When
a defendant is convicted of a crime, his or her appellate lawyer will often attack
the defendant’s trial counsel for ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC) in an attempt to win a new trial. The applicable legal standard is (usually) found
in Strickland v. Washington.
However, Strickland’s IAC standard is both too broad and too
narrow.
Strickland
is too broad in the sense that it’s often used to go after the defendant’s
trial counsel not for his or her own conduct, decisions, and errors, but
rather for failing to correct the trial judge’s errors or to properly monitor
the prosecutor’s misconduct during trial.
In other words, it unfairly requires the defense lawyer to do three jobs
in one.
But on
the other hand, Strickland is too narrow, as the standard often fails to
provide any remedy for true defense-lawyer ineffectiveness, such as failing to
consult with the client, showing up to trial drunk, or even falling asleep in
court (which, in fairness, could be due to being drunk).
