
Do You Have the Right to Plead Not Guilty When Your Lawyer Disagrees? - happy-go-lucky
https://www.npr.org/2018/01/17/578479044/do-you-have-the-right-to-plead-not-guilty-when-your-lawyer-disagrees
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emodendroket
I would certainly hope so.

> "This is a very difficult issue," he says. "Obviously most of us would think
> that the lawyer should just do what's in the best interest of the client in
> the view of the lawyer."

That doesn't seem very "obvious" to me, any more than it seems "obvious" that
a doctor should just go ahead and carry out a medical procedure he recommends
after I refuse it.

~~~
tokenizerrr
If you choose to have your hand cut off because you think it would be awesome,
I'd hope your doctor would refuse to do it.

~~~
harryh
It's interesting to think about decisions that involve an action vs decisions
that involve stopping an action.

    
    
      Doctor: undergo my recommended treatment or you will die
      Patient: no
    
      Patient: Doctor, please chop off one of my hands for no good reason
      Doctor: no
    

In the former we respect the rights of the patient, in the latter we do not.
Kind of weird isn't it?

~~~
lolsal
in the first example the doctor is compelling the patient to do something and
the patient exercises her right to refuse. In the second example the patient
is compelling to the doctor to do something and the doctor exercises her right
to refuse. You never have a 'right' to compel another person to do anything.
You may have legal, ethical or moral reasons to compel someone to do
something, but you never have a right to.

~~~
ABCLAW
>You never have a 'right' to compel another person to do anything.

There are plenty of instances where you have the right to compel another
person to do things.

~~~
passivepinetree
I'm not disagreeing with you, but your case would be stronger if you could
provide some examples.

~~~
ABCLAW
You walk into my house. I have the right to compel you to leave. You try to
stab me. I have the right to compel you to stop with reasonable force. You
arbitrarily try to deny my passport application because you don't like my
face. I get a Writ of Mandamus issued against you and compel you to do your
job. We enter into an agreement which you breach. I obtain an order mandating
specific performance and compel you to personally do what we agreed upon.
You're wanted for arrest and I'm a peace officer. I compel you to come down to
the station.

I can go on all day.

The poster above you does not understand what a 'right' is and is trying to
make a point about positive vs negative rights, but doesn't actually
understand the distinction.

~~~
lolsal
You just listed a bunch of examples where people are legally compelled to do
something, which I mentioned.

> The poster above you does not understand what a 'right' is and is trying to
> make a point about positive vs negative rights, but doesn't actually
> understand the distinction.

Ok. Nice talking with you. Have a good day.

~~~
ABCLAW
I know you mentioned it - you just weren't correct. Hope the clarification was
helpful. Here's some additional reading if you're interested:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights)

------
notahacker
By the sounds of it the circumstances make it quite hard for the state to
argue that he was given _effective_ assistance by counsel, since it appears
the counsel was not only unwilling to follow the defendant's strategy and
unwilling to stand down from the case but also the only argument he _was_
willing to make for his client was ruled legally inadmissible, meaning his
only contribution to the case was to render the defendant's preferred line of
defence impossible and argue for his conviction.

~~~
philipodonnell
You have a good point. Even if you set aside all the stuff about the client
and the lawyer disagreeing, if your only strategy was ruled legally
inadmissible then you did a pretty poor job, whether it was your client's idea
or yours.

~~~
Bartweiss
Certainly the duty of care ought to be in full force when one is acting
against a clients wishes. Ignoring an illegal defense in favor of a legal one
might be reasonable; ignoring an unlikely defense in favor of an illegal one
looks like a clear absence of assistance of counsel.

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Zenbit_UX
Plot twist: His lawyer is brilliant and did this on purpose to cause a
mistrial years down the line knowing his client had no other alternatives.

~~~
anigbrowl
Arguably happens a lot already

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analog31
I wonder if there's a problem with the whole "plea" thing, mixed up with the
death penalty. What if there were no pleading, every case went to trial, and
the penalty was the one assigned to the circumstances of the case at the
beginning of the trial. This would get rid of the abuse of plea bargaining,
and the need for the defendant to strategize based on trying to manipulate the
penalty.

Even if we keep the pleading stage, a guilty plea should require the approval
of the judge based on his evaluation of the evidence. It should not be
possible for the police to get away with punishing someone without having to
present their evidence. The evidence should be submitted to the court before
the pleading begins.

