Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-13-56704/USCOURTS-ca9-13-56704-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Candace L. Fox
Appellant
Deborah K. Johnson
Appellee

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

CANDACE L. FOX,

Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

DEBORAH K. JOHNSON,

Respondent-Appellee.

No. 13-56704

D.C. No.

2:04-cv-06933-AG-SS

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

Andrew J. Guilford, District Judge, Presiding

Argued March 5, 2015

Submitted August 1, 2016

Pasadena, California

Filed August 8, 2016

Before: Stephen Reinhardt, N. Randy Smith,

and Andrew D. Hurwitz, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge N.R. Smith;

Concurrence by Judge Hurwitz;

Dissent by Judge Reinhardt

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2 FOX V. JOHNSON

SUMMARY*

Habeas Corpus

The panel affirmed the district court’s denial of a

California state prisoner’s habeas corpus petition challenging

her conviction for first-degree murder and first-degree

burglary.

The petitioner pleaded guilty to second-degree murder

and, pursuant to a plea agreement, was sentenced to fifteen

years to life imprisonment. She later successfully petitioned

to withdraw her guilty plea after establishing that the

sentencing court failed to inform her that she would receive

a mandatory term of lifetime parole as a direct consequence

of her plea. At her subsequent trial, she was convicted of

first-degree murder and first-degree burglary and was

sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of

parole.

In her federal habeas petition, the petitioner sought

specific performance of an alleged plea agreement in which

the state promised her a term of imprisonment no greater than

seven and one-half years in exchange of her plea. The panel

held that because the petitioner chose in the state habeas

proceedings to seek vacation of her conviction, rather than

specific performance of the purported plea agreement, she

had no due process right to specific performance of the

rescinded agreement.

* This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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FOX V. JOHNSON 3

Concurring, Judge Hurwitz wrote that the case was

troubling and that, having had a hand in producing an

outcome that disfavored the one defendant who cooperated

with the prosecution, the state could remedy the situation

either through clemency or by once again offering the

petitioner the chance to plead guilty to second-degree murder.

Dissenting, Judge Reinhardt wrote that the proceeding

was fundamentally unfair, and due process required specific

performance of the plea agreement and vacation of the

petitioner’s unconstitutional sentence of life without the

possibility of parole.

COUNSEL

Michael Parente (argued), Assistant Federal Public Defender;

Sean K. Kennedy, Federal Public Defender; Federal Public

Defender’s Office, Los Angeles, California; for PetitionerAppellant.

David Wildman (argued) and Jason Tran, Deputy Attorneys

General; Lance E. Winters, Senior Assistant Attorney

General; Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General; Office of the

Attorney General, Los Angeles, California; for RespondentAppellee.

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4 FOX V. JOHNSON

OPINION

N.R. SMITH, Circuit Judge:

Candace Lee Fox pleaded guilty to second-degree murder

in 1984 in California Superior Court and, pursuant to a plea

agreement, was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of

fifteen years to life. Approximately five years later, Fox

successfully petitioned to withdraw her guilty plea after

establishing that the sentencing court failed to inform her that

she would receive a mandatory term of lifetime parole as a

direct consequence of her plea. At her subsequent trial, Fox

was convicted of first-degree murder, first-degree burglary,

and the special circumstance that the murder was committed

in the course of a burglary. She was sentenced to life

imprisonment without the possibility of parole. In this

28U.S.C. § 2254 habeas proceeding, Fox now argues that the

State originally promised her a term of imprisonment no

greater than seven and one-half years in exchange for her

plea, and asks for specific performance of that purported

agreement.

We refuse Fox’s request and affirm the district court,

because Fox chose in the state habeas proceedings to seek

vacation of her conviction, rather than specific performance

of the purported plea agreement. She therefore has no due

process right to specific performance of the rescinded

agreement.

FACTUAL BACKGROUND

In June 1984, Fox, Janet Meyer, Scott Peters, and Eddie

Rangel drove to Lewis Levy’s apartment to collect $100 that

Levy allegedly owed Meyer for sexual services. Meyer told

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FOX V. JOHNSON 5

the others that Levy had $20,000 to $30,000 in travelers

checks in his apartment. The group forced their way into the

apartment and held Levy at gunpoint while they searched for

cash and travelers checks. After they found Levy’s wallet and

$20,000 in travelers checks, Meyer and Rangel departed to

purchase cocaine, leaving Fox and Peters with Levy.

