Rompilla v. Beard

Rompilla v. Beard
Yet another killer given an extra chance because of perceived incompetence by his original defense team.

The crux of this one is that Rompilla stabbed, beat and burned someone. He was convicted and sentenced to death. His new lawyers claim thath Rompilla's previous lawyers did not bring up as a defense Rompilla's alcohol abuse, childhood and when the state announced that it was going to use previous convictions to help push for a stronger sentence Rompilla's lawyers did not fight against those.

The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision (given by Souter) concludes that the defense was not adequate and therefore the sentence cannot stand.

However, Kennedy offers the dissent (which Scalia, Thomas and Rehnquist joined) and in it he points out that:

The prior conviction the Court refers to is Rompilla’s 1974 conviction for rape, burglary, and theft...Before the sentencing phase of the capital case, the Commonwealth informed Rompilla’s attorneys that it intended to use these prior crimes to prove one of the statutory aggravating circumstances–namely, that Rompilla had a “significant history of felony convictions involving the use or threat of violence to the person.”.
...
A per se rule requiring counsel in every case to review the records of prior convictions used by the State as aggravation evidence is a radical departure from Strickland and its progeny. We have warned in the past against the creation of “specific guidelines” or “checklist[s] for judicial evaluation of attorney performance.” “No particular set of detailed rules for counsel’s conduct can satisfactorily take account of the variety of circumstances faced by defense counsel or the range of legitimate decisions regarding how best to represent a criminal defendant. Any such set of rules would interfere with the constitutionally protected independence of counsel and restrict the wide latitude counsel must have in making tactical decisions...For this reason, while we have referred to the ABA Standards for Criminal Justice as a useful point of reference, we have been careful to say these standards “are only guides” and do not establish the constitutional baseline for effective assistance of counsel.

Basically, the US Supreme Court should not set up criteria or checklists to measure if a defense was adequate because there are too many factors with each defense. A checklist would hinder the effective defense of people in some cases.

So the result today is (1) a vicious murderer gets a second chance based on a newly created technicality from the liberal wing of the US Supreme Court and (2) a new checklist is introduced into the a defense attorney's review of his cases endangering the effectiveness of a defense attorney...also brough about by the left-side of the Court.