Strickland v. Washington

so that if any jail time is possible, the defendant has a right to appoint a counsel, not just in felony cases.

Strickland v. Washington, 1984, defined what effective counsel actually means, setting the modern legal standard for ineffective assistance of counsel claims.

Deficient performance plus resulting prejudice to the outcome is the standard basis of ineffective assistance of counsel.

Strickland v. Washington is the exact case that defense attorneys in appellate courts still cite today when a conviction is being challenged on the grounds that the defense attorney simply just did a bad job.

And then Padilla v. Kentucky, 2010, a more recent extension holding that defense counsel must advise non-citizen clients about the immigration consequences like deportation of a guilty plea.

Put these cases together and they've built something over time that didn't meaningfully exist in America before the 1960s.

He offers the example of a prisoner who claims that prosecutors withheld mitigating evidence and that his lawyer was constitutionally ineffective for failing to pursue that evidence.

Fernandez posits that these arguments would fail to satisfy the legal intricacies of the doctrines related to Brady v. Maryland and Strickland v. Washington.

Still, Fernandez asserts, these half-baked legal challenges could count as extraordinary and compelling reasons that justify a reduced sentence.

The dissent, too, proclaims that the core mission of compassionate release is to offer deserving prisoners relief from the rigors of Section 2255.

Take Fernandez's own situation.

How would the Bureau determine whether the testimony at his trial was credible? Or take Fernandez's hypothetical.

How would the Bureau evaluate arguments raised under Brady v. Maryland and Strickland v. Washington? Congress's decision to route compassionate release motions through the Bureau strongly suggests that the extraordinary and compelling reasons warranting compassionate release must be reasons that the Director is competent to assess.

Regulatory history points the same way.