Von Moltke, 322 U.S., at 722. Holloway, Sullivan, and Wood establish the framework that they do precisely because that framework is thought to identify the situations in which the conviction will reasonably not be regarded as fundamentally fair. Although the record does . The hospital is planning an open house for a new children's center that will include field trips for students at a nearby grade school. We have done the same. Id., at 346. 2d, at 606 ("[T]he Court concludes that, as a factual matter, Saunders did not believe that any continuing duties to a former client might interfere with his consideration of all facts and options for his current client") (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). When a client employs an attorney, he has a right to presume, if the latter be silent on the point, that he has no engagements, which interfere, in any degree, with his exclusive devotion to the cause confided to him; that he has no interest, which may betray his judgment, or endanger his fidelity." The state judge, however, did nothing to discharge her constitutional duty of care. Kadyrov's Chechnya: bikers, boxers, bribes 5. Brief for Respondent 34. A look at the case of U.K. entity HS2, the taxpayer-owned company building Britain's new high-speed rail line, which recently revoked a key contract amid allegations of conflicts of interest involving the U.S. engineering firm CH2M. Indeed, it was the same judge who dismissed the case against the victim who then appointed the victim's lawyer to represent Mickens one business day later. Ibid. See Cuyler, supra, at 349. Although the District Court concluded that Saunders probably did learn some matters that were confidential, it found that nothing the attorney learned was relevant to the subsequent murder case. has a right to know if the researcher might be biased, and that measures have been taken to minimize the possibility of bias. Souter, J., filed a dissenting opinion. Post, at 6-7 (dissenting opinion). 2007, embodies Lord Millet's concern. This Court, of course, was in no position to resolve these remaining issues in the first instance. Ante, at 8-9. This conclusion is a good example of why a case-by-case inquiry is required, rather than simply adopting an automatic rule of reversal. App. The court again denied his motion. 7-11. 119, 125-140 (1978); Lowenthal, Joint Representation in Criminal Cases: A Critical Appraisal, 64 Va. L.Rev. And these are precisely the lawyers presenting the danger in no-objection cases; the savvy and ethical lawyer would comply with his professional duty to disclose conflict concerns to the court. This allocation can only be justified, however, by the defendant's consent, at the outset, to accept counsel as his representative. Ukraine's missing millions 7. Although I express no view at this time about how our precedents should treat most ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims involving an alleged conflict of interest (or, for that matter, whether Holloway, Sullivan, and Wood provide a sensible or coherent framework for dealing with those cases at all), I am convinced that this case is not governed by those precedents, for the following reasons. The District Court's findings depend upon credibility judgments made after hearing the testimony of petitioner's counsel, Bryan Saunders, and other witnesses. Yet even with extensive investigation in post-trial proceedings, it will often prove difficult, if not impossible, to determine whether the prior representation affected defense counsel's decisions regarding, for example: which avenues to take when investigating the victim's background; which witnesses to call; what type of impeachment to undertake; which arguments to make to the jury; what language to use to characterize the victim; and, as a general matter, what basic strategy to adopt at the sentencing stage. Rule Crim. In 2015, the Delaware Supreme Court affirmed a near $100m against Royal Bank of Canada, which was found to have steered the sale of ambulance company Rural/Metro to a preferred bidder in the hopes. See, e.g., United States v. Vonn, 535 U.S. ___, ___ (2002) (slip op., at 17) (error in judge's Rule 11 plea colloquy). But as to forgiveness of the fines, the interests of the employer and defendants were aligned; the State's lawyer argued to the court nonetheless that counsel's allegiance to the employer prevented him from pressing the employer to honor its obligation to pay, and suggested to the judge that he should appoint separate counsel to enforce it. In Sullivan we did not ask only whether an objection was made in order to ascertain whether the trial court had a duty to inquire. But we have already rejected the notion that the Sixth Amendment draws such a distinction. The juvenile-court judge, whom circumstances had thrust into the unusual position of having to appoint counsel in a notorious capital case, certainly knew or had reason to know of the possibility that Saunders's 14-day representation of the murder victim, up to the start of the previous business day, may have created a risk of impairing his representation of Mickens in his upcoming murder trial. See Holloway, supra, at 488. Holloway presumed, moreover, that the conflict, "which [the defendant] and his counsel tried to avoid by timely objections to the joint representation," id., at 490, undermined the adversarial process. The Court's