Ashley Mere Howard v. Texas

Petitioner pled guilty to felony theft. At the sentencing hearing, the trial court announced that it intended to sentence her to ten years in prison, the statutory maximum—asserting that she should have been charged with felony murder because her accomplice ran a red light, hit a car, and killed the driver as they fled from the police after the theft—but gave her the option of withdrawing her guilty plea. If petitioner had accepted the ten-year sentence for theft, she would have become eligible for parole after serving 15 months (and had been in jail for almost ten months by that time). Petitioner withdrew her guilty plea and was reindicted for felony murder. A jury convicted her and assessed 35 years in prison. She must serve half of the sentence (17.5 years) before she becomes eligible for parole. She sought habeas corpus relief on the basis that her original counsel in the theft case provided ineffective assistance by failing to advise her of the difference in parole eligibility between a theft sentence and a murder sentence. The court denied an evidentiary hearing and based its decision to recommend that relief be denied on the conflicting affidavits of petitioner and her counsel. The questions presented are: I. Does the state court’s decision that petitioner cannot challenge her murder conviction based on her original counsel’s failure to inform her of the difference in parole eligibility between a theft sentence and a murder sentence before she withdrew her guilty plea to theft conflict with Lafler v. Cooper, 566 U.S. 166 (2012)?