Phoning it in

While all the hullabaloo surrounding SCOTUS today may have been centered around Baze, the Court also issued a minor, but nevertheless terrifically interesting decision. In Wright v. Van Patten [pdf], the Court wrote, per curiam, that the Circuit Court’s grant of a habeas was improper because the State supreme court’s decision denying the habeas was not contrary to clearly established federal law (which is one of the two grounds on which a valid State conviction can receive federal habeas corpus review).

Mr. Wright sough habeas review in the first place because at his plea hearing, his lawyer phoned it in. Not phoned it in in the colloquial sense (or even the widely used “he was crappy” sense that forms the basis of most habeas petitions), but rather in the literal sense. He appeared for the plea hearing via telephone.

In a state as small as CT, that is unheard of. Perhaps in them larger jurisdikshuns where theys gots lots of open land and such, it may be common practice (what was I going for there? I have no clue). Still, the idea seems very…dirty. If my client is pleading guilty, I want to be there to stand by him – if for nothing else than to offer support. It’s not only my client’s case, it is my case as well and having been through the whole process side by side, I’d rather not end it speaker to ear.

Anyway, the Court reserved for another day the substantive question of whether appearing by telephone is legally adequate (maybe that answers your question, Scott?). This case was reversed on purely procedural grounds.

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