Missouri v. Frye and Lafler v. Cooper

This Monday, the Court heard oral argument on two cases related to whether ineffective assistance of counsel claims could be brought on the basis of trial counsel’s failure to communicate information relevant to a defendant’s potential plea deal.

In Lafler v. Cooper, trial counsel advised Anthony Cooper to reject a plea deal because of counsel’s misunderstanding of Michigan law. The prosecution offered Mr. Cooper – who was charged with shooting Kali Mundy four times while she was fleeing him – a plea to the charge of assault with intent to kill with a sentencing guideline calculation between roughly four to eight years; Cooper’s counsel stated that Cooper rejected the offer because the government had insufficient facts to prove intent to murder.

Cooper’s counsel mistakenly believed that Cooper the government could not prove intent to murder if all of the wounds his victim sustained were below the waist. Cooper was sentenced after trial to 15 1/2 to 30 years

In Missouri v. Frye, defense counsel failed to inform Galin Edward Frye – who was facing his fourth charge of driving with a revoked license – of the prosecution’s plea offer, he subsequently pled guilty to less favorable terms.

In Lafler, the government provides three arguments for why Cooper’s Sixth Amendment rights were not violated: first, if a defendant pled not guilty and received a fair trial with counsel, that is sufficient to satisfy the Sixth Amendment; second, a defendant has no substantive or procedural right to a plea deal, which is made purely at the discretion of the prosecution and can be rejected by the court after accepted by the defendant; and third, the only remedy the court could fashion – to require the prosecution to re-offer a plea after the defendant had received a trial – would place the defendant in a better position than if he or she had received adequate representation.

Cooper argues that his trial counsel’s performance was deficient, that this harmed a critical stage of his prosecution, and that his later trial did not cure this deficiency. He further states that the government’s bright line test is contrary to the precedent of all of the circuit courts, each of which identify circumstances where a defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights may be violated by deficient performance that causes him or her to reject a plea bargain.

In Frye, the state argues for a bright-line rule: that Hill v. Lockhart establishes that the prejudice prong of the Strickland test only can be satisfied where there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s errors, the defendant would not have pled guilty and would have instead gone to trial. As in Lafler, Missouri argues that there is categorically no right to a plea deal by a defendant, their only right is to make an informed decision on whether to go to trial or not.

Like Cooper, Frye asserts that plea negotiations are a critical stage of a criminal prosecution; Frye further argues that a failure to communicate a plea offer renders a subsequent guilty plea unknowing, unintelligent, and involuntary, and that Frye suffered prejudice because he would have received a shorter sentence of a misdemeanor if he had pled, and that allowing Frye to plead guilty to the original offer is the only remedy that will restore him to the position he would have occupied had counsel not been ineffective.

Each of the two cases poses particular concerns for the Court as it revisits a hotly contested area of the law. In Cooper, the mistaken advice of counsel led to a significantly higher sentence. But, that sentence came after a full trial by jury.

Though Frye was facing a lesser charge, counsel for Frye’s mistake was arguably more egregious – or at least the kind of clear error the Court may be more comfortable decrying than a mistake of legal judgment, even one as significant as that made by Cooper’s counsel – as counsel simply failed to provide Frye with important information.