Scalia and Thomas: So What if Your Lawyer Abandons You While Appealing Your Death Sentence?

[xchrom]

http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/01/scalia-thomas-cory-maples

After Cory Maples was convicted of two murders in Alabama in 1997 and sentenced to death, he appealed his conviction claiming that he'd received shoddy legal representation, what's technically known as ineffective assistance of counsel. Two attorneys from Sullivan & Cromwell, a prestigious law firm in New York, agreed to represent him.

Alabama doesn't provide inmates with post-conviction legal assistance. By securing free representation from two attorneys from a hotshot New York law firm, Maples must have thought he had a decent chance in court. A dream come true, right?

Didn't turn out that way. The two attorneys, Jaasai Munanka and Clara Ingen-Housz, left the firm in 2002, in the middle of Maples' appeal process. They didn't tell Maples that they were leaving, or that they weren't going to be involved in his case anymore. They didn't even tell the court in Alabama. So when the court denied Maple's appeal in 2003, he had no idea. Maples' Alabama-based attorney (the state requires a state-licensed attorney to be on the appeal team), did receive the court's notification that Maples' appeal had been rejected, but he did nothing about it. (He'd previously told Maple's New York-based lawyers that he'd be involved in the case only as much as the law required him to be.) By the time other attorneys at Sullivan & Cromwell decided to pick up the case, the 42-day deadline for appealing the court's rejection had already passed. Maples had essentially been left high and dry by his lawyers, two of whom had bailed without bothering to inform the court, and one of whom had effectively washed his hands of the case from the beginning. As far as Maples knew, he had lawyers. He didn't.

The lower courts rejected Maples' pleas for another chance to file an appeal, despite the conduct of his attorneys. But on Wednesday, the Supreme Court reversed that decision by a vote of 7 to 2, with Justice Antonin Scalia writing a dissent joined by Clarence Thomas. Their argument? If you allow Maples to file an appeal despite missing the original deadline because he was abandoned by his attorneys, then defense attorneys all over the country could argue that their clients had been effectively unrepresented at one point or another, gambling on the possibility that the big-hearted, black-robed softies on the Supreme Court would overlook any procedural errors that might have been made during their appeals.

[exboyfil]

1. Can the attorneys

who jumped ship be disbarred?

[mazzarro]

2. These two goons are the epitome of ugliness and sadism -- n/t

[A Simple Game]

3. Now that's not fair to Thomas.

He doesn't know about ugliness and sadism, he only knows where Scalia's butt is.

[mazzarro]

4. Daaaamn, that is even uglier that I had in mind! -- n/t