When Your Defense Lawyer Becomes Part of the Prosecution Team
On January 5, 2015, Randall H. McCants Jr. was not alone when Judge James H. Roberts Jr. of the Sixth Judicial Circuit of the State of Alabama opened his courtroom for a plea hearing. "Mr. McCants is present in court with his attorneys, Jim Gentry and Mike Cartee," he stated. Besides the judge's reference to McCants' court-appointed attorneys by their nicknames, nothing appeared out of the ordinary. Roberts cited McCants' constitutional rights before highlighting his defense attorneys' central task: "Your attorneys are bound to do everything they can honorably and reasonably do to see that you obtain a fair and impartial trial." McCants answered the judge's questions with "yes, sir" and "no, sir." Even to the charge of capital murder and the question of whether he understood that "the range of punishment is life without parole or death," McCants responded, "yes, sir."
According to the nine-page hearing transcript, Roberts knew that McCants had pled not-guilty during his post-arrest arraignment in January 2011. In fact, Roberts acknowledged that McCants' attorneys had only recently "proposed a plea agreement" for the "lesser offence of murder." Yet, at no point during the hearing did Roberts wonder about what prompted McCants' sudden about-face. Did four mysterious years in pretrial detention impact McCants' decision? Could McCants' attorneys have coerced him to plead guilty by invoking fear that a greater punishment awaited him at trial? Whether McCants was mentally competent to grasp legal proceedings or understand that he was assuming full responsibility for the accidental death of a Tuscaloosa resident apparently did not cross Roberts' mind either.