Essay Example on Sixth Amendment: Right to Practical Assistance of Counsel in Criminal Prosecutions

The Sixth Amendment made it a must that a defendant has the assistance of counsel in all the prosecutions in a court of law. The right to counsel is the right to practical aid from the counsel (Backus & Marcus, 2005). Every criminal deserves a right to counsel regardless of the crime and their situation. The counsel must also be competent in representing the defendant in the court. Failure to do so could lead the defendant to serve unfairly or even be subjected to harsher outcomes that the ones they could have had if the counsel provided was sound and practical. In this paper, I review two cases to shed more light on the right to counsel all defendants and not just that but also why the counsel should be competent.

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In the case of Missouri v. Frye, 132 S. Ct 1399-Supreme Court 2012, the defendant is in court in the context that he was offered ineffective assistance by the counsel that led to the lapse of a prosecution offer a plea deal. This proposal was more lenient than the terms of pleading guilty that he was advised to take (Missouri v. Frye, 132 S. Ct. 1399, 566 U.S. 134, 182 L. Ed. 2d 379 (2012). Whether the right to counsel, which is a constitutional right for everyone in a criminal prosecution, covers the negotiation and consideration of the plea deals offered, which are later rejected or lapse. The Sixth Amendment suggestst that a defendant has the right to counsel present at all essential stages of the court proceedings, including arraignments, post-indictment interrogations, lineups, and the onset into the guilty deal.

The council is tasked with explaining to the client how the pleas offer works, and the following guilty pleas offer. The court determined and ruled that the defense counsel was ineffective, and as a result, there was prejudice. The defendant, in the case above, was not given the freedom to exercise the right to self-representation as enshrined in the constitution. The role of the attorney to the defendant was to offer the defendant competent counsel and choose more lenient deals instead of misadvising him, leading to prejudice.

In the case of Strickland v. Washington, 466 US 668-Supreme Court 1984, the defendant surrendered to the police and recorded a statement after his two accomplices were arrested. A criminal attorney was appointed to defend him by the state. The attorney pursued the case but lost hope about it when he learned that his client had pleaded guilty to all the three murder trials he was being accused of and rejected to be helped by the jury (Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 131 S. Ct. 770, 178 L. Ed. 2d 624 (2011). He spilled all his personal and past criminal acts saying he had been involved in burglaries and other criminal activities, although they were never recorded. The defendant refused his counsel's advice and made him lose all the hope he had for the case.

Conclusion

The judge sentenced the defendant to death for the crimes he had committed, citing that he appreciated people who were honest like the defendant and since there was no other compelling evidence to lessen and make the punishment more lenient. The case is an example of how important the right to counsel is to criminal prosecutions. If the right counsel was offered to the defendant and accepted by him, they could have gotten a fair and more lenient punishment than the death sentence. The counsel here decided to self-represent and pleading guilty, among other incriminating shreds of evidence. The attorney who came later, therefore, had no hope left for his client and vacated the judgment to take its course.

References

Backus, M. S., & Marcus, P. (2005). The Right to Counsel in Criminal Cases, A National Crisis. Hastings LJ, 57, 1031.

Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 131 S. Ct. 770, 178 L. Ed. 2d 624 (2011).

Missouri v. Frye, 132 S. Ct. 1399, 566 U.S. 134, 182 L. Ed. 2d 379, (2012).