Interesting read. What is truly amazing to me is the acceptance of the commentariat of just how truly results-oriented the Frye/Lafler decisions are.

A quote from the article:

Former American Bar Association Criminal Justice Section chairman Bruce Green told BNA he was surprised that the four dissenting justices in Frye and Lafler thought it did not matter that the defendant got a significantly longer jail sentence because of counsel's mistake as long as there were no trial errors.

“A decision going the other way would have excluded a big category of cases from the protection of the Sixth Amendment right,” he said.

But the Sixth Amendment is there to guarantee a fair trial. So how can one be surprised that four Justices stick with that precedent? No one really disputes that the majority based its decision on what it thinks a good justice system ought to look like, rather than the rights delineated in the Constitution. Remarkable.