~~~
Sangermaine
>What if there were no pleading, every case went to trial, and the penalty was
the one assigned to the circumstances of the case at the beginning of the
trial.

This is a misunderstanding of how things work and is begging the question.
Part of the trial is determining what punishment is appropriate based on the
facts and arguments presented in the trial. Indeed, determining the
"circumstances of the case" is at the core of what a trial is.

~~~
analog31
That's fair. Perhaps what I'm thinking of is how to prevent abuse of plea
bargaining -- allowing the police to bypass examination of the evidence by
threatening an extreme punishment.

~~~
thephyber
> allowing the police to bypass examination of the evidence by threatening an
> extreme punishment

Police can threaten any punishment they want. Police only get to assign
punishment for a crime if they choose to end your life on the spot.

The District/State Attorney (and their assistants) are the ones that have to
prosecute and are the proxy for the state that choose the opening bid for
punishment.

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anigbrowl
IANAL but yeah. It seems to me that the onus here was on English to withdraw
from the case. Once the guy was ruled competent it was the defense lawyer's
moral obligation to do the best he could with the version of the facts offered
by the defendant, however lacking in credibility that was.

I don't know about ethics standards in the practice of law in Louisiana
particularly. Every state is different and Louisiana seems a bit more
different than most because of the influence of the French legal tradition.

The lawyer here is (poorly) seeking to preserve his client's rights to as a
possibility-mentally-ill person, notwithstanding the earlier competency
findings. This is not so uncommon in death penalty trials, and again
competence adjudication seems to vary by state. But in seeking to preserve his
client's life, he's sacrificing his client's agency, which is a sort of
liberty interest most defendants want to retain even if they are in physical
custody.

It might seem to the lawyer that his client has a death wish and just can't
bring himself to admit it, and suicidal intent is _de facto_ evidence of
incompetence in many jurisdictions. Also, it's not unusual for a defendant to
turn on the attorney post-conviction; eg if English argued the defendant's
version of events, and he was convicted and sentenced to death, the new lawyer
might have sued him anyway by arguing 'my client is obviously crazy and yet
English helped him to throw his life away in front of the jury instead of
getting him the help he needs."

It's yet another reason I think we should get rid of the death penalty.

------
rootusrootus
This seems scary. While the guy may be foolish to disregard his attorney's
well-considered advice, it should absolutely be his choice on how to defend
himself in court. Even if that means an inconvenient rescheduling of his
trial.

~~~
rndgermandude
Well-considered advice? The lawyer completely messed up and more or less
guaranteed a first degree murder conviction and a very harsh sentence that
goes with it:

"Finally, English embarked on a strategy of conceding his client's guilt, in
hopes of avoiding the death penalty. Indeed, in his closing argument, he told
the jury that not only was his client guilty but that he had taken any burden
for this conclusion off of the prosecutor and the jury."

"Directly contradicting his client's instructions, he suggested that McCoy
suffered from diminished mental capacity, and should therefore only be
convicted of second-degree murder. But as the prosecutor would soon explain to
the jury, that defense was legally unavailable to McCoy because Louisiana only
allows a diminished capacity argument if the defendant has pleaded not guilty
by reason of insanity. It was one of many mistakes English appears to have
made during the trial."

