Criminal defense counsel has an ethical duty to contact potential alibi witnesses identified by clients regardless of whether the testimony would fall within the lawyers’ trial strategy, many well-known Maryland defense attorneys argued this week in urging the state’s top court to order the retrial of convicted murderer – and podcast star – Adnan Syed.

Tagged with: Adnan Syed ineffective assistance of counsel serial podcast sixth amendment

Maryland’s top court will consider whether podcast star Adnan Syed’s murder conviction should be reinstated. The Court of Appeals agreed Thursday to hear the state’s argument that Syed’s trial attorney’s ill-fated defense might have been flawed but was not constitutionally ...

Tagged with: Adnan Syed ineffective assistance of counsel serial podcast sixth amendment

Attorneys for Adnan Syed asked Maryland's high court Tuesday to let the Court of Special Appeals' decision awarding him a new trial to stand.

Tagged with: Adnan Syed certiorari Court of Appeals Serial sixth amendment

Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh is urging the state’s top court to reinstate podcast star Adnan Syed’s murder conviction, saying his trial attorney’s ill-fated defense might have been flawed but was not constitutionally ineffective.

Tagged with: Adnan Syed ineffective assistance of counsel serial podcast sixth amendment

A defendant’s pretrial letter to the circuit court clerk’s office expressing dissatisfaction with his attorney triggers the requirement that a judge ask why and whether he wants to fire the lawyer, Maryland’s top court has unanimously ruled in overturning child sexual-abuse convictions.

Tagged with: Discharge of counsel Right to counsel Rule 4-215(e) sixth amendment

A lawyer’s failure to warn clients that a guilty plea in state court can be used against them in a federal criminal proceeding does not constitute ineffective assistance of counsel, a federal judge in Baltimore ruled Monday. U.S. District Judge ...

Tagged with: guilty plea padilla v. kentucky sixth amendment

Convicts have no constitutional right to pay for appellate counsel with assets they forfeited to the U.S. government under a court order accompanying their convictions, a federal appeals court ruled Monday in rejecting a convicted Bowie drug dealer’s effort to ...

Tagged with: appellate procedure assets forfeiture Caplin & Drysdale v. United States Right to counsel sixth amendment