We’re pleased to note that the 5th and 6th amendment issues brought up during the case of Luis V. United States have been ruled upon we learned from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. The defendant Sila Luis was charged with health care related crimes and financial gain related to those crimes. The government wished to seize the defendants assets before the trial for criminal forfeiture and compensation. The author explains:
“In a widely awaited decision concerning the right to counsel and the government’s pretrial seizure of a defendant’s assets, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on March 30, 2016, that a defendant has a sixth amendment right to use her own “innocent” property to pay a reasonable fee for the assistance of counsel.”
The government in trying to seize a defendants assets pretrial wasn’t necessarily a violation in of itself but the fact that they were trying to seize untainted assets, assets that are not involved in the defendants alleged crime and are considered fairly earned and owned, is where they ran into trouble and were clearly violating the clients right to hire an attorney of their choosing that they’d be able to afford. The ruling is important for clients pretrial rights and has broader impact than just that as the NACDL explained:
“In addition to finding a sixth Amendment violation in the pretrial restraint of innocent assets in this case, the plurality opinion makes a very important point about the capacity of America’s public defense systems. The plurality explained that if the government were able to properly seize such untainted assets, thereby depriving accused persons of the ability to retain counsel of their choice, “these defendants, rendered, rendered indignant, would fall back upon publicly paid counsel, including overworked and underpaid public defenders. As the Department of Justice explains, only 27 percent of county-based public defenders office have sufficient attorneys to meet nationally recommended caseload standards.” The plurality went onto explain the “substantial risk” that if the governments position prevailed, it would increase the government-paid-defender workload, “rendering less effective the basic right the sixth amendment seeks.”
So this ruling also broadly helps defendants protect their 6h Amendment rights to the core of what that Amendment actually means. The defendant has every right to use untainted assets to hire an attorney of their choice. The rest of the Supreme courts ruling can be read here. These are some of what I thought were the defining quotes:
“The question presented is “[w]hether the pretrial restraint of a criminal defendant’s legitimate, untainted assets (those not traceable to a criminal offense) needed to retain counsel of choice violates the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.” Pet. for Cert. ii. We see no reasonable way to interpret the relevant statutes to avoid answering this constitutional question. And our answer is that the pretrial restraint of legitimate, untainted assets needed to retain counsel of choice violates the Sixth Amendment. The nature and importance of the constitutional right taken together with the nature of the assets lead us to this conclusion.”
Pretty straightforward. Seizing untainted assets that are needed to be used to pay for the counsel of the defendants choice, is a violation of the sixth Amendment. Also one of the bigger problems with the governments case is that they were trying to use case examples that had very important distinctions within the specifics of their cases. The court explains here:
“Government cannot, and does not, deny Luis’ right to be represented by a qualified attorney whom she chooses and can afford. But the Government would undermine the value of that right by taking from Luis the ability to use the funds she needs to pay for her chosen attorney. The Government points out that, while freezing the fund smay have this consequence, there are important interests on the other side of the legal equation: It wishes to guarantee that those funds will be available later to help pay for statutory penalties (including forfeiture of untainted assets) and restitution, should it secure convictions. And it points to two cases from this Court, Caplin & Drysdale, supra, at 619, and Monsanto, 491 U. S., at 615, which, in the Government’s view, hold that the Sixth Amendment does not pose an obstacle to its doing so here. In our view, however, the nature of the assets at issue here differs from the assets at issue in those earlier cases. And that distinction makes a difference. Relevant difference consists of the fact that the property here is untainted; i.e., it belongs to the defendant, pure and simple. In this respect it differs from arobber’s loot, a drug seller’s cocaine, a burglar’s tools, or other property associated with the planning, implementing, or concealing of a crime.”
This statement successfully cuts the heart out of the governments argument. Justice Kennedy on other side didn’t see it that way. He likes to avoid the specifics:
“KENNEDY prefers to read Caplin & Drysdale and Monsanto broadly, as holding that “the Government,having established probable cause to believe that Luis’ substitute [i.e., innocent] assets will be forfeitable uponconviction, should be permitted to obtain a restraining order barring her from spending those funds prior to trial.”
But the court shut that opinion down pretty thoroughly here:
“But this reading asks too much of our precedents. For one thing, as discussed, Caplin & Drysdale and Monsanto involved the restraint only of tainted assets, and thus we had no occasion to opine inthose cases about the constitutionality of pretrial restraints of other, untainted assets.”
Whether Justice Kennedy wants to see it or not, restraining Luis untainted assets would violate her 6th amendment right and the court has affirmed that.
