Opinion ID: 2355337
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: Previous Plea Bargain

Text: Haight maintains that defense counsel was ineffective by not introducing evidence during the penalty phase that the Commonwealth had previously entered into a plea bargain. He asserts that he has a right to have the jury which sentenced him consider mitigating evidence. The question of whether a defendant has the right to introduce evidence of a withdrawn guilty plea as mitigating evidence has not been decided in the Commonwealth. There appears to be a split of authority on the issue. See Wright & Graham, Federal Practice and Procedure: Evidence § 5348 (1980). In terms of our rules, there is a potential conflict between KRE 410, which provides that withdrawn guilty pleas are not admissible against the defendant, and KRE 408, which provides that compromises and offers of compromise are inadmissible. The Commonwealth argues that Haight's prior guilty plea is inadmissible under KRE 408. The argument is not without merit or support. See id. On the hand other, Haight argues that KRE 408 is limited to civil cases. See United States v. Baker and Mazzilli, 926 F.2d 179 (2nd Cir.1991), construing FRE 408. Under the Strickland standard for ineffective assistance of counsel, the first thing the aggrieved defendant must show is that counsel's performance was deficient. This requires showing that counsel made errors so serious that counsel was not functioning as the `counsel' guaranteed the defendant by the Sixth Amendment. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 687, 80 L.Ed.2d at 693. We are at a loss to see how failure to move to admit evidencethe admissibility of which is still an open questioncan ever sink below sufficient performance into deficiency. Further, how can it be called an error that deprived Haight of his constitutional right to counsel? If the evidence is not admissible, there can be no error. See Commonwealth v. Davis, Ky., 14 S.W.3d 9, 11 (1999). Thus, the error is at most potential error that is in the air, weightless and awaiting decisional law that may or may not give it legal gravity. In short, while the failure to advance an established legal theory may result in ineffective assistance of counsel under Strickland , the failure to advance a novel theory never will.