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Parties Involved:
Kess Roberson
Appellee
James R. Todd
Appellant

Document Text:

In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 14‐3430

JAMES R. TODD,

Petitioner‐Appellant,

v.

KESS ROBERSON, Warden,

Respondent‐Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Western Division.

No. 14 C 50072 — Frederick J. Kapala, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED JUNE 3, 2016 — DECIDED JULY 1, 2016

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and POSNER and ROVNER, Cir‐

cuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. In 2010 James R. Todd, having

pleaded guilty in an Illinois state court to a drug offense (he

had sold 22.1 grams of cocaine to an undercover police of‐

ficer), and having a criminal record that included five prison

sentences totaling 22 years (though he hadn’t actually served

all that time), was sentenced to 25 years in prison for selling

cocaine. He appealed on the ground that his lawyer at trial

had been ineffective because he’d induced him to plead

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guilty by telling him the government would recommend no

more than a 10‐year sentence. The Illinois appellate court re‐

jected his argument and the Illinois Supreme Court denied

him leave to appeal.

Four years later he sought habeas corpus in federal dis‐

trict court on the ground that he’d pressed unsuccessfully in

his state court appeal. The district court ruled against him,

and he has appealed to us.

Before Todd had pleaded guilty in the state criminal pro‐

ceeding, the prosecutor had told his lawyer, Daniel Radako‐

vich, that if Todd agreed to plead guilty the state would rec‐

ommend an 18‐year prison sentence plus fines. In response

Radakovich had asked the prosecutor to consider recom‐

mending a 10‐year sentence—to which the prosecutor had

replied that he wouldn’t be doing his job if he recommended

a sentence shorter than 15 years.

Just days before the plea hearing the prosecutor wrote

Radakovich that it was his (the prosecutor’s) understanding

that Todd would enter an “open plea” of guilty—that is, a

plea not conditioned on sentence length—and that in return

the government would drop another charge against Todd

and, pending sentencing, reduce his $250,000 bond—which

he could not meet—to $20,000, subject to certain conditions,

such as that he submit to drug testing at least twice a week.

An attorney named Thomas Murray stood in for Rada‐

kovich at the plea hearing, at which Todd entered an open

plea of guilty and acknowledged that he could be sentenced

to anywhere between 6 and 60 years in prison and fined as

much as $500,000. The judge asked Todd whether any prom‐

ises had been made to him other than that his bond would

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No. 14‐3430 3

be reduced and another pending charge against him

dropped, and he said “no.”

The day before Todd was to be sentenced, Radakovich

had written the prosecutor asking “would the State be inter‐

ested in a sentence lower than the ten (10) year sentence that

has been negotiated in consideration for a higher fine in this

matter?” The prosecutor, not acknowledging any such nego‐

tiation, responded that Todd’s open plea had made him sub‐

ject to a prison sentence of anywhere between 6 and 60

years. Radakovich, replying to the prosecutor, did not disa‐

gree but merely asked: “What is your position re: Sentenc‐

ing, fine, etc.?” The prosecutor replied that he hadn’t yet

read the probation service’s presentence report but thought

“my recommendation will be for a significant number of

years.”

The sentencing hearing was delayed, and during the in‐

terim Todd moved to enforce what he claimed was the

state’s agreement to a “10‐year cap” on its sentencing rec‐

ommendation. The judge (a different judge from the one

who had accepted Todd’s guilty plea) held an evidentiary

hearing at which Radakovich, who had withdrawn as a law‐

yer for Todd so that he could become a witness for him, tes‐

tified that it was his recollection that in a phone call with the

prosecutor more than two years earlier he had proposed that

Todd’s “sentence would be, although not firmly decided or

agreed upon, ... capped at ten years,” and that it was his

understanding that the prosecutor had agreed. Yet when

asked on cross‐examination to explain “with specificity and

completeness, each and every thing that [the prosecutor]

said that he would do in exchange for that plea of guilty,”

Radakovich did not mention any 10‐year cap, only “a signif‐

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icant lowering of Mr. Todd’s bond ... and [ ] we would see

what the sentence ultimately would be.” He acknowledged

that the prosecutor had not stated agreement to a 10‐year

sentencing cap.

