Trial

In a bold move that probably surprises no one, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas filed a notice on August 20, 2020, that it is refusing to abide by a court order to turn over evidence after it was caught secretly recording meetings between defendants and their lawyers at the federal detention…

Whenever someone asks me if it’s a good idea to file a motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b) to reopen their 2255 motion or other civil proceeding, I cringe. That’s because the district court has such broad discretion in granting or denying these motions. A quick look at appeals from Rule 60(b) denials…

In my last column, we went over the general standard for showing ineffective assistance of counsel (“IAC”) in the guilty plea context under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). In this column, we’ll go over the showing required to establish prejudice in the different categories of IAC regarding guilty pleas. There are three main categories…

More than 95 percent of state and federal prisoners plead guilty, and most of them do so on the advice of their lawyer. A successful attack on a guilty plea would then depend on showing that counsel’s bad advice to plead guilty rendered the plea not “knowing and voluntary.” We covered the knowing and voluntary…

Guilty Pleas After Conviction Attacking the guilty plea is probably one of the least understood concepts in the post conviction world, even though more than 95 percent of state and federal convictions are the direct result of a guilty plea. In 2018 alone, there were 73,109 federal convictions with 71,550 of them by way of…