United States v. Cortland Bay Fulton, Also Known as Tairu Owolabi Alabi, Cortland Bay Fulton v. Warden, Ray Brook Correctional Facility

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• concluding that a per se unwaivable conflict exists “when an attorney is implicated in the crimes of his or her client”
• noting that per se rule is applicable only if attorney’s criminal activity is closely related to charged crimes of defendant
• holding that a cooperating co-defendant’s “allegations that lead trial counsel was engaged with him in heroin trafficking created an actual conflict of interest of the sort that requires application of the per se rule”
• noting that waiver is inappropriate where a defendant’s attorney is “implicated in related criminal activity”
• examining whether defendant’s explicit, in-court waiver of his right to conflict-free counsel was valid in light of the character of his attorney’s conflicts
• reversing conviction after holding that district court improperly accepted defendant’s waiver of an actual conflict of interest

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).