Background
Richard Klungle had lived for five years in a home owned by his grandmother. When she died intestate in 2022, the property passed to her four children rather than to Klungle. He refused to leave, believing his grandmother had intended him to inherit it. After a court-ordered eviction went unenforced, Emmet County Sheriff’s deputies arrived to remove him. Klungle resisted, and he was charged with one misdemeanor count of trespassing and two felony counts of resisting or obstructing a police officer.
At trial, Klungle testified in his own defense that he did not believe he was trespassing because the home had been purchased for him and his children. His appointed attorney, Peter Lyons, told the jury in opening statements that Klungle believed he had the right to remain on the property and that the evidence would support an acquittal on all charges. But during closing argument, Lyons reversed course and told the jury that the evidence supported a trespass conviction, asking only for acquittal on the felony counts. Lyons never informed Klungle of this strategy, and Klungle had never consented to it. When Klungle tried to speak after closing arguments, the trial court twice directed him to remain silent. The jury convicted on all counts.
Klungle moved for a new trial, and at an evidentiary hearing Lyons confirmed that Klungle had consistently maintained his innocence during their prior discussions and had never agreed to admit guilt. Lyons testified he acted on his “best legal judgment,” believing a concession on the misdemeanor would preserve his credibility for the felony counts. The trial court denied relief, and the Court of Appeals affirmed, reasoning that Klungle’s failure to communicate with Lyons and his failure to instruct Lyons not to concede guilt left counsel free to exercise professional discretion.
The Court’s Holding
In a unanimous opinion 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 on the trespassing charge violated Klungle’s Sixth Amendment right of autonomy to maintain innocence as the objective of his defense, as established in McCoy v. Louisiana, 584 US 414 (2018). Because Klungle had consistently asserted his innocence to Lyons before trial and maintained that position on the witness stand, Lyons was obligated to abide by that objective and could not concede guilt without first consulting his client. The lower courts’ reliance on Klungle’s silence as implicit permission inverted the inquiry: the duty to consult rests on the attorney, not on the client to prohibit.
The Court also rejected the argument that Florida v. Nixon, 543 US 175 (2004), controlled. Nixon applies only where counsel consults the client about a concession strategy and the client remains unresponsive — a scenario that concededly did not occur here. Additionally, the Court held that a contemporaneous courtroom objection is not required to establish a McCoy claim. Where counsel never disclosed the concession plan, the client had no meaningful opportunity to object, and the trial court twice silenced Klungle when he attempted to speak. Requiring a represented defendant to interrupt proceedings and object in open court would be impractical and inconsistent with the structure of attorney-client representation.
Finally, the Court held that the structural error required vacatur of all three convictions, not just the trespassing count. Because Michigan common law permits resistance to an unlawful arrest, the prosecution was required to prove the officers acted lawfully — which depended on establishing the trespass. By conceding the trespass, Lyons necessarily undermined any challenge to the lawful-act element of the resisting-or-obstructing charges. The error thus infected the entire trial.
Key Takeaways
- Under McCoy, a defense attorney who knows the client wishes to maintain innocence may not concede guilt on any charge — even a minor one — without first consulting the client and obtaining approval or at least an unresponsive silence after disclosure.
- The McCoy right of autonomy applies in all criminal prosecutions, not only capital cases; the Sixth Amendment does not condition this protection on the severity of the potential sentence.
- A client’s failure to contemporaneously object to counsel’s concession is not fatal to a McCoy claim, particularly where counsel never disclosed the strategy and the client was affirmatively silenced by the trial court.
- A McCoy structural error that taints the legal elements of related charges requires new trials on all interconnected counts, not merely the count on which guilt was conceded.
- The Florida v. Nixon safe harbor — permitting a concession when the client is unresponsive after consultation — is unavailable where no consultation occurred at all.
Why It Matters
This decision is a significant post-McCoy clarification for criminal defense practitioners. It confirms that the right to maintain innocence extends to misdemeanor and noncapital felony cases alike, and it makes clear that the attorney’s duty runs affirmatively: counsel must seek the client’s view before conceding guilt, not simply wait to be told what not to do. Defense lawyers cannot invoke a breakdown in the attorney-client relationship as license to make unilateral guilt admissions, even when the strategic rationale seems sound.
The ruling also settles a procedural question that had divided lower courts: a defendant preserves a McCoy claim by raising it in a timely post-judgment motion, and contemporaneous courtroom objection is neither a required element of the claim nor necessary for preservation. For practitioners, the practical lesson is straightforward — document every client conversation about concession strategy, and never make a concession the client has not expressly approved or acquiesced to after being informed.