Do they even read what you file?
Those lawyers who regularly file post-conviction motions often wonder whether the court actually reads them before they deny them. The process in most Texas counties is for the District Attorney to prepare proposed findings and present those to the judge. In the majority of cases those findings are signed without revision. I'm sure there are judges who review them to some degree, but I've also seen cases where it is obvious they didn't do anything more than put their signature on it.
I always thought the process was different in federal court. After all, they have law clerks who review everything and write memos and that sort of thing. Those are usually the top law school graduates, so you would expect them to get things right. A recent case out of the Fifth Circuit has me wondering just how much they look at what they are doing.
The case is Arnold v. Thaler, No. 08-50181 (5th Cir., January 5, 2011) The facts were pretty straightforward. Two plea offers were made, which the lawyer never conveyed to the client. Meanwhile, the prosecutor learned more about the defendant, and increased the offer. That offer - 40 years - was conveyed to the defendant and rejected. When he learned there was an earlier offer of 15 years he filed a motion for new trial. Everyone agreed that the earlier offers were never conveyed, and Mr Arnold submitted an affidavit stating if he had known of the offer he would have "considered" it. Nevertheless, the Court denied the motion. The reason was that he thought Arnold had rejected the offer; he had rejected an offer, but it was the 40 year offer and not the earlier offers. In other words, he didn't understand the facts.
The court of appeals probably recognized they couldn't affirm on that basis, so they came up with a new reason. They held that the new facts discovered by the prosecutor "changed the premises" of the original offer. I have no idea what that has to do anything, but they thought it was important. Not wanting to confuse things, they didn't address the period between the making of the offer and the discovery of the new information - in other words the time during which the offer could have been accepted.
So now we go into federal court, and file a writ of habeas corpus. In his petition Mr. Arnold stated that if he had known of the offer he would accepted. He also submitted an affidavit stating the same thing, and explaining that is what he meant in the affidavit that was submitted for he motion for new trial. In other words he alleged everything the courts have said you need to prove to obtain relief; an offer was made and not conveyed, and had it been conveyed it would have been accepted.
This time it was the federal court's turn to ignore the facts. They denied relief, holding that nowhere in the pleadings did Arnold say he would have accepted the offer. Huh...It was in his petition and his affidavit. Maybe it wasn't all in caps. Thankfully the Fifth Circuit finally came to the rescue. They held that the district court's finding was "clearly erroneous".
You have to wonder how so many courts got it so wrong. I haven't seen the pleadings, so I don't know if there is bad handwriting or what. To be fair, I get a lot of inmate mail, and much of it is barely difficult to read and understand. They may have a good point, but it's buried in 20 pages of stuff that makes no sense, or has nothing to do with the case. Somewhere along the line though you would think somebody would catch it.
I tend to believe that part of the problem is the desire to deny relief; no court likes to overturn a conviction, and they look for ways to avoid doing so.In fact, the whole post-conviction system is designed to prevent overturning convictions. Even with that though, there are certain claims the courts generally take seriously; the failure to convey plea offers is one of them. Courts also usually take notice when the District Attorney agrees with something. As you can imagine, that doesn't happen often.
Some might look at this at an example of how the system works. I suppose that's true in some respects. But is that enough. Is it too much to expect courts to get it right the first time? There were a lot of resources wasted in this case that could have been spent doing something else. I realize all courts are overworked, and have limited resources. But hey, that's what they signed up for.
