Background
Richard Klungle had lived for five years in a home owned by his grandmother. When she died without a will in 2022, the property passed to her four children rather than to Klungle. He nonetheless refused to vacate, believing his grandmother had intended for him to inherit it. After eviction proceedings yielded a court order he ignored, Emmet County Sheriff’s deputies arrived to enforce the order. Klungle refused to leave and physically resisted the officers as they removed him, resulting in charges of one misdemeanor count of trespassing and two felony counts of resisting or obstructing a police officer.
Appointed defense counsel Peter Lyons opened trial by telling the jury that Klungle believed he had a lawful right to occupy the property. Klungle testified in his own defense and maintained he did not believe he was trespassing. But during closing argument, Lyons reversed course without warning, telling the jury plainly that “the proofs would show that a trespass was committed” and asking for a guilty verdict on that count while seeking acquittals on the felony charges. Klungle twice attempted to speak after closing arguments; both times the trial court directed him to remain silent. The jury convicted on all counts.
At a post-conviction evidentiary hearing, Lyons confirmed that Klungle had consistently maintained his innocence during their pre-trial discussions, that Klungle had never authorized the concession, and that Lyons had never consulted Klungle about the strategy. Lyons acknowledged he was unaware of McCoy v. Louisiana at the time of trial and said he acted on his “best legal judgment,” hoping the partial concession would preserve his credibility with the jury on the felony counts. The trial court denied a new trial, and the Court of Appeals affirmed, concluding that Klungle’s failure to communicate with Lyons and his silence when the concession was made left Lyons free to exercise professional discretion.
The Court’s Holding
In a unanimous opinion authored by Justice Bolden, the Michigan Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals, vacated all of Klungle’s convictions and sentences, and remanded for a new trial. The Court held that Lyons’s unilateral concession of guilt violated Klungle’s Sixth Amendment right of autonomy under McCoy v. Louisiana, 584 US 414 (2018), which provides that when a client expressly asserts innocence as the objective of the defense, counsel must abide by that objective and may not override it by conceding guilt. That violation is a structural error requiring automatic reversal without any showing of prejudice. The Court also confirmed, rejecting the prosecution’s argument to the contrary, that McCoy‘s principles are not limited to capital cases but apply to all criminal prosecutions.
The Court rejected the lower courts’ reasoning that Klungle’s breakdown in communication with Lyons, and his failure to instruct Lyons not to concede guilt, freed counsel to act on professional judgment. The duty of consultation runs to the attorney, not the client; placing the burden on the accused to tell his lawyer what not to do inverts the obligation entirely. The Court also distinguished Florida v. Nixon, 543 US 175 (2004), which permits a concession where counsel consults the client and the client remains unresponsive. Because there was no dispute that Lyons never consulted Klungle at all, Nixon‘s rule was inapplicable.
The Court further held that a contemporaneous objection is not required to establish or preserve a McCoy claim. Because an attorney who conceals a concession strategy from a client necessarily deprives the client of any meaningful opportunity to object—and because represented defendants are generally prohibited from speaking out of turn at trial (as happened here when the court twice silenced Klungle)—imposing such a requirement would be both impractical and inconsistent with the attorney-client system. Klungle preserved his claim by raising it promptly in a post-judgment motion for new trial. Finally, the Court held that the structural error required a new trial on all counts, not merely trespassing, because lawful arrest was an element of the resisting-or-obstructing charges, and conceding the trespass necessarily undermined any challenge to the officers’ lawful conduct.
Key Takeaways
- McCoy v. Louisiana‘s right of autonomy to maintain innocence applies in all criminal prosecutions in Michigan, not only capital cases.
- Before conceding a client’s guilt, defense counsel must first consult the client; if the client has previously asserted innocence, counsel cannot treat a communication breakdown or the absence of an explicit “don’t concede” instruction as permission to proceed.
- A defendant need not contemporaneously object at trial to establish or preserve a McCoy autonomy claim, especially where counsel never disclosed the concession strategy and the court prevented the defendant from speaking.
- Florida v. Nixon is limited to situations where counsel actually consults the client and the client is unresponsive — it offers no safe harbor when consultation never occurs.
- A structural error tainting one charge can require a new trial on all charges when the counts are legally interconnected.
Why It Matters
This decision is the Michigan Supreme Court’s first authoritative ruling applying McCoy to a non-capital case, and it settles two contested procedural questions: whether McCoy reaches ordinary felony and misdemeanor prosecutions (yes) and whether a contemporaneous objection is a prerequisite to relief (no). Defense attorneys statewide must now treat any prior client assertion of innocence as a binding constraint on trial strategy; a concession of guilt, however tactically sound it may appear, requires genuine client consultation and at least tacit client acquiescence.
The opinion also has practical implications for cases where the attorney-client relationship has broken down. Courts and counsel cannot treat a client’s silence or failure to communicate as constructive consent to a guilt concession. The ruling places the risk of inadequate consultation squarely on trial counsel and signals that post-conviction McCoy claims — requiring evidentiary hearings and potentially resulting in retrial years after conviction — will be viable in Michigan whenever consultation is absent and the record reflects a prior assertion of innocence.