The biggest legal news of the week may be the Supreme Court's recognition of a right to the effective assistance of counsel during plea bargaining in Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye. I previewed Lafler here, and plan to do a detailed analysis of the cases next week. For now, suffice it to say that while I don't agree with the claim made in this article that the cases together constitute "the single greatest revolution in the criminal justice process since Gideon v. Wainwright provided indigents the right to counsel," I do think that they're a big deal. In other news: 1. The Court heard another significant pair of criminal cases this week when it had oral argument in Jackson v. Hobbs and Miller v. Alabama. Both cases involve 14-year-old defendants who were sentenced to life without parole for murder, and who now claim that their punishments were unconstitutionally harsh. Law professor Doug Berman, of the Sentencing Law and Policy blog, posted this video preview -- it gives Berman fans a face, and voice, to go with his name. You can read the oral argument transcripts here (Jackson) and here (Miller), and you can read a recap of the arguments at SCOTUSblog here. Most observers seem to believe that the Court will, at a minimum, rule against mandatory life without parole for the youngest killers who are tried as adults. 2. The "other" supreme court -- the one in Raleigh, not Washington -- got some attention in the Greensboro News [...]
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