Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-95-03021/USCOURTS-caDC-95-03021-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Luis Ramon Hernandez
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued February 9, 1996 Decided March 29, 1996

No. 93-3089

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE 

v.

LUIS RAMON HERNANDEZ, A/K/A LOUISE RAMON HERNANDEZ,

A/K/A LUIS R. HERNANDEZ-COPLIN,

A/K/A LUIS AYALA HERNANDEZ,

A/K/A LOUIS RAMON HERNANDEZ,

APPELLANT 

Consolidated with

93-3097 & 95-3021

Appeals from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(91cr00513-01)

(91cr00513-02)

Carmen D. Hernandez, Assistant Federal Public Defender, argued the cause for appellant Luis

Ramon Hernandez. With her on the briefs was A.J. Kramer, Federal Public Defender.

William H. Thompson, pro hac vice, argued the cause for appellant Lucy Marina Hernandez. With

him on the brief was Robert W. Mance, III.

Michael N. Levy, Assistant United States Attorney, argued the cause for appellee. With him on the

brief were Eric H. Holder, Jr., United States Attorney, John R. Fisher, Roy W. McLeese, III and

Mary-Patrice Brown, Assistant United States Attorneys.

Before: SENTELLE, RANDOLPH, and ROGERS, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge RANDOLPH.

RANDOLPH, Circuit Judge: Luis and Lucy Hernandez were married on March 23, 1991. Five

monthsand, between them, five arrestslater, theywere indicted togetherforselling crack cocaine

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to an undercover police officer. The government offered each defendant a deal: plead guilty to the

count charging distribution of 50 or more grams of cocaine base and the remaining two counts will

be dropped. There was one catch. The plea offers were linked or, as is commonly said, "wired."

Both defendants would have to plead guilty or the deal was off.

The Hernandezes came to terms and pled guilty in November 1991. In May 1993, the district

court sentenced themeach to the statutory minimum of ten years' imprisonment. In this consolidated

appeal, Luis Hernandez claims the court erred in refusing to let him withdraw his plea before

sentencing. Luis and Lucy Hernandez also raise claims relating to matters that are under seal. We

have considered these latter claims and have decided to reject them; to explain why in a published

opinion would reveal what the Hernandezes wish to remain confidential. Our opinion will therefore

discuss onlyLuis Hernandez's contention that the district court erred in not allowing himto withdraw

his guilty plea.

A district court "may permit" a defendant to withdraw his plea before sentencing "if the

defendant shows any fair and just reason." FED. R. CRIM. P. 32(e). Luis Hernandez offered the

district court what he considered to be two such reasons. The first related to the pressure he

experienced from his mother-in-law and others who allegedly told him his wife could "remain free"

only if he pled guilty. The second was that the district court's plea hearing had not been "in

substantial compliance" with Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The district court

denied Hernandez's motion to withdraw the plea on May 12, 1993, and sentenced himtwo dayslater.

The court found no evidence that Hernandez's mother-in-law had "made threatsto gain his plea," and

it viewed its plea hearing as having established, in compliance with Rule 11, that Hernandez's plea

was voluntary.

Hernandez appeals principally on the ground that the Rule 11 hearing was anything but

thorough because the district court did not then know the government had conditioned his fate on

his wife's. Before accepting any plea of guilty, a district court must first assure itself that the

defendant has entered the plea knowingly and voluntarily. FED.R. CRIM. P. 11(d). The court can do

so only if it has "total disclosure of all material details" of the plea agreement. United States v.

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*The government tells us it was interested in a joint plea or none at all because a trial of one of

these defendants would consume nearly as much time and resources as a trial of both. 

