Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-01-03005/USCOURTS-caDC-01-03005-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Michael Jonathan Booze
Appellant
A. J. Kramer
Appointed Amicus Curiae for Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued April 22, 2002 Decided June 14, 2002

No. 01-3005

United States of America,

Appellee

v.

Michael Jonathan Booze,

Appellant

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 89cr00160-24)

A. J. Kramer, appointed by the court, argued the cause and

filed the briefs as amicus curiae on behalf of appellant.

Michael Jonathan Booze, appearing pro se, was on the

briefs for appellant.

David B. Goodhand, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the

cause for appellee. With him on the brief were Roscoe C.

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Howard, Jr., U.S. Attorney, John R. Fisher, Mary-Patrice

Brown, Stephen M. Campbell, and William J. O'Malley Jr.,

Assistant U.S. Attorneys.

Before: Ginsburg, Chief Judge, and Henderson and

Rogers, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Chief Judge Ginsburg.

Ginsburg, Chief Judge: An inmate serving a 171/2-year

sentence filed a s 2255 motion alleging, among other things,

that his attorney caused him to reject a plea offer with a fiveyear sentence by advising him erroneously that he would be

sentenced to less than five years if he went to trial and was

convicted. The Government opposed the motion solely on the

erroneous ground that such advice does not constitute ineffective assistance of counsel unless the attorney failed to make a

good-faith estimate of the likely sentence, of which there was

no evidence. The district court denied the s 2255 motion on

that ground. On appeal, the Government acknowledges its

error and asks the court to remand the case for the district

court to determine, after an evidentiary hearing, whether

such a plea offer was in fact made. Over the appellant's

objection, we follow the course urged by the Government.

I. Background

In 1989 Michael Booze and his two brothers were indicted

for their role in a large drug conspiracy run by Marcos

Anderson. For a full account, see United States v. Anderson,

39 F.3d 331 (D.C. Cir. 1994). For present purposes it matters only that, according to Booze, the Government offered to

recommend a five-year prison sentence for him if he and each

of his brothers would enter a guilty plea. Booze alleges that

his brothers wanted to accept the offer but that his attorney,

Achim Kriegsheim, caused him to reject it. Kriegsheim

allegedly told Booze that if he went to trial and was convicted,

then he would be sentenced to less than five years. So Booze

went to trial, was convicted, and ultimately was sentenced to

171/2 years.*

__________

* The district court initially sentenced Booze to 22 years but

reduced the sentence after this court instructed it to attribute to

Booze then filed a s 2255 motion, claiming among other

things that Kriegsheim's misadvising him of the consequences

of rejecting the plea offer deprived him of his right to

effective assistance of counsel, as guaranteed by the Sixth

Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The

Government opposed the motion, arguing only that "assuming

that the defendant is correct about the terms of the plea offer

and about his lawyer's sentencing prediction, there is no

evidence that his lawyer did not make a good-faith estimate of

the defendant's sentence." The district court denied the

motion on that ground.

Booze filed a timely appeal. He has submitted a brief pro

se and is also represented by an amicus curiae, whose participation the court invited and to whom the court is grateful.

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II. Analysis

The amicus contends principally that Kriegsheim's flawed

advice constituted ineffective assistance of counsel without

regard to whether he acted in good faith. The Government

concedes that the district court -- at its urging -- applied the

wrong legal standard, and asks the court to remand the

matter to the district court for further factual development.

An attorney deprives a defendant of his constitutional right

to representation only if his performance falls below "an

objective standard of reasonableness" and likely affects the

outcome of the case. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668,

688, 691-92 (1984). This circuit has held that a lawyer who

advises his client whether to accept a plea offer falls below

the threshold of reasonable performance if the lawyer makes

a "plainly incorrect" estimate of the likely sentence due to

ignorance of applicable law of which he "should have been

aware." United States v. Gaviria, 116 F.3d 1498, 1512 (1997).

The Government, apparently due to its own inexcusable

ignorance of applicable law, failed in its motion opposing

__________

Booze only the quantity of cocaine that had been within the "scope

of the conspiratorial agreement [he] joined." Anderson, 39 F.3d at

352.