~~~
brians
Guaranteeing English more years of life, albeit on death row, while appeals
continue.

~~~
_jal
Irrelevant side-effect. Or are you arguing that was intentional strategy on
the part of the lawyer?

In any case, a lawyer is supposed to act as one's agent, and in this case, it
certainly appears that the attorney in question was acting incompetently when
not directly contradicting the defendant's desires.

As frequently happens, this will probably turn on what amounts to courtroom
etiquette. Should the defendant have fired the lawyer "earlier", given no
clear definition of "earlier"?

Edit: was told my irony was too subtle. That last sentence could be rewritten
as, "should a defendant whose council is not actually representing the
defendant correctly be required to sufficiently understand legal procedure as
to accurately intuit undefined deadlines that have emerged through caselaw on
their own, from prison, in order to replace the rogue council?" Kafka would
only grade this a C, I think.

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logfromblammo
To make a long story short: black man in Louisiana.

The defense attorney's decision to relieve the prosecutor and jury of the
burden of establishing guilt by unilaterally proclaiming it against the wishes
of the defendant and contrary to the "not guilty" plea seems so incredibly
irresponsible that I think disbarment should be considered.

Indeed, the judge should have paused the trial at that moment to have a little
discussion with all the lawyers about what happens to people that
intentionally try to cause a mistrial in their court.

I am not a lawyer, and I am not familiar with how they police their own, but
if I were working for someone that wanted me to deploy untested software full
of bugs and security holes straight to production, I would restrict my efforts
to vigorously attempting to talk them out of it, resigning, or just doing
exactly as they asked. I definitely would not independently publish a proof-
of-concept malware designed to exploit said bugs and security holes. If
someone is aiming a gun at their own foot, you do not stop them from doing it
by blowing off their entire leg with a bigger gun, loaded with dum-dums.

~~~
s73ver_
The defendant was facing the death penalty, and their only defense was that
they weren't there, and the whole thing was a setup by cops because he had
information on them being drug traffickers. The lawyer was attempting to save
his client from the death penalty, which is the best he thought he could do
given the circumstances.

~~~
logfromblammo
The venue being Louisiana, I find the defense's claim alleging that corrupt
cops framed up a black patsy to be not _entirely_ implausible. But it is more
likely that if they _were_ corrupt drug traffickers, and they wanted to
discredit or otherwise silence him, they would have just killed him outright
and placed a drop weapon next to the body.

I am not familiar with the evidence presented at trial, but I am familiar with
several investigative journalism reports that partially reveal some of the
tactics and practices used by corrupt cops and prosecutors to secure
convictions of apparently innocent people. Of course, the jury would have been
made up of people who are not quite so skeptical of the emissaries from
justiceland, and I'd wager they are ignorant of such tactics. So it isn't
surprising that the defense attorney was desperate.

By the way, it certainly _sounds_ like the guy is guilty, but he does have a
right to an adequate defense. On further investigation, the parts of the story
where he tried to hang himself with a bedsheet prior to extradition, and where
ballistics experts determined conclusively that the recovered bullets were
fired from a particular model of weapon seem very suspicious to me. The former
is strongly correlated (in my mind) with police beatings and the latter is CSI
voodoo, like bite mark evidence.

~~~
s73ver_
I absolutely do not buy his conspiracy theory, so I'm coming at it from that
angle. I've also not seen any evidence that the bullet forensics were tainted,
so that's another mark against it being a setup. The idea of presenting that
as their defense seems to be incredibly misguided, and seems to be an express
ticket to death row. Given that, the actions of the lawyer make a lot of sense
if the goal is to minimize the punishment.

~~~
logfromblammo
I approach it from the following angle:

A. He did it; he is guilty. B. The justice system in Louisiana is corrupt and
biased against black people and poor people.

Both can be true at once. This results in a situation where he is guilty,
everyone knows he is guilty, and then everyone--including the public
defenders' office--tramples over his right to due process in a rush to execute
him.

~~~
s73ver_
The public defender had nothing to do with it. This was a lawyer his parents
hired. A lawyer that was trying to save him from death row, and who saw that
the client's desired strategy was coocoo crazy pants.

Does the attorney have more of an obligation to pursue the desired strategy,
or to try and save the client's life?

~~~
logfromblammo
If the public defenders had not somehow turned him against using them, he
would have had at least one capital-qualified attorney from that office
working his case in conjunction with the private lawyer. We're not privy to
the details, but I think the likely scenario is that they were just telling
him what they were going to do and ignoring his input. His input may have been
cuckoo crazypants, but they still have a professional ethical obligation to
take that into account. I.e. when the client says "no guilty plea", the lawyer
has to discard all strategies that involve an admission of guilt.

It's probably all because his preferred strategy was 99% likely to result in a
guilty verdict, with capital punishment.

As I have learned from movies and television, sometimes the defendant
_demands_ that all the obvious winnable strategies are completely off the
table, and their attorney then has to be incredibly clever, to not only secure
a not guilty verdict, but also uncover the _real_ killer by forcing them to
admit guilt on the witness stand. This guy's lawyer _maybe_ watched too many
of those shows, and thought admitting guilt was actually the clever courtroom
twist that would lead to the happy ending?

The attorney has an obligation to act in the interests of their client. When
the client is issuing instructions to the attorney that are apparently
contrary to their own interests, does the lawyer do what they _say they want_
or do what _the professional believes they need_?

------
matte_black
Not only do you have the right, I don’t think it’s even _legal_ for your
lawyer to force you to plead one way or another. They can only suggest.

