Opinion of the Court
plained why this would be “unfair” and ill advised. See ibid.; see also Rodriquez, 395 U. S., at 330. Compounding the trouble, defendants would be asked to make these showings in the face of the heightened standards and related hurdles that attend many postconviction proceedings. See, e. g., 28 U. S. C. §§2254, 2255; see also Brief for Idaho Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers et al. as Amici Curiae 22–25.
The Government’s proposal is also unworkable. For one, it would be difficult and time consuming for a postconviction court to determine–perhaps years later–what appellate claims a defendant was contemplating at the time of conviction.[1] Moreover, because most postconviction petitioners will be pro se, courts would regularly have to parse both (1) what claims a pro se defendant seeks to raise and (2) whether each plausibly invoked claim is subject to the defendant’s appeal waiver (which can be complex, see supra, at 4–6), all without the assistance of counseled briefing. We are not persuaded that this would be a more efficient or trustworthy process than the one we reaffirm today.
The more administrable and workable rule, rather, is the one compelled by our precedent: When counsel’s deficient performance forfeits an appeal that a defendant otherwise would have taken, the defendant gets a new opportunity to appeal. That is the rule already in use in 8 of the 10 Federal Circuits to have considered the question, see supra, at 3, and n. 3, and neither Idaho nor its amici have pointed us to any evidence that it has proved unmanageable there.[2] That rule does no more than restore
- ↑ To the extent relief would turn on what precisely a defendant said to counsel regarding specific claims, moreover, Garza rightly points out the serious risk of “causing indigent defendants to forfeit their rights simply because they did not know what words to use.” Reply Brief 17.
- ↑ It is, of course, inevitable that some defendants under this rule will seek to raise issues that are within the scope of their appeal waivers.
