{"id":481,"date":"2016-07-04T21:24:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-04T21:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/?p=481"},"modified":"2023-12-15T22:00:44","modified_gmt":"2023-12-15T22:00:44","slug":"sixth-amendment-right-to-counsel-prohibits-state-from-freezing-legitimate-assets-of-a-criminal-defendant-needed-to-pay-for-counsel-of-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/2016\/07\/04\/sixth-amendment-right-to-counsel-prohibits-state-from-freezing-legitimate-assets-of-a-criminal-defendant-needed-to-pay-for-counsel-of-choice\/","title":{"rendered":"Sixth Amendment right to counsel prohibits state from freezing legitimate assets of a criminal defendant needed to pay for counsel of choice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Supreme Court held in\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/15pdf\/14-419_nmip.pdf\" class=\"mtli_attachment mtli_pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Luis<em>\u00a0v. United States<\/em><\/a><em>,<\/em>\u00a0136 S.Ct. 1083<em>\u00a0<\/em>(U.S. 2016), that the government may not prevent a criminal defendant from using funds not derived from a crime to pay for counsel of choice. No constitutional issue arose from confiscating the proceeds of a crime but the law in question froze the defendant&#8217;s assets to ensure that moneys would be available to pay any eventual fines or penalties. While that was a legitimate government purpose it was not sufficient to justify the imposition on the defendant&#8217;s right under the Sixth Amendment to seek assistance of counsel of the defendant&#8217;s choice.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"taxonomy-category wp-block-post-terms\"><a href=\"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/category\/due-process\/\" rel=\"tag\">Due Process<\/a><span class=\"wp-block-post-terms__separator\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/category\/personal-property\/\" rel=\"tag\">Personal Property<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Supreme Court held in\u00a0Luis\u00a0v. United States,\u00a0136 S.Ct. 1083\u00a0(U.S. 2016), that the government may not prevent a criminal defendant from using funds not derived from a crime to pay for counsel of choice. No constitutional issue arose from confiscating the proceeds of a crime but the law in question froze the defendant&#8217;s assets to ensure that moneys would be available to pay any eventual fines or penalties. While that was a legitimate government purpose it was not sufficient to justify the imposition on the defendant&#8217;s right under the Sixth Amendment to seek assistance of counsel of the defendant&#8217;s choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[52,59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-due-process","category-personal-property"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"jsinger","author_link":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/author\/jsinger\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}