Case Title: Commonwealth v. Camacho

Citation: 

Docket Number: SJC-12704

State: massachusetts

Court: Massachusetts Supreme Court

Date: 2019-12-10T00:00:00Z

Document:
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SJC-12704 
 
COMMONWEALTH  vs.  ANGEL CAMACHO. 
 
 
 
 
Suffolk.     September 9, 2019. - December 10, 2019. 
 
Present:  Gants, C.J., Lenk, Gaziano, Lowy, Budd, Cypher, 
& Kafker, JJ. 
 
 
Controlled Substances.  Retroactivity of Judicial Holding.  
Practice, Criminal, Postconviction relief, Plea, 
Retroactivity of judicial holding, Conduct of government 
agents. 
 
 
 
 
Indictments found and returned in the Superior Court 
Department on December 9, 2008. 
 
 
A motion for postconviction relief, filed on March 16, 
2018, was considered by Christine M. Roach, J. 
 
 
The Supreme Judicial Court granted an application for 
direct appellate review. 
 
 
 
Matthew Malm for the defendant. 
 
Ian M. Leson, Assistant District Attorney, for the 
Commonwealth. 
 
 
 
GAZIANO, J.  In this appeal, we yet again confront 
questions arising out of the misconduct of chemist Annie Dookhan 
2 
 
 
at the William A. Hinton State Laboratory Institute (Hinton 
lab).  Addressing the consequences of her malfeasance in 
Bridgeman I, we created the so-called "Bridgeman sentencing 
cap"; we held that when the Commonwealth sought to reprosecute a 
Dookhan defendant,1 both the charges and the sentence could not 
exceed those agreed to at the defendant's first guilty plea.  
See Bridgeman v. District Attorney for the Suffolk Dist., 471 
Mass. 465, 477 (2015) (Bridgeman I), S.C., 476 Mass. 298 (2017). 
 
This case asks us to consider whether defendants who 
withdrew their guilty pleas after Dookhan's misconduct was 
discovered, but before our decision in Bridgeman I,2 are entitled 
retroactively to the protection of the Bridgeman sentencing cap.  
We conclude that they are, but only if they actually were 
convicted of more serious charges or received a more severe 
sentence than at their first plea.  Where, as here, a defendant 
negotiated his or her second plea agreement in the shadow of the 
                                                          
 
1 As in Bridgeman v. District Attorney for the Suffolk 
Dist., 471 Mass. 465, 467 n.4 (2015) (Bridgeman I), "[w]e use 
the term 'Dookhan defendants' to refer generally to those 
individuals who were convicted of drug offenses and in whose 
cases Dookhan signed the certificate of drug analysis (drug 
certificate)." 
 
2 At the time the district attorneys submitted their brief 
in Bridgeman I, they represented that approximately 1,100 
Dookhan cases had been resolved in the special sessions.  While 
the district attorneys asserted that very few of these cases 
were retried, it is unclear what percentage of these cases ended 
in a second plea. 
3 
 
 
original charges, but ultimately was not convicted of more 
severe charges and did not receive a harsher punishment, the 
defendant is not entitled to withdraw the second guilty plea on 
the basis of the Bridgeman sentencing cap. 
 
1.  Background.  In 2008, the Commonwealth indicted the 
defendant on charges of trafficking two hundred or more grams of 
cocaine, in violation of G. L. c. 94C, § 32E (b), and three 
related charges.3  He pleaded guilty to the lesser included 
offense of trafficking between twenty-eight and one hundred 
grams of cocaine, and he received a sentence of from six to 
eight years in prison.  In 2013, the defendant successfully 
moved to withdraw his guilty plea on the ground that the 
misconduct of Dookhan, the confirmatory chemist on his case, 
rendered his plea involuntary.  See Commonwealth v. Scott, 467 
Mass. 336, 347-358 (2014) (setting forth framework for Dookhan 
defendants to use to withdraw guilty pleas). 
 
