SCOTUS, ruling 6-3, refuses to let appeal waivers impact ineffectiveness claims when attorney improperly fails to appeal
The Supreme Court this morning handed down an opinion in Garza v. Idaho, No. 17-1026 (S. Ct. Feb. 27, 2019) (available here), a case concerning the distinctive Sixth Amendment jurisprudence addressing whether defense counsel has been constitutionally deficient when failing to appeal upon a defendant's instructions. The ruling in the case is 6-3, with Justice Sotomayor delivering the opinion of the Court, which was joined by the Chief Justice as well as Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan and Kavanaugh. Here is how the opinion gets started:
In Roe v. Flores-Ortega, 528 U.S. 470 (2000), this Court held that when an attorney’s deficient performance costs a defendant an appeal that the defendant would have otherwise pursued, prejudice to the defendant should be presumed “with no further showing from the defendant of the merits of his underlying claims.” Id., at 484. This case asks whether that rule applies even when the defendant has, in the course of pleading guilty, signed what is often called an “appeal waiver” — that is, an agreement forgoing certain, but not all, possible appellate claims. We hold that the presumption of prejudice recognized in Flores-Ortega applies regardless of whether the defendant has signed an appeal waiver.
Justice Thomas filed a dissenting opinion, which Justices Gorsuch joined in full and Justice Alito joined in part. (The last part of the dissent reviews originalist approaches to the Sixth Amendment, and only Justice Gorsuch joined that part). The dissent starts this way:
Petitioner Gilberto Garza avoided a potential life sentence by negotiating with the State of Idaho for reduced charges and a 10-year sentence. In exchange, Garza waived several constitutional and statutory rights, including “his right to appeal.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 44a, 49a. Despite this express waiver, Garza asked his attorney to challenge on appeal the very sentence for which he had bargained. Garza’s counsel quite reasonably declined to file an appeal for that purpose, recognizing that his client had waived this right and that filing an appeal would potentially jeopardize his plea bargain. Yet, the majority finds Garza’s counsel constitutionally ineffective, holding that an attorney’s performance is per se deficient and per se prejudicial any time the attorney declines a criminal defendant’s request to appeal an issue that the defendant has waived. In effect, this results in a “defendant-always-wins” rule that has no basis in Roe v. Flores-Ortega, 528 U.S. 470 (2000), or our other ineffective-assistance precedents, and certainly no basis in the original meaning of the Sixth Amendment. I respectfully dissent.
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