The judge concluded that there had never been such an

agreement and proceeded to sentence Todd to 25 years (as

we noted at the beginning of this opinion) on the basis of his

“significant history of criminal activity” and “the significant

amount of cocaine that was sold here.”

This wasn’t the end of the state‐court proceeding. In re‐

sponse to a motion by Todd to reconsider the sentence or va‐

cate the guilty plea, the state court convened a further evi‐

dentiary hearing, at which lawyer Murray, who had stood in

for Radakovich at the plea hearing, testified that Radakovich

had not mentioned a 10‐year cap and that he (Murray) had

told Todd that he would be “pleading open.” Todd testified

that the day before his plea hearing Radakovich had told

him that “him [Radakovich] and [the prosecutor] had a plea

negotiation of a ten year cap” and that he (Todd) “would

have never pled guilty to an open six to 60”—though of

course he had pleaded guilty to exactly that range. And on

cross‐examination he admitted that he’d agreed to “pleading

guilty open,” that he knew what that meant, that he’d heard

the judge explain that the possible penalties at the plea hear‐

ing were from “6 years to 60 years in the Department of Cor‐

rections ... and a possible fine of up to $500,000,” and that

he’d been promised nothing in exchange for his plea aside

from the concessions relating to the bond and the dismissal

of another charge.

Unsurprisingly the state trial judge found that the 10‐

year cap was “a fantasy ... not based in any fact whatsoev‐

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No. 14‐3430 5

er.” He also found that Todd had not been confused about

the terms of the plea agreement—that there was “absolutely

no basis whatsoever [ ] to support a finding that [Todd] did

not make a knowing and voluntary plea.” The judge also

found “no evidence to suggest, whatsoever, that Mr. Rada‐

kovich [had been] ineffective in any way.” This may seem a

surprising finding, given the “fantasy” character of the 10‐

year cap, but Radakovich had conceded that the prosecutor

had never agreed to a 10‐year cap. And Murray, who had

represented Todd at the plea hearing, had never heard of the

cap and Todd had acknowledged not mentioning it in any of

his court appearances, even though the court had made clear

that he was facing a maximum sentence not of 10 but of 60

years.

There is no doubt that Radakovich had fabricated (we

don’t know whether deliberately or because of a failure of

memory) the 10‐year sentence cap; he confused his propos‐

ing it to the prosecutor with the prosecutor’s accepting it. If

as a consequence of Radakovich’s fabrication Todd had

pleaded guilty rather than invoke his right to a trial at which

he might conceivably (if improbably) have been acquitted,

he might have a claim to have been harmed by ineffective

assistance of counsel and to be entitled therefore to a do‐over

of his state‐court proceeding that had culminated in the 25‐

year sentence. See Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668

(1984); Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U.S. 52 (1985); cf. 28 U.S.C.

§ 2254(d). But his briefs nowhere mention the possibility of

an acquittal, nor has he ever presented evidence that he

would have gone to trial had it not been for his belief (if he

did believe) that by pleading guilty he would get his sen‐

tence capped at 10 years. It’s true that he’d said that he

“would have never pled guilty to an open six to 60,” and if

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he hadn’t pleaded guilty he would have gone to trial, but his

statement was bluster: he did “plead guilty to an open six to

60.”

Even if we assume that he believed in the 10‐year cap, he

either lied or was confused in replying “no” when asked by

the judge whether any promises had been made to him other

than that his bond would be reduced and the other charge

against him dropped. If he lied, he has no right to change his

story and get a trial. If he was confused and still believed

there was a sentencing cap, the trial judge disabused him of

his mistake by telling him he could be sentenced to any‐

where from 6 to 60 years even if he pleaded guilty—which is

what he did, with his eyes open. See Hutchings v. United

States, 618 F.3d 693, 699 (7th Cir. 2010).

AFFIRMED

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