Wiggins v. Smith: The Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Standard Applied Twenty Years After Strickland

Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, The, Summer 2004 by Gable, Elizabeth, Green, Tyler

Because the defendant must prove both elements of the Strickland test in order to prove ineffective assistance of counsel, an appellate court will not always review counsel's effectiveness. For example, if the defendant cannot prove that the result of his trial reasonably might have been different had counsel acted as an effective advocate, the test does not require any evaluation of counsel's performance.42 The Court stated that "the object of an ineffectiveness claim is not to grade counsel's performance,"43 but instead to establish if counsel's performance was determinative to the outcome of the defendant's trial. While this may prove effective in determining whether that particular client suffered injury, ethics violations may not become apparent every time there is a challenge to counsel's performance, because it may be that only the second prong of the Strickland test is evaluated while the first prong is never reached.44 When no actions, investigations, or strategy choices of counsel would have made a difference on the outcome, a court will not reverse a decision even if counsel was completely ineffective.

Strickland was a case where seemingly no strategy would have changed the outcome of the case. Therefore, counsel's representation was not deemed ineffective assistance of counsel. Defendant had confessed, against the advice of counsel, to three counts of capital murder, multiple counts of bank robbery, and numerous other serious charges.45 Because of the overwhelming aggravating evidence, there was no reasonable probability that different tactics would have changed the conclusion of the judge.46 Nevertheless, the Court reviewed counsel's performance in Strickland anyway in order to illustrate the general principles set forward in its new test.47 Regardless, in future cases with similar facts, evaluation of counsel's performance would not be required if the result of the case was not prejudiced.

IV. WIGGINS v. SMITH-DUTY TO INVESTIGATE

In 2003, the Supreme Court applied the standard established in Strickland v. Washington to the case of Wig gins v. Smith. Contrary to the result in Strickland, the Court in Wiggins applied the Strickland standard and determined that counsel's performance was ineffective.48 Specifically, the Court added to the Strickland standard by establishing that effective assistance includes conducting any and all reasonable investigations into possible lines of defense, to the reasonable extent each investigation warrants, when presenting mitigating evidence in a sentencing hearing.49

The facts of Wiggins v. Smith presented a situation in which the Court believed that any reasonable counsel would have chosen to thoroughly investigate the defendant's background in order to determine what mitigating evidence to present at trial.50 Many of these facts came to light on appeal to the Baltimore County Circuit Court, where a court-certified social history expert presented a complete report on Kevin Wiggins. The report found that Wiggins had a severely dysfunctional background.51 At an early age, Wiggins' mother left him and his siblings home for days at a time, forcing them to beg for food and eat paint chips and garbage because she kept the kitchen locked.52 If the children were found trying to break into the kitchen, she severely beat them, and once forced Wiggins' hand onto a hot stove, which resulted in hospitalization.53 The mother also had intercourse with men while her children slept in the same bed.54 Wiggins entered foster care at age six, where his first and second foster mothers physically abused him and the second foster father molested and raped him.55 After running away, Wiggins returned to foster care at age sixteen, where one of his foster mother's sons allegedly participated in gang raping him.56 Having left foster care, Wiggins entered a Job Corps program, where his supervisor sexually abused him.57 Wiggins was convicted of murdering 77 year-old Florence Lacs on August 4, 1989.58