rule makes no sense unless, that is, the real point of this case is to eliminate the judge's constitutional duty entirely in no-objection cases, for that is certainly the practical consequence of today's holding. Some Courts of Appeals have read a footnote in Wood v. Georgia, 450 U.S. 261, 272, n.18 (1981), as establishing that outright reversal is mandated when the trial court neglects a duty to inquire into a potential conflict of interest. In place of the forsaken judicial obligation, we can expect more time-consuming post-trial litigation like this, and if this case is any guide, the added time and expense are unlikely to purchase much confidence in the judicial system.13. Id., at 347-348. The most obvious special circumstance would be an objection. With no objection on record, a convicted defendant can get no relief without showing adverse effect, minimizing the possibility of a later reversal and the consequent inducement to judicial care.11 This makes no sense. The University of Maryland Medical System has implemented dozens of recommendations from a state auditor relating to board governance and conflicts of interest a year after a high-profile self . With these observations, I join the opinion of the Court. organisation But there is little doubt as to the course of the second instance of alleged adverse effect: Saunders knew for a fact that the victim's mother had initiated charges of assault and battery against her son just before he died because Saunders had been appointed to defend him on those very charges, id., at 390 and 393. Song, Band, Use. Conflict of interest is fraud because the employee takes advantage of the organization's trust in expecting that the employee will act in the best interests of the organization. There is no reason to presume this guarantee unful-filled when the purported conflict has had no effect on the representation. . . Accordingly, the Court did not rest the result simply on the failure of counsel to object, but said instead that "[n]othing in the circumstances of this case indicates that the trial court had a duty to inquire whether there was a conflict of interest," ibid. The case was presented and argued on the assumption that (absent some exception for failure to inquire) Sullivan would be applicable--requiring a showing of defective performance, but not requiring in addition (as Strickland does in other ineffectiveness-of-counsel cases), a showing of probable effect upon the outcome of trial. Petitioner no longer argues, as he did below and as Justice Souter does now, post, at 14 (dissenting opinion), that the Sixth Amendment requires reversal of his conviction without further inquiry into whether the potential conflict that the judge should have investigated was real. See Lackawanna County District Attorney v. Coss, 532 U.S. 394, 406 (2001) (opinion of O'Connor, J.). In addition to describing the defendant's burden of proof, Sullivan addressed separately a trial court's duty to inquire into the propriety of a multiple representation, construing Holloway to require inquiry only when "the trial court knows or reasonably should know that a particular conflict exists," 446 U.S., at 3472 --which is not to be confused with when the trial court is aware of a vague, unspecified possibility of conflict, such as that which "inheres in almost every instance of multiple representation," id., at 348. Breyer, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Ginsburg, J., joined. Three are on point, Holloway v. Arkansas, supra; Cuyler v. Sullivan, supra; and Wood v. Georgia, supra. Cuyler, 446 U.S., at 348 ("[A] defendant who raised no objection at trial must demonstrate that an actual conflict of interest adversely affected his lawyer's performance" (footnote omitted)). Id., at 481. The constitutional question must turn on whether trial counsel had a conflict of interest that hampered the representation, not on whether the trial judge should have been more assiduous in taking prophylactic measures. The Commonwealth complains that this argument "relies heavily on the immediate visceral impact of learning that a lawyer previously represented the victim of his current client." Proc. 35-36 in Wood v. Georgia, O.T. Former -client conflict. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 694. The thinking is that other researchers, doctors, patients, regulators, investors everyone! 240 F.3d 348, 357 (CA4 2001). The law on conflicted counsel has to face the fact that one of our leading cases arose after a trial in which counsel may well have kept silent about conflicts not out of obtuseness or inattention, but for the sake of deliberately favoring a third party's interest over the clients, and this very case comes to us with reason to suspect that Saunders suppressed his conflicts for the sake of a second fee in a case getting public attention. Id., at 478-480. After King James I of Scotland was captured and held prisoner in England in 1406, Scottish barons gained tremendous authority over the people. Conflict of Interestthe revolving door turns both ways. And the Holloway Court said that once a conflict objection is made and unheeded, the conviction "must be reversed . One infamous internal memo from the Brown & Williamson tobacco company, typed up in the summer of 1969, sets out the thinking very clearly: "Doubt is our product." Why? 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