## Facts

- Betty Lou Beets was convicted in Texas state court of capital murder for killing her fifth husband, Jimmy Don Beets, and was sentenced to death.
- After Jimmy Don disappeared, Beets retained attorney E. Ray Andrews to pursue insurance and death benefits under a contingent-fee arrangement.
- After Beets was arrested for capital murder, Andrews continued as her trial counsel in the criminal case.
- Shortly after trial began, Beets signed a contract transferring all literary and media rights related to her case to Andrews’s son as payment of Andrews’s fee.
- The trial judge did not learn of the media-rights contract during trial and learned of it months later at a hearing concerning appointment of appellate counsel; the record described in the materials indicates no waiver inquiry regarding conflict-free counsel.
- In state and federal postconviction proceedings, Beets argued the media-rights arrangement created an unconstitutional conflict of interest that denied effective assistance of counsel.

## Issues

1. Whether a defense lawyer’s personal financial interest arising from a contingent-fee/media-rights contract triggers presumed prejudice under Cuyler v. Sullivan or must be evaluated under Strickland v. Washington.
2. Whether Beets proved ineffective assistance based on the media-rights arrangement, including deficient performance and a reasonable probability of a different outcome.

## Decision

- The Fifth Circuit reheard the case en banc, vacating the prior panel decision.
- The en banc court held that conflicts based on counsel’s personal interests (including financial/media-rights interests) are generally analyzed under Strickland, not under Cuyler’s presumed-prejudice rule.
- Applying Strickland, the court rejected Beets’s Sixth Amendment claim and declined to disturb the conviction and death sentence on the media-rights conflict theory.

## Legal Principles

- Cuyler’s presumed-prejudice framework is limited to conflicts arising from multiple or concurrent representation, not all attorney conflicts.
- Personal-interest conflicts, including fee arrangements and prospective media profits, are ordinarily evaluated as ineffective-assistance claims under Strickland.
- Under Strickland, a petitioner must prove both objectively unreasonable representation and prejudice—a reasonable probability that the result would have been different absent the challenged conduct.
- Ethically suspect arrangements may warrant close scrutiny, but they do not automatically establish a Sixth Amendment violation without proof of deficient performance and prejudice.

## Conclusion

The en banc Fifth Circuit treated counsel’s media-rights/fee arrangement as a personal-interest conflict subject to Strickland’s performance-and-prejudice test, not Cuyler’s presumed prejudice, and denied habeas relief because Beets did not show constitutionally ineffective assistance affecting the outcome.


Beets v. Collins, 65 F.3d 1258 (5th Cir. 1995) (en banc)