At the same hearing, the Commonwealth offered the defendant 
a new plea agreement.  If he pleaded guilty to the lesser 
included offense of possession with intent to distribute, G. L. 
                                                          
 
3 The defendant also was charged with trafficking cocaine 
within one hundred feet of a public park, in violation of G. L. 
c. 94C, § 32J; unlawfully distributing cocaine in violation of 
G. L. c. 94C, § 32A; and unlawfully distributing cocaine within 
one hundred feet of a public park, in violation of G. L. c. 94C, 
§ 32J.  As part of the first plea agreement, the Commonwealth 
filed nolle prosequis as to these other charges. 
4 
 
 
c. 94C, § 32A (a), the prosecutor would recommend a sentence of 
time served, essentially ending the case.  According to the 
defendant's plea counsel, the Commonwealth represented that, 
should he pursue his request for a new trial, the Commonwealth 
would reinstate all the original charges and seek the maximum 
penalties.  During the plea colloquy, the judge explained the 
severity of the sentence for a conviction of trafficking in 200 
or more grams of cocaine: 
"I understand that having allowed a motion for a new trial, 
technically you are charged at this minute with trafficking 
in cocaine in an amount which could result in a twenty year 
prison sentence and would have to be . . . at least twelve 
years in state prison if you went to trial and were found 
guilty." 
The defendant accepted the Commonwealth's offer; he pleaded 
guilty to the lesser included offense of possession with intent 
to distribute and received a sentence of from three and one-half 
years to three and one-half years and one day of incarceration, 
which was deemed served.  In the course of the plea, he also 
signed a Dookhan-specific waiver that stated, in relevant part: 
"I am also waiving, after discussion with my lawyer, the 
right to file a motion to vacate this guilty plea based on 
information that may come to light in the future about the 
state laboratory. . . . 
 
"I understand that if I agree to plead guilty and if I do 
in fact plead guilty that I am agreeing to give up and 
waive my right to an appeal.  I understand that I am giving 
up my right to appeal from my conviction." 
5 
 
 
 
Approximately seventeen months after the defendant pleaded 
guilty for a second time, we decided Bridgeman I.  Invoking our 
superintendence powers pursuant to G. L. c. 211, § 3, we 
announced a rule limiting a Dookhan defendant's liability to no 
more than the charges and the sentence received under the 
defendant's initial plea.  Bridgeman I, 471 Mass. at 477. 
 
In 2018, the defendant sought to withdraw his second guilty 
plea.4  He argued in the Superior Court that if Bridgeman I is 
applied retroactively, his plea is invalid because it was made 
under the threat of his original charges and not under the 
protection of the Bridgeman sentencing cap.  The motion judge 
did not reach this argument.  Instead, she relied on the 
defendant's waiver: 
"Motion denied.  I see no reason why the waiver executed, 
in the midst of all parties addressing the lab issues and 
with full understanding that the [Supreme Judicial Court] 
would ultimately rule on appropriate remedies, is not 
enforceable and valid as to this [defendant]." 
 
On appeal, the defendant asks us to apply the rule 
announced in Bridgeman I retroactively to his case.  He also 
argues that collateral-review waivers should be void as against 
                                                          
 
4 In 2016, the defendant was convicted of possession of 
heroin with the intent to distribute in the United States 
District Court for the Middle District of Florida and sentenced 
to 188 months of imprisonment.  In that case, his conviction 
pursuant to the 2013 guilty plea agreement increased his 
potential sentencing range under the Federal sentencing 
guidelines from 60-71 months to 188-235 months. 
6 
 
 
public policy or, alternatively, that they should be 
unenforceable in certain specified circumstances. 
 
