Opinion ID: 181203
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Whether the District Court Should Have Considered Johnson's Mid-Trial Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Claim.

Text: Johnson claims that his trial counsel gave him incorrect advice regarding his potential sentence when considering a plea agreement, and that he would have accepted the agreement had he been given correct advice. Furthermore, he claims that he brought this issue before the district court during trial and the court erred by not considering his claim at that time. In order for a defendant to prevail on an ineffective assistance of counsel claim, there must be a reasonable probability that the outcome of the proceedings would have been different but for counsel's deficient performance. Avery v. Prelesnik, 548 F.3d 434, 437 (6th Cir.2008) (citing Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 694, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984)). This analysis requires the existence of two outcomesone actual and one alternate. However, Johnson claims that the district court erred by not considering his claim during trial when the court could not have known the outcome of the trial. Even if we assume that Johnson's counsel was in fact deficient, the court did not know the actual outcome of the proceedings and could not rule in favor of Johnson until one existed. Furthermore, Johnson's reliance upon the non-binding decision of the Second Circuit in United States v. Brown, 623 F.3d 104 (2d Cir.2010), is misplaced because the ineffective assistance claim in that case was brought to the district court's attention after the defendant had been convicted. While we decline to extend our discussion to all situations where a defendant raises a mid-trial claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, or the situation in Brown where an ineffective assistance claim is raised after conviction but before sentencing, the district court here did not err in refraining from deciding Johnson's claim. Because the court did not know the outcome of the trial at the time the claim was made, it could not have possibly decided that the outcome of Johnson's case would have been different but for any alleged deficiency of counsel.