You next wonder if the client has committed three violent felonies. Perhaps his last crime involved an armed robbery and kidnapping. If this were the case:

Question

You have graduated from law school, passed the bar, and opened your own law firm. The first phone call to your office comes from a mother begging you to handle an appeal for her son, who has been sentenced to life in prison under a “three strikes and you’re out law.” This law mandates a life sentence for any three criminal convictions. Your state has no death penalty, so this is the worst sentence that he can receive. You agree to hear the case and the mother says she will be there in ten minutes to hand you the file. You decide to use the ten minutes before her arrival researching Supreme Court case law in “three strikes” cases; in the process you envision possibilities of what this client might have done.

a. You have no relevant Supreme Court case law to turn to, and should tell the mother that there is nothing that can be done.
b. You really have little chance of winning an appeal, based on Supreme Court precedent from Ewing v. California, where an individual received life in prison when that was deemed “proportional” to his offenses
c. You can build a strong appeal around Solem v. Helm, where the Supreme Court vacated a life sentence for similar activity
d. You could use the Supreme Court’s ruling in Atkins v. Virginia to set him free, as long as he is deemed competent to stand trial

Answer 1

Answer: B