Levy took this opportunity to run for the door. Peters

struck Levy over the head with the barrel of his revolver until

the handle broke. Peters then attempted to shoot Levy, but his

gun jammed. Fox handed Peters a large steak knife from

Levy’s kitchen. Peters attempted to stab Levy twice, but the

blade bent and did not penetrate. At that point, Levy fell to

the ground nearly unconscious. When Meyer and Rangel

returned with the cocaine, Levy remained semiconscious on

the ground. After Rangel left, Peters explained to Meyer that

Levy had tried to escape.

After Fox, Peters, and Meyer used the cocaine, Meyer

stated that she was not leaving the apartment until Levy was

dead. Meyer took a Swiss Army knife from her pocket and

repeatedly stabbed Levy. Fox struck Levy over the head with

a beer bottle, and Peters attempted to strangle Levy with a

phone cord. Nonetheless, Levy was still alive. Peters then left

the apartment and waited in Fox’s car. Twenty minutes later,

Fox and Meyer left the house with two shopping bags

containing the gun and knives used in the attack. They told

Peters that Levy was dead.

The next day, the group cashed several of Levy’s travelers

checks and purchased drugs.The followingmorning,Meyer’s

roommate called the police after overhearing an argument

between Meyer and Fox about the murder. The police

questioned Meyer, who disclosed the location of Levy’s

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6 FOX V. JOHNSON

body. After further investigation, the police arrested Fox,

Meyer, and Peters.

PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

A. Fox’s Guilty Plea and Sentence

Fox, Meyer, and Peters were charged with first-degree

murder, first-degree burglary and robbery, and the special

circumstances of (a) murder during the commission of a

robbery and burglary and (b) use of a deadly weapon in the

murder, making them eligible for the death penalty. Fox

agreed to plead guilty to second-degree murder1

in exchange

for testifying against Peters.2

The plea agreement was not reduced to writing. Fox

argues that she was promised she “would be paroled after

serving 7.5 years with good behavior.” The State contends

that Fox was promised she would be sentenced to fifteen

years to life in prison, but would be eligible for parole

consideration after seven and one-half years. Fox’s change of

plea hearing on November 6, 1984, supports the State’s

contention:

PROSECUTOR: By way of sentence

. . . you’re going to receive—as we discussed,

1 When Fox pleaded guilty, second-degree murder in California was

subject to a mandatory minimum of fifteen years to life. Cal. Penal Code

§ 190(a).

2 On November 9, 1984, Fox testified for nearly five hours at Peters’s

preliminary hearing. Peters later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

Meyer also pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

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FOX V. JOHNSON 7

you’re going to receive 15 years to life on this

case. Do you understand that?

FOX: Yes.

PROSECUTOR: That is the sentence for

second degree murder. There are no

enhancements. It’s a straight second degree

and you’re going to receive a sentence from

[the court] of 15 years to life.

FOX: Yes.

PROSECUTOR: And do you understand that

it’s up to you how much time you will do. It’s

indeterminate. We can make no promises or

representations on what the Board of Prison

Terms will or will not do or when they will

release you. There is a life-time top. Do you

understand that?

FOX: Yes.

After being so advised, Fox pleaded guilty. The court

accepted her plea as knowing and voluntary. There is thus no

contest that Fox agreed to a sentence of fifteen years to life.

But, Fox was not advised during the plea colloquy that she

also faced a lifetime term of parole when released.

At the sentencing hearing, Fox’s counsel asked for a

continuance to amend the probation report. The court

responded: “I don’t understand exactly what you’re doing

here, Mr. Ficht. She is going to receive a sentence of fifteen

to life, is that correct? Fifteen to life, and that’s going to be

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8 FOX V. JOHNSON

her sentence.” In response, Ficht stated that Fox’s probation

report was “the most outrageous document I’ve seen.” The

court told Ficht to “file an amendment. She’s going to be

there for quite awhile. I don’t understand what the difference

is. She should get going. She’s losing time.” Any parole

consideration was only discussed during the following

exchange:

FICHT: Also, if I may, for the record, Your

Honor, I believe the People have indicated as

part of the plea bargain that [Fox would] be

looking at obtaining probation—parole,

excuse me, in seven and a half years. Is that

correct, [prosecutor]?