Roberts, 570 F.2d 999, 1007 (D.C. Cir. 1977). The linking of one defendant's plea to another's is

such a material detail. United States v. Farley, 72 F.3d 158, 164 n.5 (D.C. Cir. 1995). Wired pleas,

we thought in Farley, could be coercive, id. (citing Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U.S. 357, 364 n.8

(1978)), especially when family members are involved. See United States v. Pollard, 959 F.2d 1011,

1021 (D.C. Cir.), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 915 (1992). Of course, much depends on which way the

pressure, if any, flowed. The defendant standing before the court might have wanted to accept the

deal despite his co-defendant's reluctance. Through his counsel, he may have initiated the plea

discussions and proposed the terms. Or the defense attorneys might have negotiated jointly on behalf

of clients perfectly willing to plead guilty in return for the government's dropping of other charges

against them.

A district court cannot be expected to inquire about such matters unless the plea wiring is

brought to its attention. The obligation to disclose the terms of a plea agreement is one shared by

defense counsel and the prosecutor. Roberts, 570 F.2d at 1007 n.25. It is "the parties" who enter

into the agreement and it istherefore "the parties" who have a duty under Rule 11(e)(2) to inform the

court of the extent of their agreement. If there was a package deal here, Luis Hernandez and his

attorney obviously knew of it. But at the Rule 11 hearing, the defense attorney said only that Luis

had entered into a "joint plea" with his wife, Lucy, a statement that hardly alerted the court to the

linkage between the pleas. For its part, the government said nothing on the subject. The revelation

of plea wiring came much later, when the government wrote in its memorandum opposing Luis

Hernandez's motion to withdraw his plea that "the plea agreement with defendant was conditioned

upon Lucy Hernandez also pleading guilty, as is customary in a case of this nature."* This brief

remark is susceptible of an interpretation other than the one Luis now proposes. It implies that the

government and Luis had cut a deal, but that the government would honor it only if Lucy decided to

accept the offer made to her. This suggests that any pressure to plead was on Lucy, not Luis.

Nothing transpired at the motion-to-withdraw hearing to clear things up, doubtless because Luis's

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motion did not rest on any alleged coercive effect of the plea wiring.

We do not condone the parties' failure to advise the district court of the plea wiring at the

Rule 11 hearing. When we first sustained the practice of making one defendant's plea contingent on

another's, we thought that if we banned such arrangementsthey might occur anyway through "winks

and nodsrather than in writing." 959 F.2d at 1021. The parties winked and nodded in this case: they

not only failed to tell the court of the plea wiring; they also inserted into Hernandez's written plea

agreement language that could have misled the court into thinking that Hernandez's plea was

unrelated to his wife's. Given the concerns we have expressed here and in Farley, we trust that

counsel for the defense and for the government will be more forthcoming in the future.

That said, we believe that any Rule 11 error here was harmless. Hernandez argues that if the

court had known his plea was wired, it would have conducted a "searching inquiry" into his "mental

instability" and "the coercion and distress" created by the plea wiring and the threats he claimed to

receive as a result of it. But the court conducted an extensive Rule 11 colloquy before Hernandez

entered his plea, and it then conducted another "searching inquiry" in a hearing on Hernandez's

plea-withdrawal motion. Because the transcript of the hearing remains under seal, we are not at

liberty to disclose anything more about its contents or to comment further on the district court's

sealed memorandum opinion denying the motion. We have already revealed as much of this part of

the record as we think appropriate, given the reason for its confidentiality. We can say that after

reviewing the proceedings, we see nothing that would cast doubt on the district court'sjudgment that

Hernandez knowingly and voluntarily pled guilty. Contrast United States v. Daniels, 821 F.2d 76,

79 (1st Cir. 1987).

Once we conclude that a plea was accepted in substantial compliance with Rule 11, we are

"extremely reluctant" to find that the district court abused its discretion in denying a plea-withdrawal

motion "even if the defendant makes out a legally cognizable defense to the charges against him."

United States v. Cray, 47 F.3d 1203, 1208 (D.C. Cir. 1995). We are equally reluctant to reverse

upon finding that the plea-acceptance proceedings suffered from only a harmless Rule 11 error. See

FED. R. CRIM. P. 11(h). In any event, Hernandez has offered only a bare assertion of innocence, far

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short of the "objectively reasonable argument" for innocence a defendant in his position must

advance. See Cray, 47 F.3d at 1209.

Affirmed.

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