In the case of Christeson v. Roper, 2014, Mark Christeson was convicted for murder and sentenced to death in Missouri. His court-appointed attorneys missed a crucial deadline for filing his federal habeas corpus petition by over three months due to their negligence. When they realized their mistake, instead of admitting it and allowing him to get new representation who could argue that he should be excused from this default because of attorney error, they continued representing him which created a conflict of interest situation as they were essentially arguing against their own incompetence. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Christeson stating that these lawyers had abandoned him at a critical time thus violating his constitutional right to effective assistance counsel under the Sixth Amendment. The court also noted that these attorneys cannot reasonably be expected to make arguments implicating themselves with professional misconduct hence ordered appointment of conflict-free counsel.

In the dissenting opinion for Christeson v. Roper, Justice Samuel Alito argued that the majority's decision to grant a certificate of appealability (COA) was inappropriate and inconsistent with previous rulings. He contended that the COA should only be granted if there is a debatable constitutional issue at stake, which he believed was not present in this case. Furthermore, he criticized the majority for failing to address whether or not Christeson’s attorneys had abandoned him by missing his federal habeas deadline due to negligence rather than strategic reasons as they claimed. Instead, according to Alito, they focused on an irrelevant conflict of interest claim regarding these same lawyers' potential professional liability issues stemming from their missed deadline. In essence, Alito disagreed with both how the majority interpreted existing law and applied it in this particular instance.