Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-04-01499/USCOURTS-ca8-04-01499-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Jennifer Regenos
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

1

The Honorable Charles R. Wolle, United States District Judge for the Southern

District of Iowa.

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 04-1499

___________

United States of America, *

*

Appellee, *

* Appeal from the United States 

v. * District Court for the

* Southern District of Iowa.

Jennifer Regenos, *

*

Appellant. *

___________

Submitted: March 14, 2005

Filed: April 28, 2005

___________

Before WOLLMAN, LAY, and HANSEN, Circuit Judges.

___________

WOLLMAN, Circuit Judge.

Jennifer Regenos appeals from the district court’s1

 denial of her motion to

vacate, set aside, or correct her sentence pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255, as well as from

the district court’s denial of an evidentiary hearing to address the claims brought in

the § 2255 motion. We affirm.

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I.

Regenos pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess

with intent to distribute methamphetamine in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846. Her

original plea agreement with the government provided that, in return for her plea, a

stipulation that she was an organizer or leader of the conspiracy, and a waiver of her

right to seek an acceptance of responsibility reduction, the government would agree

to a sentence of 210 months and would withdraw its previous notice (filed pursuant

to 21 U.S.C. § 851) informing the court that Regenos had a prior narcotics felony

conviction. The notice, if not withdrawn, would have increased the mandatory

minimum sentence for Regenos’s crime from ten years to twenty years. See 21

U.S.C. §§ 841(b)(1)(A), 846, 851.

Prior to her plea hearing, however, Regenos and the government modified the

plea agreement. The modified agreement deleted the 210-month sentence provision,

the government’s promise to withdraw the notice of prior conviction, and Regenos’s

stipulation regarding her role in the offense. The modified agreement also restored

Regenos’s right to seek an acceptance of responsibility reduction and stated that the

mandatory minimum sentence for Regenos’s offense of conviction (without the

withdrawal of the government notice) was twenty years (240 months) rather than ten.

Each change in the original agreement was initialed by the prosecutor, Regenos’s

attorney, and Regenos herself. See App. to Appellant’s Br. at 9-11. 

At Regenos’s plea hearing, the district court informed her that the minimum

sentence she would receive under the modified agreement was the mandatory

minimum of twenty years in prison and that the mandatory minimum would most

likely be higher than the sentence mandated by the Guidelines. Plea Tr. at 9.

Regenos indicated that she understood these facts, and she further acknowledged that

the mandatory minimum sentence had been explained to her. Id. at 9-11. She

nonetheless affirmed her desire to enter a guilty plea. Id. at 11. The district court

subsequently sentenced her to the mandatory minimum twenty-year sentence. On

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appeal, we rejected Regenos’s contention that the mandatory minimum sentence

constituted cruel and unusual punishment. United States v. Regenos, 54 Fed.Appx.

245 (8th Cir. 2002). Regenos then filed a motion for post-conviction relief pursuant

to 28 U.S.C. § 2255, alleging that her counsel provided her with ineffective assistance

during the plea negotiation process and that the government failed to file a motion for

a downward departure. The district court denied the motion and Regenos’s

accompanying request for an evidentiary hearing. We granted a certificate of

appealability on the ineffective assistance of counsel claim.

II.

When addressing post-conviction ineffective assistance claims brought under

§ 2255, we review the ineffective assistance issue de novo and the underlying

findings of fact for clear error. Covey v. United States, 377 F.3d 903, 906 (8th Cir.

2004). We review the district court’s decision to deny an evidentiary hearing for

abuse of discretion. Koskela v. United States, 235 F.3d 1148, 1149 (8th Cir. 2001).

Regenos contends that her trial counsel provided ineffective assistance because

he failed to inform her that the sentence prescribed under the modified plea agreement

(240 months) was longer than that prescribed under the original agreement (210

months) and provided no benefit to her in return. Claims of ineffective assistance of

counsel arising from plea negotiations are reviewed under the two-part test laid out

in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U.S. 52, 57

(1985). Thus, in order to prove her claim, Regenos must show both that her counsel’s

performance was deficient—that her “counsel’s representation fell below an objective

standard of reasonableness”—and that such deficient performance prejudiced her

defense—that there is “a reasonable probability that, but for [her] counsel’s

unprofessional errors,” the result of the plea negotiation process would have been

different. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 687, 688, 694.