~~~
jerf
This feels like a freshman law school essay problem, given after the class has
just covered the nature of and reasons for our use of an adversarial system.
In fact I suspect this will be showing up in such problems in the near future.
We chose a system where lawyers are to do their best to defend their client,
regardless, for various good historical reasons.

In this situation, I would accept a defense lawyer basically immediately
resting their case, if they truly have nothing with which to defend their
client. But standing in front of the jury and actively pushing the same
content as a guilty plea would contain is going to far. Alas, there is not a
law against someone being an idiot in court, it isn't even obvious how one
could possibly write that law, and if the client insists on an innocent plea,
at the very least the defense is obligated to not actively contradict that
plea, even if all that leaves them to do is say nothing.

If you think prosecutors already have too much power, probably a pretty
popular opinion around here, we _certainly_ do not also want the _defense_ to
get into the prosecution game! Let the prosecution do its job, if it's so
obvious what the verdict should be.

~~~
matte_black
The thing that should stop a defense lawyer from working against their client
is the chance of it harming their business. In this case, maybe this lawyer
just doesn’t want to be a lawyer anymore.

~~~
s73ver_
He wasn't working against his client. His client was facing the death penalty,
an the lawyer was trying to get him a lesser sentence.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
Incompetently trying to get him a lesser sentence. He straight out declared
that his client was guilty in favor of a defense that legally was not allowed.

------
gjmarsh
Yes. In fact the Judge is very deliberate in asking that you want to plead
guilty and were not coerced into doing so. At least in Federal Courts they
have an entire, what appears to be prepared list of questions they ask just to
make sure it is your will.

~~~
Bjartr
If I understand correctly, it's more a script that gets followed than a
genuine inquiry [https://www.popehat.com/2017/05/08/the-elaborate-
pantomime-o...](https://www.popehat.com/2017/05/08/the-elaborate-pantomime-of-
the-federal-guilty-plea/)

~~~
gjmarsh
Might depend on the Judge. I have witnessed Judges ask "You understand what
you are doing, this will never go away, etc". Genuine inquiry to make them
comfortable that the defendant knows precisely what they are doing. But you
are correct, there is also a scripted line of questioning.

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mcguire
Fillings from the case make interesting reading:

[http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/09/16-8255...](http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/09/16-8255-opinion-below.pdf)

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JoeAltmaier
If your lawyer disagrees, simply say the words "you're fired" followed by "Not
Guilty, Your Honor"

~~~
roywiggins
> "Throughout the trial, McCoy kept interrupting his lawyer's concessions of
> guilt, even trying to fire him... Because McCoy did not try to fire his
> lawyer until just days before the trial, the state contends, he had let the
> lawyer dictate legal strategy."

So... either it's not that simple, or something else went wrong here.

~~~
cjensen
It's not that simple. You can't go around firing your lawyers every time you
feel like it and causing trial delays and mistrials. The state has a right to
try you, and you cannot avoid that through shenanigans. Client had already had
trouble and fired his Public Defender. Client had hired counsel and retained
him without complaint until trial started.

If you allow shenanigans to stop a trial in process, you are essentially
giving the Defendant veto power over a trial when it doesn't go his way.

At some point the Judge has to make the case happen. When and how is a tough
question I'm pleased I don't have to answer.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
'every time you feel like it' and 'when he's trying to get you executed' are
maybe different things.

------
ErrantX
If the lawyer believes his client is not compos mentis, to the extent he is
damaging his own right to a fair trial, surely he a can file some sort of
motion to relieve him of his rights?

