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Glover v. United States

Supreme Court of the United States · 2001 · Criminal Procedure

Criminal ProcedureIneffective Assistance of CounselSentencingStrickland PrejudiceStricklandprejudiceineffective assistancesentencing guidelines

Facts

Glover was convicted in federal court, and at sentencing the district court refused to group his money laundering counts with his other counts. According to Glover, his attorneys failed to contest that ruling adequately at sentencing and failed to raise the issue on appeal. He alleged that this error raised his offense level by two levels and increased his Guidelines range, making his 84-month sentence 6 to 21 months longer than it should have been. The lower courts did not decide whether counsel performed deficiently, concluding instead that such an increase could not amount to prejudice under Strickland.

Issue

Whether, for purposes of Strickland v. Washington, an alleged error by counsel that caused a defendant to receive 6 to 21 additional months in prison can constitute prejudice. More specifically, the question was whether courts may require some further showing that the sentence increase was sufficiently significant before finding prejudice.

Rule

Under Strickland, when counsel's deficient performance deprives a defendant of a substantive or procedural right to which the law entitles him and causes an increase in his term of imprisonment, prejudice may be established without any additional requirement that the increase meet a threshold level of significance. Any amount of actual jail time has Sixth Amendment significance, and courts may not engraft a 'significant increase' requirement onto Strickland's prejudice prong in Guidelines-calculation cases.

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One of 10 multiple-choice questions for this case. Pick an answer to see why.

In federal court in Denver, Malik Turner was sentenced under the Sentencing Guidelines after his lawyer failed to object to a criminal-history miscalculation. On collateral review, Malik shows that if counsel had objected successfully, his advisory range would have been lower and his actual sentence would have been 3 months shorter.

If the court denies relief solely because a 3-month increase in imprisonment is too small to count as prejudice under Strickland, what is the best answer?

Explanation. The governing rule is that courts may not engraft an additional requirement that the increase in imprisonment be sufficiently significant before prejudice exists. The majority explained that any amount of actual jail time has Sixth Amendment significance. So if counsel's error caused additional prison time, the prejudice prong is not defeated merely because the increase was small. (Derived from Glover v. United States (2001).)