Post-Conviction Battles
Hi, I’m Oklahoma City Attorney Aaron Easton, and this is part four in a five-part series discussing the ineffective assistance of counsel and the use of that constitutional right for an Oklahoma defendant to apply for post-conviction relief following, obviously, a conviction in the state of Oklahoma.
So we previously discussed your constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel, and then the criteria laid out by the Supreme Court that the courts will look at when determining if you do deserve post-conviction relief.
In the previous video, we discussed the first prong of that test, which is the court will look to see if the attorney met an objective standard of reasonableness.
Today, we’re going to discuss the second prong of that test, but what’s important to note right out of the gate is the court will look at that first prong first, and if you don’t meet the prong, if you don’t show that your attorney fell below an objective standard of reasonableness, they’re not going to look at the second prong.
Proving Prejudice
That second prong is that the petitioner must also show that they suffered prejudice because of their attorney’s deficient performance. So if you can first show their performance was deficient, that’s not going to be good enough if that deficiency is overrun by clear evidence of your guilt. You’re going to have to show A, it was deficient, and B, that because of that deficiency, you suffered some prejudice.
The courts have said prejudice exists where there is a reasonable probability that but for counsel’s unprofessional error, the result of the proceeding would have been different. And so the but for shows that you have to show a direct link from that ineffective performance by counsel strictly straight to the prejudice that you’ve got because of that performance.
The U.S. Supreme Court has also elaborated on that by saying that the deficient performance prong of Strickland is necessarily linked to the practice and expectations of the legal community. So again, you have to show the deficient performance, you have to show a direct link from that performance to the prejudice that you’ve got.
Get Help with Your Post-Conviction Case
If you can do that, you may be a candidate to get relief in a post-conviction setting through the Oklahoma Post-Conviction Procedure Act. To speak to an attorney privately and confidentially about the specifics of your matter, you can speak to somebody at my firm for a initial consultation. You can reach us by phone at 405-888-5400 or online at postconviction.lawyer.