This not being possible is, I assume, the only excuse for what the lawyer has
done here?

~~~
amarkov
Correct. The lawyer in this case asked for permission to withdraw, and the
court wouldn't let him. (The court wouldn't agree to reschedule the case, and
the defendant neither found another lawyer nor agreed to waive his right to a
lawyer.)

------
pharrington
Offhand, I wonder what the ramifications would be if a Supreme Court would be
able to rule that the legislative branch resolve an apparent contradiction in
laws.

------
mnm1
It's really not even surprising anymore. When you don't have a court/justice
system that works, any ridiculous situation is possible. And somehow we as
citizens are supposed to have faith in a system that leads to this outcome?
What's the incentive for the defendant to stick to the rules now? If he had
the chance, why wouldn't he bribe or even have witnesses/jurors murdered to
advance his defense in a system that does not even respect his plea? The
absurdity of our laws and courts is beyond comprehension.

------
pmcollins
The problem is that if the lawyer's gambit had worked, the client would have
happily benefitted from the result. Since it didn't work, he's crying foul.
Private profits, public losses (or something). If this worked, it would be a
novel strategy to try something radical like this, see if you benefit, and if
you don't, claim the lawyer was not acting with your consent.

------
throwwwwaway9
_> >Do You Have the Right to Plead Not Guilty When Your Lawyer Disagrees?_

NO, _if_ the lawyer does the time for me. Otherwise, F him, it's my life

------
lr4444lr
I don't understand: doesn't any individual counsel serve at the discretion of
its client, barring mental incompetence? Title sounds like clickbait. You
don't have the right to keep swapping out your county-appointed lawyer for a
new one. It's a Hobson's choice.

~~~
fjsolwmv
Yes title is deceptive, and contradicts the article.

But your second statement is not accurate. The question is whether the
defendant has the right to control his lawyers actions in court. Intuitively,
the answer is obviously yes, but the lower courts disagree.

~~~
snuxoll
I'm having a hard time seeing how anyone could see the answer as "no".

I hate hypotheticals, but let's do one here because the extreme helps frame
potential issue.

Let's say the man standing trial disagrees with the strategy of his counsel,
he fires them and gets new counsel. Rinse and repeat, no counsel is willing to
actually follow the clients wishes and put up a proper defense - this
hypothetical defendant is literally unable to obtain counsel to help defend
him in court.

In reality, could he have likely found counsel willing to put up a defense?
Likely. But factoring in financial burden or competence of his choice of
counsel, it's entirely possible he would either A) be unable to pay for a more
expensive lawyer actually willing to defend him and B) a lawyer he could
afford is either unwilling to put up a defense or lacks experience to do it
properly.

I'm not a lawyer, but from a novice understanding of the American Bar
Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct not abiding by a clients
decision to enter a Not Guilty plea (which I would take to include defending
that plea) is unethical - likely to prevent the model problem I described
above from occurring. Specifically Rule 1.2(a).

------
rrggrr
A wealthy defendant wouldn't find themselves in this predicament because
expert testimony would've been found to testify the defendant was insane. A
plea deal would have been struck so the prosecution could avoid the expense of
a lengthy trial and dueling expert witnesses. And, most defense counsel would
have gladly argued the defendants innocence assertion to the last penny. Its a
6th Amendment case, but 14th Amendment issues haunt this case and many like
it.

~~~
Filligree
The insanity defense isn't used nearly as much as you seem to think it is, and
never to the defendant's benefit. Do you think mental hospitals are _nice_
places?

It isn't a "get out of jail free" card. It's a "stay in mental hospital
instead, probably longer" card. Insanity pleas exist because the purpose of
the justice system is, in principle, to improve society -- not to punish --
and prisons are in any case not equipped to incarcerate the insane.

------
fjsolwmv
The title is deceptive clickbait. The actual question is how much right the
defendant had to block or cancel his lawyers' official actions (both public
defenders and his own lawyers) he disagrees with before he fires them.

Thanks lawyer did block a not guilty plea (obviously since the case went to
trial); the lawyer told the court the client was guilty during the trial,
which was the lawyer's opinion.

I frequently find NPR rather biased in misrepresentation of details in its
articles.

~~~
haZard_OS
I'm afraid I don't follow your reasoning here. Can you explain what you mean
by NPR showing bias in this article?