2.  Discussion.  a.  Standard of review.  "A motion to 
withdraw a guilty plea is treated as a motion for a new trial 
pursuant to Mass. R. Crim. P. 30 (b)," as appearing in 435 Mass. 
1501 (2001) (citation omitted).  Commonwealth v. Cotto, 471 
Mass. 97, 105 (2015).  "Under Mass. R. Crim. P. 30 (b), a judge 
may grant a motion for a new trial any time it appears that 
justice may not have been done.  A motion for a new trial is 
thus committed to the sound discretion of the judge."  Scott, 
467 Mass. at 344.  "We review the allowance or denial of a 
motion to withdraw a guilty plea to determine whether the judge 
abused that discretion or committed a significant error of law."  
Cotto, supra, citing Scott, supra.  We may "affirm a ruling on 
grounds different from those relied on by the motion judge if 
the correct or preferred basis for affirmance is supported by 
the record and the findings."  Commonwealth v. Va Meng Joe, 425 
Mass. 99, 102 (1997). 
 
b.  The necessity of retroactivity to the defendant's 
claim.  The defendant contends that the Bridgeman sentencing cap 
should apply retroactively to his case.  If it does, he argues, 
his second plea was both unknowing and involuntary because he 
made it under threat of his original charges, which carried a 
maximum sentence of twenty-two and one-half years of 
7 
 
 
incarceration, and not under the protection of the Bridgeman 
sentencing cap, which would have limited his sentence to a term 
of from six to eight years of imprisonment.  Nothing else in the 
record suggests that the defendant's second plea was involuntary 
or unknowing.  Therefore, in order for the defendant to prevail, 
Bridgeman I would have to be applied retroactively to his case. 
 
c.  The Bridgeman sentencing cap.  Our decision in 
Bridgeman I, 471 Mass. at 474, was issued in the midst of a 
then-unprecedented crisis.  See id. (describing previous actions 
taken by this court to address Hinton lab scandal).  Dookhan's 
misconduct tainted the evidence used by the government to 
convict tens of thousands of people of drug crimes.  See 
Bridgeman v. District Attorney for the Suffolk Dist., 476 Mass. 
298, 300 (2017) (Bridgeman II).  In Scott, 467 Mass. at 352, we 
fashioned a framework under which Dookhan defendants potentially 
could withdraw their guilty pleas, aided by a conclusive 
presumption that there had been egregious government misconduct 
in their case.  In Bridgeman I, 471 Mass. at 475, the 
petitioners made clear that they were hesitant to utilize this 
remedy because "[i]n the ordinary course, when a defendant 
withdraws his [or her guilty] plea after sentencing, he [or she] 
may receive a harsher sentence than was originally imposed" 
(quotation and citation omitted).  In response to these 
8 
 
 
concerns, we fashioned the Bridgeman sentencing cap.  We 
concluded that 
"in cases in which a defendant seeks to withdraw a guilty 
plea under Mass. R. Crim. P. 30 (b) as a result of the 
revelation of Dookhan's misconduct, and where the motion is 
allowed, the defendant cannot (1) be charged with a more 
serious offense than that of which he or she initially was 
convicted under the terms of a plea agreement; and (2) if 
convicted again, cannot be given a more severe sentence 
than that which originally was imposed.  In essence, a 
defendant's sentence is capped at what it was under the 
plea agreement." 
Id. at 477. 
 
In creating the Bridgeman sentencing cap, we were animated 
by three principal concerns.  First, as stated, there were 
plausible claims that defendants had been deterred from seeking 
postconviction relief by the threat of receiving harsher 
punishment after their initial pleas were withdrawn.  See 
Bridgeman I, 471 Mass. at 473, 475 ("this court shall resolve 
[these matters] . . . so as to ensure that a fear of more 
punitive consequences, as expressed by the petitioners, does not 
render their right to seek postconviction relief a flawed 
option").  Second, we determined that, "in the wake of 
government misconduct that has cast a shadow over the entire 
criminal justice system, it is most appropriate that the benefit 
of our remedy inure to defendants" (citation omitted).  Id. 
at 476.  In other words, we were concerned that "defendants 
9 
 
 
wrongly would bear the burden of a systemic lapse that . . . is 
entirely attributable to the government."  Id. 
 
