland is straightforward—
the result of the proceeding likely would have been different had counsel 
performed capably. But prejudice under the Court’s “Baum-plus” 
standard is unclear and prompts more questions than answers, including 
what “best interests of the child” even means in these proceedings: 
•
Is it solely a results-based inquiry?
•
Or does process matter?
Also unclear is what yardstick applies for assessing whether a given 
disposition serves the child’s best interests: 
•
Is the child’s own view dispositive?
•
Is the child’s view even relevant?
•
Is it appropriate to ask the paternalistic question whether the
outcome is good for the child’s long-term interest, even if the child
does not presently see things that way?
Yet another question is whether there must be a causal link between the 
lawyer’s deficient performance and the judicial outcome? In other words, 
if the court would have decided the matter contrary to the child’s best 
interests even if counsel had performed competently, should it matter that 
counsel was not up to snuff? The answers to these questions are not self-
evident. Rather than wrestle with these questions, I would simply apply 
the Baum standard and, on this record, affirm the trial court. 
For these reasons, I concur in our Court’s judgment but do not join its 
opinion.