Second chance at plea in death penalty case?

[Fash]

http://wcco.com/national/supreme.court. ... 89417.html

WASHINGTON (AP) ― The Supreme Court stepped into a death penalty case Monday in which a defendant says his lawyers gave him bad advice by telling him to reject a plea deal that would have spared him a death sentence.

Maxwell Alton Hoffman was convicted in connection with a revenge killing in Idaho and sentenced to death in 1989. He appealed, claiming he should be allowed to take the deal prosecutors offered anyway.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. The San Francisco-based appeals court said the state must either release Hoffman or again offer him a plea deal that he originally turned down -- allowing him to plead guilty in exchange for prosecutors no longer seeking the death penalty.

The state appealed to the Supreme Court. The justices said they would decide whether Hoffman is entitled to the plea deal, even though he was later convicted and sentenced in a fair trial.

Hoffman was one of three men charged with the murder of a man who served as a police informant in a drug deal.

The other two defendants avoided the death penalty. Hoffman, however, refused to plead guilty on the advice of his attorneys, even though prosecutors told him that if he refused the plea deal they would seek the death penalty.

One of Hoffman's attorneys -- William Wellman -- told Hoffman he believed that a recent appellate court ruling out of Arizona showed that Idaho's similar death penalty scheme was unconstitutional, and that it was only a matter of time before Idaho's death penalty scheme would be overturned in court.

But Idaho's death penalty scheme wasn't immediately overturned, and on June 9, 1989, Hoffman was sentenced to death.

Uhh... another bad precedent!! You can't turn down the plea, lose the case, and then argue you should be able to plea again!

[Ashur]

I concur. Very bad precedent. The reason for plea bargaining is often to save the expense of a public trial but more often than not insurance for the prosecution against flubbing the case.

In no way you should get a mulligan on the trial by being allowed to take the plea bargain AFTER it's been tried and you lost.

I welcome Sirensa (and other VVLawyers!) point of view on this one.

[Spang]

If he hadn't been killing people, he wouldn't be in this mess!