5-4 heads will recognize this one
What of the argument that Rice was represented by ineffective counsel? It’s a powerful one, at least in the eyes of an ordinary person looking at the facts. That doesn’t mean it carries any weight in a legal system set up in so many ways to protect itself.
The Sixth Amendment guarantees defendants the right to counsel. In a 1984 case, Strickland v. Washington , the U.S. Supreme Court took up the question of just how bad lawyers need to be before their performance proves constitutionally defective. Writing for the majority, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor established a two-part test: A lawyer’s performance falls short of the Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel if (a) it is deficient and (b) that deficiency prejudices the defense, depriving the defendant of a fair trial. The opinion went on to define a deficient counsel as one who “made errors so serious that counsel was not functioning as the ‘counsel’ guaranteed the defendant by the Sixth Amendment”—a definition that is not only vague but circular. The inadequacy of the standard has allowed a patchwork of different rules to proliferate across the country. A lawyer can sleep during part of a client’s cross-examination, or be arrested for drunk driving on the way to court, or be mentally unstable, or have been disbarred midway through a trial without sinking to the level of constitutionally defective performance—all of these instances have been adjudicated in various jurisdictions. This spring, the Supreme Court further restricted the right to claim ineffective counsel as the basis for an appeal. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing in dissent, declared that the decision “reduces to rubble” a defendant’s Sixth Amendment guarantee. Most of the largest counties across the country have a system like Philadelphia’s, where court-appointed attorneys such as Sandjai Weaver are among the only options for defendants like C. J. Rice.
Justice Thurgood Marshall, the sole dissenter in the Strickland case, faulted the ruling for a “debilitating ambiguity” that compelled judges to rely on “intuitions” about what constitutes ineffective counsel. Under Pennsylvania’s Post Conviction Relief Act, the person whose intuition matters is the original trial judge—this is the person who first considers an appeal. When the matter came before him, Denis Cohen, the judge who had wished Rice good luck, found that Weaver was not deficient counsel. (Through a spokesperson for the Philadelphia courts, Cohen declined to comment, referring to his opinions in Rice’s case.)
The reality is that Commonwealth v. Charles J. Rice represents nothing out of the ordinary. The Conviction Integrity Unit’s caseload captures the situation in a single city, but the same reality exists everywhere. Reforms, even if enacted, would scarcely touch the deeper dysfunction—not just of the criminal-justice system but of neighborhoods and schools. In too many cases, “reform” simply allows dysfunction to remain functional. Rice’s story has produced no bumper stickers or T-shirts or movies. There is no corrupt cop or evil prosecutor. There is only doubtful evidence, deficient counsel, and the relentless grind of the criminal-justice system itself. Rice’s story is meaningful precisely because it is not unusual. Change the details, and it is the story of tens of thousands of poor defendants and the accumulation of large and small injustices that define their lives.
The only unusual thing about Rice’s story is the quirk of fate—his doctor is the father of a journalist—that has gained it any attention at all. To examine his case is to watch a conveyor belt leading in a single direction, with escape routes slamming shut the moment each is glimpsed: a public defender rather than a court-appointed attorney; a routine check of cellphone data; a timely notice of alibi; the right questions put to a dubious eyewitness; a Kloiber instruction by the judge; a request for hospital records; the testimony of an independent medical expert; a defense counsel familiar with the crime scene; a Sixth Amendment that is taken seriously.
Let me state the obvious, in personal terms: With evidence as meager as that against Rice, no prosecutor in the country would even have charged me, a white man with resources. If it had—and if I’d had legal representation worthy of the name—no jury would have brought a conviction.
