Fox on Lawyer Duties in Multidisciplinary Teams in Capital Cases

Posted by Alan Childress

Lawrence J. Fox, an attorney with Philly’s Drinker Biddle & Reath and the former chair of the ABA’s standing committee on ethics and professional responsibility, has posted to SSRN Law & Soc’y: Legal Prof’n his article “Capital Guidelines and Ethical Duties: Mutually Reinforcing Responsibilities.” It is also in Hofstra Law Review, vol. 36 (2008).  Here is the abstract:

This article appears in the Hofstra LawReview symposium issue on the Supplementary Guidelines for theMitigation Function of Defense Teams in Death Penalty cases. Thecomplete text of the issue, which also contains the Guidelinesthemselves, is available online at www.law.hofstra.edu/DeathPenalty.

Itis counsel, and not any non-lawyer member of the multidisciplinarydefense team which needs to be assembled to provide competentrepresentation in a capital case, who bears ultimate responsibility forthe team’s performance and for decisions affecting the client and thecase. This article describes the many respects in which counsel’sspecific obligations under both the ABA’s Guidelines for theAppointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Casesreprinted in 31 Hofstra L. Rev. 913 (2003) and the SupplementaryGuidelines that are the subject of this issue are either directimplementations of or logical corollaries to deeply-rooted provisionsof the Model Rules of Professional Conduct that would bind counsel inany event. Correspondingly, the ABA Guidelines and SupplementaryGuidelines illuminate the requirements of the Model Rules in theparticular context of capital representation.