Florida v. Joe Elton Nixon (543 U.S. 175)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided December 13, 2004 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 543 U.S. 175 · 125 S. Ct. 551
- Decided
- December 13, 2004
- Term
- October Term 2004
- Vote
- 8–0
- Majority author
- Justice Breyer
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court. This capital case concerns defense counsel’s strategic decision to concede, at the guilt phase of the trial, the defendant’s commission of murder, and to concentrate the defense on establishing, at the penalty phase, cause for sparing the defendant’s life. Any concession of that order, the Florida Supreme Court held, made without the defendant’s express consent — however gruesome the crime and despite the strength of the evidence of guilt — automatically ranks as prejudicial ineffective assistance of counsel necessitating a new trial. We reverse the Florida Supreme Court’s judgment. Defense counsel undoubtedly has a duty to discuss potential strategies with the defendant. See Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668, 688 (1984). But when a defendant, informed by counsel, neither consents nor objects to the course counsel describes as the most promising means to avert a sentence of death, counsel is not automatically barred from pursuing that course. The reasonableness of counsel’s performance, after consultation with the defendant yields no response, must be judged in accord with the inquiry generally applicable to ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims: Did counsel’s representation “f[a]ll below an objective standard of reasonableness”? Id., at 688, 694. The Florida Supreme Court erred in applying, instead, a presumption…
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