U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decries the Court’s latest :defendant always wins” rule!
As reported in this Appellate Squawk March 2, 2019 Post:
Plenty, fumes Justice Thomas, dissenting in Garza v. Idaho (2019), where Justice Sotomayor floats the radical notion that if a client asks his lawyer to file a notice of appeal, the lawyer should just do it. A notice of appeal is nothing but a form that takes five minutes to fill out telling the court that the client wants to pursue an appeal. It doesn’t commit the lawyer to anything. But because Garza’s lawyer refused to file it, Garza lost all opportunity to appeal. Sotomayor found this to be ineffective assistance of counsel.
Another “defendant-always-wins rule!” cries Thomas. Garza had no right to appeal! He pled guilty, signed an appeal waiver and that’s that!
Appellate Squawk March 2, 2019