Nicholas Bernard Acklin v. Alabama

Shortly before the trial in this capital case, the defense attorney learned that his client, Petitioner Nicholas Acklin, had been abused and threatened at gunpoint by his father when he was a child. The attorney knew that this information could be important as mitigation. But Acklin’s father was paying the attorney’s fee, and he told the attorney that if evidence of the abuse was presented, he would no longer pay for the representation. The attorney did not inform Acklin or the trial court that he had a conflict of interest. Instead, without mentioning the conflict, the attorney privately obtained a typewritten waiver of the abuse evidence from Acklin. The attorney then called Acklin’s father to testify at the penalty phase that Acklin had been raised in a loving and supportive home. The trial court expressly relied on that testimony as a reason to impose a death sentence. In the post-conviction proceedings below, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals held that Acklin’s attorney did not have an “actual conflict of interest” under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, based on the typewritten waiver, which the conflicted attorney had Acklin sign without disclosing his conflict. The question presented is: Whether a criminal defendant is deprived of his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights to conflict-