Smith v. Robbins
- Decided
- January 19, 2000
- Docket
- 98-1037
- Status
- Published
- Jurisdiction
- Federal
Cited 3,510 timesNo negative treatment found in this library
What later courts said
- holding that the Anders procedure is merely one method of satisfying the requirements of the Constitution for indigent criminal appeals — Pullen v. State (2001)
- holding that Anders is a prophylactic measure and that states may adopt alternative approaches as long as those approaches meet constitutional standards — A.L.L. v. People (2010)
- holding that “the proper standard for evaluating [a] claim that appellate counsel was ineffective ... is that enunciated in Strickland” — Milton v. Miller (2014)
Each line is a later court’s own words about this case, not a summary. Read the opinion before relying on it.
How the opinion begins
Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the Court.
Not infrequently, an attorney appointed to represent an indigent defendant on appeal concludes that an appeal would be frivolous and requests that the appellate court allow him to withdraw or that the court dispose of the case without the filing of merits briefs. In Anders v. California, 386 U. S. 738 (1967), we held that, in order to protect indigent defendants’ constitutional right to appellate counsel, courts must safeguard against the risk of granting such requests in cases where the appeal is not actually frivolous. We found inadequate California’s procedure — which permitted appellate counsel to withdraw upon filing a conelusory letter stating that the appeal had “no merit” and permitted the appellate court to affirm the conviction upon reaching the same conclusion following a review of the record. We went on to set [*265] forth an acceptable procedure. California has since adopted a new procedure, which departs in some respects from the one that we delineated in Anders. The question is whether that departure is fatal. We hold that it is not. The procedure we sketched in Anders is a prophylactic one; the States are free to adopt different procedures, so long as those procedures adequately safeguard a defendant’s right to appellate counsel.
I
Statutes cited
Cite this
Smith v. Robbins, 528 U.S. 259 (2000)Read the full opinion
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