Plea Bargaining In US Under Judicial Scrutiny

The Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution gives a criminal defendant a right to a fair trial. On 21 March 2012, the US Supreme Court ruled that this constitutional right also includes a right to an effective lawyer during plea bargaining negotiations. Consequently, the right of effective counsel in all parts of a criminal proceeding is strengthened by applying it to the entire plea bargaining process.

The US Supreme Court formulated this new standard in two recent cases (Missouri v Frye and Lafler v Cooper), in which legal advice of counsel led the defendant to reject a favourable plea bargain. The Supreme Court argued that had the lawyers counselled the defendants well, they would have taken the shorter sentence. To win a challenge under this new standard, a defendant must show that with effective counsel, he would have taken a plea offer, the judge would have approved it and the deal would have been more favourable than the actual case's outcome. As