⚖ Oral Arguments, with Context

The Fifth Circuit hears Reginald Wallace's challenge to a Mississippi conviction arising from a robbery. He pleaded guilty and received a thirty-year prison sentence. He says his lawyer failed to tell him about a later offer to plead to the lesser offense of robbery, which carried at most fifteen years. An earlier written offer was different and had expired. In 2016, Mississippi's appeals court ordered an evidentiary hearing on whether the later offer had been conveyed. A federal district court later dismissed his petition, but permitted an appeal on specific factual questions about that offer. The dispute involves more than what the lawyer said: would Wallace have accepted the offer on its actual terms? His lawyer will argue that the state courts assumed a cooperation requirement without adequate evidence. Mississippi will point to the other defendants' agreements and Wallace's unwillingness to implicate his brother. Listen for the difference between a better possible sentence and proof that the entire deal would have happened, under the deferential rules for federal review of state convictions.

Wallace v. State of Mississippi (No. 25-60458) — U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, argued November 5, 2026.