Burt v. Titlow (2013)
- Docket
- 12-414
- Decided
- 2013-01-01
Summary
Question: 1. Did the Sixth Circuit give appropriate deference to the Michigan trial court under the AEDPA? 2. Can a defendant establish prejudice in an ineffective assistance claim by presenting subjective testimony that he would have accepted the plea offer absent the attorney's deficient advice? 3. Does the Court's decision in Lafler v. Cooper require a state trial court to resentence a defendant when he claims that ineffective assistance of counsel led him to reject a plea offer? Conclusion: No; no; unanswered. Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. delivered the opinion for the 9-0 majority. The Supreme Court held that, when a state prisoner asks a federal court to set aside a sentence due to ineffective assistance of counsel, the AEDPA requires the Court of Appeals to apply a "doubly-deferential" standard in which both the state court and the defense attorney are given the benefit of the doubt. Because the state court's factual determination is assumed to be correct, the state prisoner has the burden to disprove that determination with clear and convincing evidence. In this case, the Court held that there was no convincing evidence that the new counsel's advice did not stem from the defendant's continued protestations of innocence. In the absence of such evidence, the new counsel's advice was reasonable and the defendant could not prove that he received ineffective assistance of counsel. In her concurring opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the defendant had the burden to prove that the new counsel acted ineffectively and that the state court decided the case incorrectly—both burdens that the defendant did not meet. Justice Sotomayor also emphasized the limited scope of the ruling in this case, which referred only to the facts at hand. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a separate concurring opinion in which she argued that the plea deal became invalid when the defendant refused to testify against her aunt, so the prosecutor could not be directed to renew a plea deal that could no longer exist. Without the existence of a still-possible plea deal, there was no reversible error in the trial.