High court rules on criminal plea bargains

WASHINGTON -- A divided Supreme Court laid out new standards Wednesday for criminal plea bargains, saying defense attorneys must do a competent job advising and informing their clients of prosecutors' offers of less prison time for convictions and guilty pleas.

Justice Antonin Scalia, in a rare move, dissented aloud from the bench, calling the 5-4 decisions "absurd" and warning courts would be flooded with appeals from criminals now claiming their plea bargain rights were violated, though there is no legal right to a plea bargain.

"The court today embraces the sporting chance theory of criminal law, in which the state functions like a conscientious casino operator, giving each player a fair chance to beat the house, that is, serve less time than the law says he deserves. And when a player is excluded from the tables, his constitutional rights have been violated," Scalia said. "I do not subscribe to that theory. No one should, least of all justices of the Supreme Court."

The two opinions, both written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, have the potential to affect thousands of criminal cases, with the Justice Department reporting that 97 percent of federal convictions and 94 percent of state convictions in 2009 were the result of a guilty plea.

The decisions laid out by Kennedy mean that criminal defense attorneys are now required to inform their clients of plea bargain offers, whether they think the clients should accept them or not, and must give their clients good advice on whether to accept a plea bargain at all stages of prosecution. If they don't, Kennedy said, they will run afoul of the Sixth Amendment right to assistance of counsel during criminal proceedings.

"The right to counsel is the right to effective assistance of counsel," Kennedy said.

In the cases before the court, Galin Edward Frye was never told by his attorney about plea bargain offers from Missouri before he pleaded guilty to driving with a revoked license before his trial. In the second case, Anthony Cooper rejected a plea offer on the advice of his attorney, and then was convicted of assault with intent to murder and other charges and sentenced after a jury trial in Michigan.