Excelsior Judicial Process Lafler v Cooper Case Study

Question Description

During the 2011 term, the United States Supreme Court recognized the reality that you read about since the midterm: most criminal cases are settled before trial in plea bargains. The role of the court, judges and formal court procedures intended to promote fairness, consistency and due process become essentially meaningless when supplanted by plea bargains. Seeing this, the Court in Missouri v. Frye and Lafler v. Cooper, held that criminal defendants have a Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel during plea negotiations.

For this project, you will review your readings in your text and read about these seminal Supreme Court decisions. You will then write a 500-700 word essay responding to the prompt below:

Did the Supreme Court get it right when they decided that the Sixth Amendment protects criminal defendants by requiring effective assistance of counsel during plea negotiations or are the strong dissents in these cases persuasive and correct?

You are expected to consult scholarly outside sources (EC Library Criminal Justice Research Guide (Links to an external site.)) and provide in text citations for facts and ideas obtained therefrom. Some recommended sources are:

SCOTUSblog for commentary: Opinion analysis: Expanding the right to effective counsel during the plea-bargaining process (Links to an external site.)

New York Times for commentary: Click on this link (https://www.nytimes.com/topic/organization/us-supreme-court?match=all&query=Frye&submit.x=0&submit.y=0 (Links to an external site.)) for NYT Supreme Court coverage. In the Search bar, type in Right to Counsel. And look for articles about Frye and Lafler and the right to counsel in criminal cases, including the right to effective counsel during the plea bargaining process.

Oyez for the primary source opinions and oral arguments (click on links as see sidebar, Oral Argument – October 31, 2011 and Opinion of the Court (Kennedy)

MISSOURI v. FRYE (Links to an external site.)

LAFLER v. COOPER (Links to an external site.)

Make use of these EC Library resources to ensure proper citation .

EC Library Citing Sources (Links to an external site.)

Compose your work in a .doc or .docx file type using a word processor (such as Microsoft Word, etc.) and save it frequently to your computer. For those assignments that are not written essays and require uploading images or PowerPoint slides, please follow uploading guidelines provided by your instructor.

Check your work and correct any spelling or grammatical errors. When you are ready to submit your work, click “Upload Submission.” Enter the submission title and then click on “Select a file to upload.” Browse your computer, and select your file. Click “Open” and verify the correct file name has appeared next to Submission File. Click on “Continue.” Confirm submission is correct and then click on “Accept Submission & Save.