Pleas and Prejudice: Examining Ineffective Assistance of Counsel in Plea Bargaining After the Supreme Court’s Denial of Certiorari in Davis v. United States

Imagine you are twenty years old, facing a life sentence for crimes you committed when you were eighteen.You are a first-time offender, and you need effective representation.But despite the severity of the charges and the near certainty of your conviction, your attorney fails to initiate plea negotiations with the prosecutor.He also neglects to share that your codefendants entered plea deals with the government and agreed to testify against you.Without a plea offer on the table, you-alone-proceed to trial and are convicted on all counts.A judge then sentences you to 160 years in prison.You later institute an appeal, convinced that the court will overturn your convictions and sentence based on your counsel's ineffective assistance in the pretrial stage.But your case inevitably fails because you live in a state within the jurisdiction of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which conditions a successful showing of prejudice on the receipt of a formal plea offer.Quartavious Davis, a Florida man found guilty on several counts of Hobbs Act robbery and possession of a firearm in 2012, faced the harsh reality described above. 1 Davis's situation is one of many that underscores the importance of the Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel, which extends to the plea-bargaining process. 2