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Even if we assume that Regenos’s counsel performed deficiently during the

plea negotiation process, her ineffective assistance claim fails because she cannot

prove that the result of the plea negotiations would have been different had her

counsel performed adequately (i.e., that she would not have accepted the modified

agreement). See Fields v. United States, 201 F.3d 1025, 1027 (8th Cir. 2000) (where

defendant fails to satisfy one of Strickland’s two parts, the court need not address the

other part). The information that her counsel would have provided—express advice

that the modified agreement called for a greater sentence than the original

agreement—was fully supplied to her throughout the plea process. The district court

explicitly informed Regenos during the plea colloquy that the minimum sentence that

it could impose was 20 years (240 months), and Regenos indicated that she

understood that fact. Moreover, Regenos personally initialed each modification to

the original plea agreement, and thus she was aware of and assented to every

difference between the terms of the original agreement and those in the modified

agreement, including the increased sentencing exposure.

The record also indicates that Regenos received some benefit from the

modified plea agreement in that it did not require her to cooperate with the

government in any way. Although Regenos disputes on appeal the government’s

assertion that the original plea agreement required cooperation, it is notable that, in

her original § 2255 motion in the district court, Regenos stated that it “seem[ed] clear

that the last-minute changes in the plea agreement presupposed that some sort of

cooperation plea agreement was contemplated.” Indeed, it is difficult to understand

why the government would have made reference at Regenos’s plea hearing to the fact

that the modified plea agreement reflected a “noncooperation plea agreement” if the

original agreement did not in fact contemplate cooperation on Regenos’s part. See,

e.g., Plea Tr. at 3. Lending further support to the government’s assertion that the

original plea agreement required Regenos’s cooperation is the district court’s

statement in its order denying § 2255 relief that “[t]he government accurately

summarize[d] the benefits [Regenos] received,” including the removal of the

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2

Regenos cites United States v. Day, 969 F.2d 39 (3d Cir. 1992), in support of

her claim. Day, however, involved a defendant’s choice to go to trial—a decision that

does not require a plea colloquy—rather than to accept a plea. Id. at 42. The

defendant in Day, who allegedly rejected a plea solely on the basis of his counsel's

erroneous advice, id., is thus not similarly situated with Regenos, who was fully

informed of the consequences of the plea modification both by the district court and

by her own review and written approval of the modified plea itself. 

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cooperation requirement. D. Ct. Order of Dec. 18, 2003, at 3. We find nothing in the

record that would cause us to question the district court’s account of the

circumstances that gave rise to the modified plea agreement. Regenos’s plea colloquy

and her written approval of each modification to the plea agreement further indicate

that she understood that the modified plea agreement removed the cooperation

requirement. We are accordingly satisfied that, despite Regenos’s now-apparent

regret that she chose to enter into and plead guilty in accordance with the modified

plea agreement, she was on notice of the consequences of doing so. Thus, any

additional advice from her attorney regarding those consequences would not have

affected her decision to accept the modified plea.2

The district court also did not abuse its discretion in denying Regenos’s request

for an evidentiary hearing. A defendant is entitled to a hearing on a § 2255 motion

“unless the motion, files, and record conclusively show” that the defendant is not

entitled to relief. Koskela, 235 F.3d at 1149. “A § 2255 motion ‘can be dismissed

without a hearing if (1) the petitioner’s allegations, accepted as true, would not entitle

the petitioner to relief, or (2) the allegations cannot be accepted as true because they

are contradicted by the record, inherently incredible, or conclusions rather than

statements of fact.’” Sanders v. United States, 341 F.3d 720, 722 (8th Cir. 2003)

(quoting Engelen v. United States, 68 F.3d 238, 240 (8th Cir. 1995)). Here,

Regenos’s allegation that she was prejudiced by her counsel’s alleged deficiencies in

performance is contradicted by the record. Accordingly, the district court properly

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exercised its discretion to dismiss Regenos’s § 2255 motion without first holding an

evidentiary hearing.

The judgment is affirmed.

______________________________

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