People v. Milam

Defendant was convicted with first degree murder of his wife. Prior to trial, Defendant moved to suppress his confession, arguing that police ignored his request for counsel and obtained his confession six minutes after his counsel arrived at courthouse, but police did not tell Defendant that his counsel had arrived, delayed his attorney from seeing Defendant until after confession was signed, and did not read him his Miranda rights. Defendant was denied effective assistance of counsel, as his postconviction counsel failed to amend his petition to allege ineffective assistance of appellate counsel, which prevented trial court from considering merits of Defendant's claim and directly contributed to dismissal of petition without evidentiary hearing. (R. GORDON and LAMPKIN, concurring.)