williams against united states is the next case for argument supplied an email from the district judge to support this his claim that the e mail saying that mr williams would be a fool if he did not accept the draft clear agreement that had been presented to the judge  the first time mr williams saw the proposed plea agreement he was not only show the police remit he was shown the email from the trial judge saying that he was a fool if he didn't accept the plea agreement now at that point did you practice before june because i had his very first federal hearing as a federal district judge and appeared in front of them almost every day for a couple years how often did he ask for information regarding  pleas and i think the institution of that rule of law really wanted to see agreements given to him before hand it was kind of an outgrowth of when they switched over and start having judge bernthal do t so i never personally was involved as he didn't have any chance to point out the statue of liberty i did not at that time and at that time the u s attorney's office wasn't agreeing to very many c agreements that was a change  and in this case the district judge erred in a couple of ways legally she made the error of finding that to his window on his claim that his guilty plea was involuntary mr williams had to a stablish that it would have been rational in the district court's mind for him to have gone to trial and there's simply no case law that supports that at all the test for whether or a guilty plea is voluntary is whether it's a knowing intelligent voluntary decision in light of all of the factors and while there is always some pressure inherent in a guilty plea if the government's threatening to add acceptance of responsibility and without that there's always some coercion in that and that is not improper but it is improper for the district judge to inject themselves into the plea negotiation process that's why rule eleven exist that's why the prosecution in from this court is very adamant that violations of rule eleven are can very rarely be harmless and the remedy is you get a new judge now i understand in the twenty two fifty five area that a simple rule eleven violation in and of itself is not sufficient to show that you're guilty plea or excuse me to show that your plea is invalid but what you have here is the judge saying well you have to prove to me that it would have been rational for you to go to trial and i think the evidence against you was overwhelming therefore i don't think it would have been rational to go to trial therefore your plea wasn't involuntary and point out in our briefs if you take that logic to its logical extreme the problem and let me tell you councilman the problem i have with your view is that if you take the position of just assuming that the defendant is a madman or doesn't pay any attention to costs and benefits then the prejudice component in the supreme court standard has been abolished where it goes every time there is a problem in the plea bargaining process or in the  ineffective assistance of counsel in these police situations you have to show not only through the lawyer didn't do what was necessary but also that there was prejudiced shock in the sense that the person otherwise we're going to try and your line of argument is since people behave irrationally they might always have gone to trial however foolish that would be and that would it seems to me just abolish the prejudice component of ill if that were my argument that would be true you're on but as we pointed out in the brief i'd say of course a district court is never required to automatically accept when a defendant says i would have gone to trial that doesn't have to be the end of the analysis because obviously you're right and that reads the prejudice out but if the judge is going to find the detailed allegations not credible it's just she wants to make a credibility determination she needs to have it here and when you look at the other factors in this case they back up what mr willing to send the case have been around for over a year and i think what really is very telling is usually the way these things go down is are you have the bank robbery charge to house act robberies but only one hundred twenty four see and then the the hammer to get the guilty plea is if you don't plead guilty we're going to supersede in add more nine twenty four c counts that carry mandatory consecutive twenty five years now i can't tell you that this is that's what happened in this case because we didn't have a hearing and trial defense counsel chose not to speak to me when i tried to but i'm going forward now does he understand objects robbery and federal bank robbery are now under twenty four thousand and twenty four your honor it is been explained to him in detail that the sentence he's looking at a few years convicted is massive he this is clear in his pleadings so i don't think i'm not telling you anything that's privileged he very much thinks that the federal courts do not have jurisdiction that that is not accurate i would have no problem with that because i understand that me actually being successful in this case might not be the best thing for mr williams in the long run it and i get that and i've been doing this for a while and there are some cases where it kills you because your client just is insistent on making you not the spearmint have to go through that yeah it's just it's it's bad and into that extent i have some sympathy for trial defen don't mean to run him down he's in a tough spot he's trying to get a young kid to plead guilty to save a lot of time but the bottom line is the trial judge just can't get involved in  negotiations in where you have the evidence that he's calling him a fool if he doesn't take the guilty plea then at a minimum you're entitled to a hearing to discuss whether or not mr williams really would have gone to trial because i think that's really the only question nobody is questioning you know there was improper judicial involvement here and that that was coercive the real question was well what do you have gone to trial and they certainly he doesn't have to prove that he's factually innocent to get relief on twenty two fifty five is argued in the government's proof that it's just not the standard it's nowhere close to the standard and i'll reserve the remainder of my time his decision was a rational one it's the telling of the circumstances however that just determine whether a decision was voluntary and intelligent and the rationality of that decision is certainly a relevant consideration and i'm i'm not entirely sure what in the evidence you're hearing would accomplish in this matter because it's not there's no dispute about judge mccuskey is email that it was given to i not aware of and a then it's not it's not that it's no longer a problem but it certainly as we can see in their brief they could have objected to that procedure in and of itself but there's no dispute that about the e mail that the e mail was given to mr williams prior to his plea those are the detailed allegations that he lays out in his twenty two fifty five and there's no dispute about them so i'm not entirely sure what an evidentiary hearing would develop any further than what we already have what isn't detailed in any filing is why he would have made the decision to go to trial given the evidence against him and even in the reply brief on page six they say if you would have pled guilty absent the coersion then this is a voluntary please and i don't think there's any allegation to suggest that he would have gone to trial other than just his statement that i'm actually innocent that's where the actual innocence came from was his words not our saying he needs to prove his actual innocence so we think  that you need to take the rationality of the decision into account that's what the district court did and we think that she made the appropriate determination that he would have pled guilty in any event and while the judge's comments and there is nothing irrational about a defendant coming to that conclusion as lawyers we can understand a judge family i think this guy's guilty but you know whatever i can do that i can do the case but for a defendant and for any lay person that's just not something that they're going to process and the circumstances does show that it is bad of the decision as it might have been he was really intent on going to trial as i pointed out before the big cameras the superseding indictment saying you don't plead we're going to add these charges he didn't fold they added those charges you know to add fifty years of mandatory minimums and he's still saying i want to trial i mean they filed jury instructions they filed witness list they filed exhibits list it was two weeks from the beginning a trial he had hung tough mr williams saying no i want to trial because i don't think you know for whatever reason you can have a trial whether you admits he's guilty or not even if he's given ten statements to the police same as guilty you can have a trial if you wants to and he insisted on going to trial right up until the time his lawyer shows him this plea agreement with the e mail saying from the judge saying he's a fool if he doesn't plead guilty and those are circumstances that back up mr williams is sworn statement and what he filed with the twenty to fifty five motion that with absolute judicial coercion he would have went to trial and it is true get to make bad decisions that's just the respect we have for the individual is that the individual can make really bad decisions and it it's painful to watch it's painful to participate in but it it is the right thank you thank you very much mr case was taken under advisement