Buried near the end of the Court's opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, is the following passage that richly expresses the extent to which this Court is willing to go to sacrifice trial rights in the name of the finality of judgments.

The referenced portion of the opinion states:

Despite our conclusion that there was no factual or legal justification for overturning the state court’s decision, we recognize that Toca’s conduct in this litigation was far from exemplary. He may well have violated the rules of professional conduct by accepting respondent’s publication rights as partial payment for his services, and he waited weeks before consulting respondent’s first lawyer about the case.

But the Sixth Amendment does not guarantee the right to perfect counsel; it promises only the right to effective assistance, and we have held that a lawyer’s violation of ethical norms does not make the lawyer per se ineffective.

Troubling as Toca’s actions were, they were irrelevant to the narrow question that was before the Sixth Circuit: whether the state court reasonably determined that respondent was adequately advised before deciding to withdraw the guilty plea.

Andrew on the injustice:

This is what the right to counsel has come to in America. Your lawyer may have violated ethical rules; he may have failed to timely consult with other attorneys; he may have not adequately investigated your case; he may have given you bad advice that leads you to withdraw a guilty plea. And yet the legal standards imposed by the Supreme Court declare that you still aren't entitled to any meaningful relief by the courts. In law school, they call this "a right without a remedy." In real life, it's called injustice.