Yesterday, Justice Ginsburg announced the decision in Maples v. Thomas. For the second time in the last two years, the Supreme Court said that it matters when an attorney abandons their client. It Matters.
For prisoners this is good news for those pursuing postconviction relief. The Court has long held that a criminal defendant has no right to counsel when filing a federal post-conviction motion. Yet, Congress and the Court requires prisoners and their attorneys to meet a series of stringently-enforced deadlines. So where attorneys adandoned their clients and prisoners fail to meet the filing deadlines, they can now ask for equitable tolling or argue “cause” to overcome any procedural hurdle. That is a welcome change from what the lower courts were doing–refusing to credit defendants’ assertions that their lawyer abandoned them and that is the reason why they failed to file within the proper deadlines.
It was also nice to see the Court acknowledge the unfairness by requiring a pro se prisoner to meet filing deadlines without attorney representation:
Abandoned by counsel, Maples was left unrepresented at a critical time for his state postconviction petition, and he lacked a clue of any need to protect himself pro se. In these circumstances, no just system would lay the default at Maples’ death-cell door. Satisfied that the requisite cause has been shown, we reverse the Eleventh Circuit’s judgment.
To read more coverage of Maples, see articles from Adam Liptak at the New York Times, Mike Sacks at Huffington Post, David Savage at the Los Angeles Times, and Garrett Epps at The Atlantic.