Ineffective Assistance Of Counsel Essay

When faced with ineffective assistance of counsel it is impossible for a defendant to knowingly abandon a right or privilege, whose existence he does not truly understand exists. Here, if a defendant does not know that they are victims of ineffective assistance of counsel then a Rule 11 colloquy does not assist the defendants in their understanding of whether they attained effective legal representation. For example, the transcript of the Rule 11 hearing shows that the Court never asked whether the brothers understood effective versus ineffective assistance of counsel; whether they understood reasonable diligence in legal representation; whether they understood the actual work expected of attorneys in CCE and money laundering cases and against …show more content…
These rights can, of course, be waived. However, in comparable settings, the Court has repeatedly stressed that a valid waiver must rest on "an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege." An examination of whether a person is “competent” is not the same as an examination of whether they are knowledgeable about the law and their Constitutional rights or the rights, which they waive. The Rule 11 and Sentencing Hearing failed to secure from the brothers whether they knew that their lawyers were not effective and zealous during their representation and whether but for this knowledge, they would have entered a plea. The sentencing record lacks evidence to refute their contention that they knew that their case could have successfully prevailed before trial or whether they knew that since their attorneys were not diligent in their representation that they could have gone to trial. Alternatively, the Johnson brothers did not know that they did not have to enter a plea of guilty to the indicted