Malia Arciero v. United States

Malia Arciero was charged with conspiring to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of meth. Two weeks prior to her trial, Arciero frantically told her then trial counsel that she was feared losing at trial and wanted to plead out. Counsel Dubin responded by demanded that she reject the offer and proceed to trial based on his fundamental misunderstanding of federal law. Unbeknown to Arciero, Dubin was a state real estate attorney with little or no experience in federal law, nevertheless, Arciero did as Dubin advised her and rejected the offer, Arciero was later convicted on all counts as charged. Arciero does not assert that any error occurred at the trial. On habeas review, both the Ninth Circuit and district court despite former trial counsel’s concession on the above undisputed facts, found that Arciero did not demonstrated a reasonable probability that she would have accepted the plea offer had she been adequately advised, and therefore her Sixth Amendment rights to effective assistance of counsel was not violated. Both lower Courts also found that Arciero did not show prejudice when the district court imposed a two level obstruction-of-justice enhancement based on sentencing counsel advising her to withdrawing her allegations against the case agent right before sentencing. The question presented is: Whether this Court holding in Lafler v. Cooper, 566 U.S. 156 (2012), is still good law, and if so, whether Arciero is entitled to relief due to defense counsels deficient advice which led to a twopoint enhancement in her impose sentence and led her to reject a favorable plea offer that resulted in her being later convicted and sentence to a harsher sentence after a fair trial?