Washington (CNN)The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a death row inmate on Monday who argued his constitutional rights were violated when his lawyer told the jury he was guilty, even though the inmate wanted to proclaim his innocence.
The ruling means the inmate Robert McCoy will get a new trial.
Writing for a 6-3 majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that a lawyer “may not admit her client’s guilt of a charged crime over the client’s intransigent objection to that admission.”
Ginsburg said McCoy’s lawyer, Larry English, was in a difficult position as he sought a lesser conviction of second-degree murder in order to save his client from the death penalty. But even though McCoy was an “unruly client” and “faced a strong government case,” English’s proposed strategy to admit guilt “was incompatible with the Sixth Amendment.”