In such cases, the Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment requires the trial judge to exercise discretion to determine an appropriate remedy.

[4] The Strickland Court determined that a conviction may be reversed for ineffective assistance of counsel if the defendant shows that: On March 25, 2003, Anthony Cooper shot Kali Mundy repeatedly under the waist, injuring (but not killing) her.

[6] Cooper later gave evidence his attorney had inaccurately advised him that he could not be convicted of assault with intent to murder because he shot the victim below the waist.

On March 26, 2009, U.S. District Judge Denise Page Hood granted the petition, issuing a writ of habeas corpus "ordering specific performance of Petitioner’s original plea agreement, for a minimum sentence in the range of fifty-one to eighty-five months, the plea Petitioner would have accepted if counsel had been competent".

The Sixth Circuit affirmed the District Court's order, holding that Cooper had established a Strickland violation and that the remedy of specific performance was proper.

On January 7, 2011, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, granting certiorari and directing the parties to brief and argue the following question, in addition to the question presented in the petition for certiorari: "What remedy, if any, should be provided for ineffective assistance of counsel during plea bargain negotiations if the defendant was later convicted and sentenced pursuant to constitutionally adequate procedures?

Accordingly, Cooper argued that criminal defendants can be prejudiced by ineffective assistance of counsel during plea negotiations, even if the subsequent trial was fair.

Relying on his opinion in Missouri v. Frye, which was also decided the same day, Justice Kennedy wrote that the Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel extends to plea negotiations.

[27][29] Scalia argued that by reversing a conviction following "a full-dress criminal trial with its innumerable constitutional and statutory limitations upon the evidence that the prosecution can bring forward, and (in Michigan as in most States) the requirement of a unanimous guilty verdict by impartial jurors",[30] the majority transformed plea bargaining from being an embarrassing "necessary evil" to being an embraced, constitutionally-protected institution of the criminal justice system.

[31] He noted that the majority's remedy, which left to the discretion of the trial judge the specific relief, was unprecedented in the history of the Court's criminal justice jurisprudence.

Justice Alito then wrote the "weakness in the Court’s analysis is highlighted by its opaque discussion of the remedy that is appropriate when a plea offer is rejected due to defective legal representation".

[27] An article published in the Federal Sentencing Reporter argued that the government had "[won] by losing" by requiring defense lawyers to "bargain at the behest of the prosecutor".

[35] The Brennan Center for Justice wrote that the decision could incentivize defense counsel to advise accepting the first plea bargain their clients are offered for fear of being labelled "ineffective" by a court deciding that rejecting the plea was disadvantageous with the advantage of hindsight, but also noted that the decision represented a "triumph of realism and justice over narrow legalism and formalism".