Criminal
Nov. 21, 2014
Effective counsel and jury instructions
Failing to ask for the right jury instruction may well land you a finding of ineffective assistance of counsel, as one recent case shows.
In criminal defense, a finding of ineffective assistance of counsel carries an element of "there but for the grace of God go I." Or to paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, there by the grace of God goes someone else. Lawyers who practice criminal defense in trial courts periodically mess up. Appellate lawyers point this out all the time, even as deputy attorneys general routinely urge, in furtherance of our clients' convictions, that our errors really weren't that bad, or as often, are excusab...
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