Third, in addition to these concerns for defendants' 
rights, we endeavored to ensure that our remedies "should be 
tailored to the injury suffered and should not unnecessarily 
infringe on competing interests."  See Bridgeman I, 471 Mass. 
at 475, quoting Commonwealth v. Cronk, 396 Mass. 194, 199 
(1985).  In particular, we required "that the rights of 
defendants be balanced against the necessity for preserving 
society's interest in the administration of justice."  
Bridgeman I, supra, quoting Cronk, supra.  For while "[i]t 
certainly is true that we cannot expect defendants to bear the 
burden of a systemic lapse, . . . we also cannot allow the 
misconduct of one person to dictate an abrupt retreat from the 
fundamentals of our criminal justice system."  Bridgeman I, 
supra at 487, quoting Scott, 467 Mass. at 354 n.11. 
 
The extraordinary circumstances of the Bridgeman litigation 
and the ongoing need to balance these important interests 
continue to guide our analysis as we consider whether and how to 
apply Bridgeman I's sentencing cap retroactively. 
 
d.  Applying Bridgeman I retroactively.  When a new 
criminal rule is not constitutionally mandated but, rather, is 
derived from our broad superintendence power, its retroactive 
10 
 
 
application is a matter of our discretion.5  See Commonwealth v. 
Hernandez, 481 Mass. 582, 602 (2019), quoting Commonwealth v. 
Dagley, 442 Mass. 713, 721 n.10 (2004), cert. denied, 544 U.S. 
930 (2005) ("When announcing . .  a new rule in the exercise of 
our superintendence power, there is no constitutional 
requirement that the new rule or new interpretation be applied 
retroactively, and we are therefore free to determine whether it 
should be applied only prospectively").  Generally, "[i]n prior 
cases announcing new rules or requirements in the exercise of 
our superintendence power, we have declined to give the new rule 
or requirement retroactive effect."  Commonwealth v. Colon, 482 
Mass. 162, 182 (2019), citing Dagley, supra at 720–721.  See, 
e.g., Commonwealth v. Russell, 470 Mass. 464, 465 (2015) 
(prospectively applying new reasonable doubt instruction under 
superintendence power); Commonwealth v. King, 445 Mass. 217, 248 
(2005), cert. denied, 546 U.S. 1216 (2006) (prospectively 
applying new first complaint doctrine under superintendence 
power). 
                                                          
 
5 Even when a new rule is constitutionally mandated, 
retroactive application on collateral review is appropriate only 
under two very narrow exceptions.  See Diatchenko v. District 
Attorney for the Suffolk Dist., 466 Mass. 655, 664 (2013), S.C., 
471 Mass. 12 (2015), citing Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 310 
(1989) ("With two limited exceptions . . . , a 'new' 
constitutional rule of criminal law generally is not applicable 
on collateral review to those cases that became final before the 
new rule was announced"). 
11 
 
 
 
While prospective application of new rules announced under 
our superintendence power may be the norm, we acknowledged in 
Bridgeman I, 471 Mass. at 475, that "a defendant who files a 
motion to withdraw a guilty plea as a consequence of Dookhan's 
misconduct is not doing so in the context of an ordinary 
criminal case."  Likewise, the Bridgeman sentencing cap is not 
an ordinary rule announced under our superintendence powers but, 
rather, one distinctively tied to the extraordinary facts of its 
origin.  The cap does not address the ongoing practice of 
criminal law, as do most new rules, but instead was designed to 
ameliorate the effects of a specific and widespread systemic 
lapse.  Id. at 474.  Therefore, it is appropriate for us to look 
to the underlying purposes of the rule announced in Bridgeman I 
to guide our discretion in determining whether and how that rule 
should apply retroactively. 
 
The first principal concern underlying the Bridgeman 
sentencing cap, that defendants would be deterred from 
withdrawing their guilty pleas for fear of harsher punishment, 
has no bearing on defendants who successfully moved to withdraw 
their guilty pleas prior to Bridgeman I.  Evidently, they were 
not daunted from exercising their postconviction rights. 
 
The second principal concern, that defendants should not be 
made unjustly to bear the burden of the systemic lapse, supports 
retroactive application.  We discern no reason why defendants 
12 
 
 
who moved quickly to withdraw their guilty pleas should be left 
in a substantively worse position than those who withdrew their 
pleas after the announcement of Bridgeman I.  Cf. Bridgeman II, 
476 Mass. at 323 (hypothetically considering that if court 
dismissed all remaining cases with prejudice, defendants who had 
vacated pleas and had been reprosecuted prior to that holding 
"justly [could] contend" that they were entitled to later 
remedy).  For all Dookhan defendants, "the Commonwealth must be 
held to the terms of its plea agreements."  Bridgeman I, 471 
Mass. at 477. 
 