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Booze's habeas petition to apprise the district court of the

standard set forth in Gaviria.* Instead pointing to cases

from the Seventh Circuit, the Government argued that a

lawyer's recommendation regarding a plea offer falls below an

objective standard of reasonableness only if "the lawyer did

not 'attempt to learn the facts of the case and make a goodfaith estimate of a likely sentence.' " Opposition at 12 (quoting United States v. Martinez, 169 F.3d 1049, 1053 (7th Cir.

1999)). The district court unfortunately relied upon the

reason given by the Government to deny Booze's motion.

The decision of the district court, based as it is upon the

wrong legal standard, must be vacated because applying the

correct legal standard could yield a shorter sentence --

assuming, that is, the five-year offer was made. If the offer

was made and spurned as alleged, then Kriegsheim's advice

may have caused Booze to be sentenced to 171/2 rather than to

five years in prison.

The issue remaining between the parties is whether the

court should remand the case to the district court for an

evidentiary hearing to determine whether the Government

made the alleged plea offer. The amicus resists that course,

arguing that the Government, by opposing Booze's s 2255

motion in the district court without ever disputing that it

made the offer, has waived the factual contention it now seeks

to raise in an evidentiary hearing. As the amicus points out,

the Government in its motion in opposition did not argue in

the alternative, that is, did not suggest that if the court

rejected its claim that Kriegsheim's performance was reasonable as a matter of law, then the court should hold an

evidentiary hearing to determine whether the offer was made.

The question, then, is whether the Government may be

heard to ask this court to order an evidentiary hearing even

though it failed to make that request of the district court.

__________

* The omission is all the more egregious because the Government

cited Gaviria elsewhere in the same section of the motion in which

it set forth the wrong standard. Apparently government counsel

either cited the case without reading all of it or knowingly ignored

its holding.

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This court follows "the general rule [that] ... issues and legal

theories not asserted at the district court level ordinarily will

not be heard on appeal"; but the court also acknowledges

that the rule "should not be applied where the obvious result

would be a plain miscarriage of justice." United States v.

TDC Mgmt. Corp., No. 01-5150, slip op. at 7 (D.C. Cir. May 3,

2002); see also Singleton v. Wulff, 428 U.S. 106, 121 (1976);

Hormel v. Helvering, 312 U.S. 552, 558 (1941). Here the

Government has indeed presented on appeal an issue --

whether Booze was in fact offered the plea he claims -- it did

not assert before the district court. We shall exercise our

discretion to consider that issue lest a plain miscarriage of

justice be the result.

Consider: Booze is asking us to let him out of prison

because he would have accepted the alleged plea offer of five

years if only his lawyer had competently advised him. Suppose no such offer was made? To grant Booze's request

would be to cut short Booze's 171/2-year sentence due solely to

the Government's oversight in failing to ask the district court

in the alternative for an evidentiary hearing. That would be

an injustice to the public the criminal justice system is

supposed to serve.

The other argument advanced by the amicus need not

detain us long. The amicus maintains that Kriegsheim's

successor as Booze's attorney also provided him ineffective

assistance, this time by preparing inadequately for the resentencing hearing required by our earlier remand. The district

court ruled correctly, however, that Booze failed to demonstrate that his representation at that hearing was in any way

prejudicial to him. The amicus suggests only that a better

prepared lawyer could have argued more effectively that

some of the drug transactions conducted by Michael Booze's

brothers should not have been attributed to him. Even a

better prepared lawyer would have been making an argument

that runs counter to the law of conspiracy; therefore, he had

no reasonable prospect of getting Booze a lower sentence.

See Booze I, 108 F.3d at 384 (labeling Booze's contention

"that he should not be held accountable for drug amounts

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that he had not personally handled" as "a position that ...

reflected a lack of familiarity with the principles of conspiracy

law").*

III. Conclusion

For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district

court is reversed. Booze's claim of ineffective assistance of

counsel with respect to the alleged plea offer is remanded to

the district court for further proceedings consistent with this

opinion. In light of the circumstances -- Booze has already

served twelve years of a sentence that, if his claims are true,

should have been five years -- the district court should

conduct such proceedings as soon as possible.

So ordered.

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* The arguments advanced by Booze in his pro se brief were

addressed adequately by the district court and do not warrant

further discussion in a published opinion.

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