Supreme Court takes a case addressing ineffective assistance in plea bargaining

According to this post at SCOTUSblog, the Supreme Court has granted cert in a case concerning ineffective assistance of counsel in plea bargaining.  (They also had a summary disposition in a capital habeas case, Allen v. Siebert, that split the court 7-2).  Here is Lyle Denniston’s account of the new case:

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to spell out the remedy that may be available for ineffective defense lawyer’s efforts during plea bargaining, if the individual was later convicted at a fair trial.  The Court granted review of that question, which it spelled out in its order, in Arave v. Hoffman (07-110).

This is fascinating news and in future posts I hope to assess the potential impact of Hoffman.  For now, I can suggest that this grant continues the Supreme Court’s wonderful recent tendency to focus on important real-world criminal justice issues that have often previously escaped its attention. 

It is interesting to speculate why the Justices are now, in my view, more regularly taking up more consequential and dynamic criminal justice issues.  Perhaps it is the presence of two new justices, including one (Justice Alito) with a significant criminal justice background.  Perhaps it is a recent lack of interesting civil cases to fill the Court’s docket.  Perhaps the Justices are finally fatigued with the death penalty and habeas cases that have clogged up the Court’s criminal docket in recent Terms.

Whatever the explanation for the Supreme Court’s apparent interest in more interesting criminal cases, I hope these trends will continue. (I also hope readers will suggest additional issues meriting SCOTUS attention.)

UPDATE:  Thanks to SCOTUSblog, the cert petition from the state of Idaho in Hoffman can be found here.  The petition reveals that this new case does concern death and habeas (and even Apprendi), though it does seem that interesting plea issues can and will remain at the center of the case.