WASHINGTON — Anthony Cooper got some very bad legal advice when considering a plea deal for shooting an acquaintance four times. His lawyer said the prosecution would not be able to prove intent to murder because Cooper had missed a shot to the head and hit his victim only below the waist.
So Cooper turned down an offer of four to seven years in prison. He went to trial, was convicted and is now serving 15 to 30 years.
Cooper’s new lawyers convinced the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the legal advice was so egregious that it violated Cooper’s right to effective counsel.
But the Supreme Court on Monday seemed far more skeptical that Cooper should get another shot at the plea bargain after he received a fair trial and was sentenced to a far longer time in prison.
The point of the Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel is to ensure fair proceedings, some of the justices said, not to get the defendant the best deal.
“This man deserved to get the sentence he got, didn’t he?” Justice Antonin Scalia asked.
Justice Anthony Kennedy amplified the point in his questioning of Michigan public defender Valerie Newman, who represented Cooper at the court.
“You are saying it was unfair to have a fair trial?” Kennedy asked.
“I’m saying it’s unfair to go to trial when your attorney tells you you can’t be convicted,” Newman answered.
The larger question the court was confronting was whether the right to effective counsel during trial and sentencing also should apply during the more informal negotiations over plea bargains.
Several of the justices noted that about 95 percent of criminal cases are disposed of by a guilty plea.
Besides Cooper’s case, the court Monday heard another that raises similar issues. It was brought by Galin Frye, whose lawyer never told him that Missouri prosecutors were willing to let him plead guilty to a misdemeanor for his charge of driving with a revoked license and serve 90 days in jail.
After the deadline for the deal passed, prosecutors withdrew it, and Frye pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years. Frye did not learn about the first offer until he was in jail and a new lawyer was preparing an appeal.
In both cases, the states agreed the men got bad legal representation but said the court’s precedents limit the right to effective counsel to critical points in the proceedings where outcomes are determined.
Other court action Monday
• Federal protections for California’s delta smelt will remain intact with a Supreme Court decision not to hear farmers’ challenge to the Endangered Species Act. The court’s decision effectively upholds the conclusion by a trial judge and a lower appellate court that the act can protect even those plants and animals that don’t cross state borders.
• The court reinstated the murder conviction of Shirley Ree Smith in the 1996 death of her 7-week-old grandson, striking down for the third time a federal appeals court’s judgment that there was “no demonstrable support” for the prosecution’s theory that she shook the baby to death. In their 6-3 ruling, the justices chided the 9th Circuit for persisting in the effort to overrule the jury’s decision in the case.
• Justices sidestepped a case raising constitutional questions about government display of religious symbols, declining to review a lower court’s decision that 12-foot-high crosses along Utah highways in honor of dead state troopers are improper.
Denver Post wire services
