Habeas Corpus — AEDPA

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U.S. Supreme Court

Criminal

Habeas Corpus — AEDPA

The Sixth Circuit failed to apply the “doubly deferential” standard of review recognized by the Court’s case law when it refused to credit the state court’s reasonable factual finding and assumed that counsel was ineffective where the record was silent.

Here, the record readily supports the Michigan Court of Appeals’ factual finding that Toca advised withdrawal of the guilty plea only after respondent’s proclamation of innocence. The facts that respondent passed a polygraph test denying being in the room when Billie’s husband was killed, discussed the case with a jailer who advised against pleading guilty if respondent was indeed innocent, and hired Toca just three days before Billie’s trial at which respondent had agreed to self-incriminate, strongly suggest that respondent had second thoughts about confessing in open court and proclaimed innocence to Toca. The only evidence cited by the Sixth Circuit for its contrary conclusion was that Toca’s sole explanation at the withdrawal hearing focused on the fact that the State’s plea offer was substantially higher than that provided by the Michigan guidelines. The Michigan Court of Appeals was well aware of Toca’s representations to the trial court and correctly found nothing inconsistent about a defendant’s asserting innocence on the one hand and refusing to plead guilty to manslaughter accompanied by higher-than-normal punishment on the other. Accepting as true the Michigan Court of Appeals’ factual determination that respondent proclaimed innocence to Toca, the Sixth Circuit’s Strickland analysis cannot be sustained. More troubling is that court’s conclusion that Toca was ineffective because the record contained no evidence that he gave constitutionally adequate advice on whether to withdraw the plea. The Sixth Circuit turned on its head the principle that counsel should be “strongly presumed to have rendered adequate assistance and made all significant decisions in the exercise of reasonable professional judgment,” Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668, 690, with the burden to show otherwise resting squarely on the defendant, id., at 687. The single fact that Toca failed to retrieve respondent’s file from former counsel before withdrawing the guilty plea cannot overcome Strickland’s strong presumption of effectiveness. In any event, respondent admitted in open court that former counsel had explained the State’s evidence and that it would support a first-degree murder conviction. Toca was justified in relying on this admission to conclude that respondent understood the strength of the prosecution’s case. Toca’s conduct in this litigation was far from exemplary, but a lawyer’s ethical violations donot make the lawyer per se ineffective, and Toca’s questionable conduct was irrelevant to the narrow issue before the Sixth Circuit.

680 F. 3d 577, reversed.

12-414 Burt v. Titlow

Alito, J.; Sotomayor, J., concurring; Ginsburg, J., concurring.