Opinion ID: 2140929
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Post-Fretwell Authority

Text: The Supreme Court has not elaborated on the implications of Fretwell for a conviction based on a guilty plea, and only a few federal courts of appeals and state supreme courts have addressed this question. The handful of courts who have faced the matter, however, have ultimately arrived at a reasonable probability of acquittal standard, or its functional equivalent. Most recently, in Jones v. Page, 76 F.3d 831 (7th Cir.1996) the Seventh Circuit held that no Strickland prejudice resulted from a failure to pursue an insanity defense. The defendant had pleaded guilty to three counts of murder in an Illinois state court and was sentenced to death. Id. at 834. On federal habeas review, the defendant asserted that his lawyer had been constitutionally ineffective for failing to request a complete psychological evaluation, which in turn would have been the basis for an insanity defense. Id. at 841. After concluding that the lawyer's advice to plead guilty would have been no different even if the psychological evaluation been done before the plea hearing, the Seventh Circuit held: Had Jones ignored that advice and gone to trial, the outcome most likely would have been the same, in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt. . . . [F]ailure to pursue an insanity defense therefore did not result in prejudice, much less a fundamentally unfair or unreliable result[.] Id. at 843-44 (citing Fretwell ) (internal quotation marks & footnote omitted). Other federal courts appear to read Hill and Fretwell as turning on whether the defendant would have pleaded guilty, but hinging that determination on an assessment of the outcome of a trial. These courts reasoned that because the defendant could expect a harsher sentence after trial than was available through a plea bargain, a guilty plea even with effective counsel could be inferred from strong evidence of guilt. Armstead v. Scott, 37 F.3d 202 (5th Cir.1994), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 115 S.Ct. 1709, 131 L.Ed.2d 570 (1995) is one of two Fifth Circuit decisions reasoning along these lines. In that case, the court concluded that the defendant would have pleaded guilty despite his lawyer's deficient performance, because evidence of guilt was overwhelming and the plea bargain provided for a substantially reduced sentence compared to what the defendant might have received had he gone to trial. Id. at 210-11. Although the Fifth Circuit relied primarily on the Hill test, the court also concluded that the defendant failed to meet the appreciable showing of prejudice required under Fretwell. Id. at 211. Similarly, in Mangum v. Hargett, 67 F.3d 80 (5th Cir.1995) the defendant failed to show prejudice because had he gone to trial and been convicted he would surely live out the rest of his days in prison. Id. at 86 (citing Armstead ). Under this analysis, however, prejudice would seem to turn on an evaluation of the degree of leniency available to the defendant under the plea bargain. We agree with the dissent in Evans that these matters are simply too speculative to be confidently undertaken. A more manageable and ultimately fairer test is to require an objective showing of reasonable probability of success at trial. Although Armstead and Mangum did not reason from Fretwell in the manner we do here, in each case the court ultimately relied on the likelihood of conviction in finding no Fretwell prejudice and the practical result is the same. Yet a third analytical framework is provided by Copas v. Commissioner of Correction, 234 Conn. 139, 662 A.2d 718 (1995), where the Connecticut Supreme Court addressed the proper prejudice standard for guilty pleas after Fretwell. Copas concluded that Hill required a showing that the defendant would have gone to trial on the basis of the likelihood that his defenses would succeed in providing a more favorable outcome. Id. 662 A.2d at 726 n. 10. Under that view, Fretwell did not affect the prejudice requirement in a guilty plea setting. Copas interpreted Hill to require that the defendant show the defense that was not discovered or explained to him during the plea process would have likely resulted in . . . an acquittal. Id. at 729 n. 18. Copas relied primarily on its reading of Hill that courts adjudicating ineffective assistance claims look to the outcome of a possible trial in ascertaining whether the defendant would have changed his plea. As already noted, in our view Hill 's reference to the outcome of a possible trial was not put so strongly that we can confidently extract from that case the reasonable probability requirement we hold is required under Fretwell. Indeed, various courts have read Hill in different ways for precisely this reason. However, in the end, Copas also comes to the same result as we do. We conclude that to the extent Hill does not require a defendant to show a reasonable probability of acquittal to prove prejudice in the ineffective assistance context, Fretwell requires that showing. [8] Otherwise stated, to show prejudice after a guilty pleai.e., to establish that a conviction was unfair or unreliablethe defendant must establish a reasonable probability that the trial would not have resulted in that conviction. Although we are ultimately guided by federal law on the prejudice question, our holding is consistent with prior Indiana cases (both before and after Fretwell ) on ineffective assistance of counsel. For example, in King v. State, 537 N.E.2d 503 (Ind.Ct.App. 1989), trans. denied, the Court of Appeals rejected a claim of ineffective assistance in the guilty plea setting, reasoning that the defendant failed to demonstrate a reasonable probability that had he proceeded to trial represented by an attorney who was unquestionably well prepared, he would likely have been acquitted of some of the charges. Id. at 506. In discussing the Strickland test in Mftari v. State, 537 N.E.2d 469 (Ind.1989), we presaged Fretwell when we stated that in addition to deficient performance by counsel, the defendant must further show a reasonable probability that it altered the outcome of the case. Id. at 473. Finally, shortly after Fretwell was handed down we reiterated this view in Powers v. State, 617 N.E.2d 545 (Ind.1993), reh'g denied, where we held that the defendant had not been prejudiced by his attorney's errors because the outcome therea habitual offender findingwould have been the same. [9] In short, the requirement that Van Cleave show a reasonable probability of acquittal to prove prejudice is consistent with Indiana cases on ineffective assistance and with Fretwell 's interpretation in other jurisdictions. [10]