Our third concern, however, balancing the Commonwealth's 
competing interests in the administration of justice, tempers 
this retroactive application.  As we have done throughout the 
course of the Dookhan litigation, we will continue to seek 
workable solutions that equitably balance the interests of all 
parties.  See Bridgeman II, 476 Mass. at 318-326 (rejecting 
proposals by both parties in course of fashioning solution 
falling between their respective positions).  While we will not 
allow defendants to be subject to harsher punishment, we 
similarly cannot expect prosecutors to have been clairvoyantly 
aware of a rule we had not yet announced as they negotiated new 
plea agreements with Dookhan defendants. 
 
As we seek a balanced solution, we acknowledge that the 
defendant negotiated his second agreement under the threat of 
13 
 
 
his original charges, and that this would not have been 
permissible after our guidance in Bridgeman I.  We recognize 
that, in a system where an overwhelming majority of convictions 
are secured via plea agreement, it is of utmost importance to 
ensure that the terrain on which those agreements are negotiated 
is fair.  See Missouri v. Frye, 566 U.S. 134, 143 (2012) 
(applying ineffective assistance of counsel standard of Sixth 
Amendment to United States Constitution to plea negotiation 
process and noting that "[n]inety-seven percent of [F]ederal 
convictions and ninety-four percent of [S]tate convictions are 
the result of guilty pleas").  As we made clear in Bridgeman II, 
476 Mass. at 320-321, we also are well cognizant of "the severe 
collateral consequences of drug convictions." 
 
The fact remains, however, that the defendant's second plea 
agreement was negotiated under correct principles of law as they 
existed at the time of the plea, and with clear knowledge of 
Dookhan's misconduct.  See Bridgeman I, 471 Mass. at 475 ("In 
the ordinary course, 'when a defendant withdraws his [or her 
guilty] plea after sentencing, he [or she] may receive a harsher 
sentence than was originally imposed'" [citation omitted]).  
Both sides were equally unaware of what we later would decide.  
And, most importantly, while the defendant negotiated both his 
first and his second guilty pleas under the same set of charges, 
ultimately he was not subjected to harsher punishment the second 
14 
 
 
time around -- precisely what later would be required by the 
then-undecided Bridgeman I.  Indeed, the charge of which he was 
convicted was reduced from the original charge of trafficking to 
possession with intent to distribute, and his sentence was 
reduced to time served (approximately three and one-half years).  
Defendants so situated essentially received the protection of 
the Bridgeman sentence cap.  See Bridgeman I, supra at 477.  The 
interests of finality and judicial efficiency support the same 
conclusion.  See Mains v. Commonwealth, 433 Mass. 30, 38 n.12 
(2000), and cases cited. 
 
Therefore, we conclude that the Bridgeman sentencing cap 
must be applied retroactively for defendants who, after having 
withdrawn a guilty plea on Dookhan grounds, pleaded guilty to 
more serious charges, were convicted of more serious charges at 
a trial, or received longer sentences than they had for their 
first pleas.  "In essence, a defendant's sentence is capped at 
what it was under the plea agreement."  Bridgeman I, 471 Mass. 
at 477.  Where the Commonwealth negotiated a plea agreement in 
the shadow of the original charges, but did not actually subject 
a defendant to harsher charges or punishment, there is no 
violation of the principles underlying the Bridgeman sentencing 
15 
 
 
cap, and thus no need for a third plea or trial in order to 
apply Bridgeman retroactively.6 
Order denying motion for 
  postconviction relief 
  affirmed. 
                                                          
 
6 Because we conclude that the defendant is not entitled to 
the relief he seeks on collateral review, we need not decide 
whether the collateral-review waiver he signed should be found 
void as against public policy.