No. 20-34

Anthony Thomas Grimes v. Kentucky

Lower Court: Kentucky
Docketed: 2020-07-16
Status: Denied
Type: Paid
Response Waived
Tags: criminal-defense criminal-procedure effective-assistance-of-counsel parole-eligibility plea-bargaining plea-negotiation prejudice-standard sentencing sentencing-information sexual-offender-registration sixth-amendment strickland-v-washington
Key Terms:
DueProcess HabeasCorpus
Latest Conference: 2020-09-29
Question Presented (AI Summary)

Whether the Kentucky Court of Appeals has diminished and violated the federal constitutional guarantee of effective assistance of counsel

Question Presented (OCR Extract)

question presented is: Whether the Kentucky Court of Appeals has diminished and violated the federal constitutional guarantee of effective assistance of counsel in the pretrial negotiation phase ofa criminal trial mandated by Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), ate Hill y. Lockhart, 474 U.S. 52 (1985) Padilla v. Kentucky, 130 S. Ct. 1473 (2010), Lafler v. Cooper, 132 S. Ct. 1376 (2012), and Missouri v. Frye, 132 S. Ct. 1399 (2012), by sanctioning as effective assistance of counsel the conduct of a criminal defense attorney who admittedly was ignorant of and failed to advise his client of the sentencing aspects of the case and instead relied upon the client to read criminal statutes and a generic sentencing form provided by counsel and who deliberately declined to seek clarification from the prosecution of the one-sentence oral plea offer counsel admittedly did not understand or believe would be acceptable to the court before simply conveying the one-sentence offer to his client with no explanation and no advice. The Kentucky Court of Appeals found that Petitioner had not demonstrated prejudice because he had not shown how his trial counsel’s performance impacted Petitioner’s decision to reject the plea offer, emphasizing that trial counsel and the prosecutor testified that Petitioner had an unwavering stance that he would not accept any plea offers. Accordingly, the second question presented is: Whether the Kentucky Court of Appeals misinterpreted and misapplied the prejudice standard of Lafler v. Cooper, 132 8. Ct. 1376 (2012), by finding Petitioner failed to demonstrate how Petitioner’s trial counsel’s performance impacted Petitioner’s decision to reject the plea offer, even though Petitioner showed that but for the ineffective advice of counsel there is a reasonable probability that the plea offer would have been presented to the court, as Petitioner testified he would have accepted the plea, the prosecution acknowledged the offer would not have been -ii withdrawn in light of intervening circumstances, the trial court would have accepted its terms, and that the conviction or sentence, or both, under the plea offer’s terms would have been substantially less severe than the conviction and sentence actually imposed following Petitioner’s jury trial. -iii

Docket Entries

2020-10-05
Petition DENIED.
2020-07-29
DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 9/29/2020.
2020-07-22
Waiver of right of respondent Kentucky to respond filed.
2020-07-13
Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due August 17, 2020)

Attorneys

Anthony Thomas Grimes
Joseph Vincent Aprile IILynch, Cox, Gilman & Goodman, P.S.C., Petitioner
Joseph Vincent Aprile IILynch, Cox, Gilman & Goodman, P.S.C., Petitioner
Kentucky
James HaveyOffice of the Attorney General, Respondent
James HaveyOffice of the Attorney General, Respondent