PROSECUTOR: That’s correct.

TRIAL COURT: All right. Understand that?

Fox now argues that this exchange “modified the plea

agreement” to require that she be paroled after seven and onehalf years in prison. However, neither the parties nor the court

acknowledged any modification of the plea agreement at the

hearing. Following the exchange between Ficht and the

prosecutor, the court sentenced Fox to fifteen years to life in

state prison without any reference to parole eligibility or

release on parole, stating: “All right. Miss Fox, the court has

read and considered the probation report. Probation is denied.

You are sentenced to the state prison for the term prescribed

by law, which in this case is fifteen years to life.” Fox did not

object.

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FOX V. JOHNSON 9

B. Post-Conviction Proceedings

On July 1, 1986, Fox filed her first petition for a writ of

habeas corpus in state Superior Court. Rather than seeking

specific performance of the alleged plea agreement, Fox

instead sought to withdraw her plea of guilty on two grounds.

First, Fox alleged that, when she entered her plea, she

“did not understand that her term could exceed seven and

one-half years even if her prison behavior were good.”

Instead, Fox claimed that she believed that she was “entitled

to release after seven and one-half years, provided that she

behaved properly in state prison.” Fox acknowledged that

such a belief was contrary to California law, because a

petitioner “is not entitled to release after serving the

minimum period of incarceration.” Fox also acknowledged

that “no firm promise . . . was given [to her] before her actual

sentencing” as to eligibility for parole in seven and one-half

years. However, Fox maintained (citing the portion of the

sentencing proceedings excerpted above) that the “the parties

understood that if [Fox] was cooperative and fully truthful in

her testimony, she would be eligible for parole after 7 1/2

years . . . and in fact would receive parole if she behaved

herself in state prison.” Fox also argued that, before entering

her plea, she “was not advised of the mandatory postincarceration parole term.” Fox asserted that, had “she known

the full consequences of her guilty plea, she would not have

pled guilty.”

Second, Fox asserted that she had received ineffective

assistance of counsel during the plea process and that she was

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10 FOX V. JOHNSON

“not in fact guilty of second degree murder.”3 Fox argued that

her previous attorney “erroneously” told her that, if she went

to trial, she could not use a defense of duress; her new

counsel, on the other hand, assured her that she “had a good

defense of duress.” Fox argued that her former attorney failed

to “comprehend and/or advise her of the defenses available”

and that she entered her plea after “rel[ying] upon [such]

erroneous lega1 advice.” The Superior Court denied this first

habeas petition, citing the guilty plea transcript.

On August 26, 1986, Fox filed a second petition in the

Court of Appeal, alleging “that her sentencing was unlawful

and the matter should be remanded for resentencing.” In this

petition, Fox repeatedly insisted that she sought “withdrawal

[of] her plea of guilty,” making the same arguments as those

in her Superior Court petition. On September 4, 1986, the

Court of Appeal denied the petition as not ripe, because Fox

had not yet served seven and one-half years in prison.

On January 24, 1989, after serving just over four and onehalf years in prison, Fox filed a third habeas petition in the

state Superior Court. The arguments echoed those in her

previous petitions. Fox asked to withdraw her guilty plea,

asserting that it was not voluntary and that her counsel was

ineffective. Fox also argued that (1) newly discovered

evidence exonerated her of the murder;4(2) defense counsel

3 The dissent states that Fox “never seriously denied her guilt.” Dissent

60. However, Fox specifically claimed in her first habeas petition that “she

[was] not in fact guilty of [the] offense and was unaware of [the defense

of duress] at the time she entered her plea.”

4 Fox also alleged that she received letters from Peters, in which he took

full responsibility for the murder.

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FOX V. JOHNSON 11

failed to throughly investigate and advise her regarding a

viable duress defense; (3) she was not advised of a mandatory

parole term after incarceration and “would not have entered

a guilty plea if she had known of this lifetime parole”; and

(4) she did not understand that her period of confinement

would exceed seven and one-half years with good prison

behavior. Importantly, this petition again did not seek specific

performance of the alleged plea agreement. On October 13,

1989, the Superior Court granted the habeas petition, setting

aside Fox’s conviction and granting her a new trial on the

basis that she had not been informed before entering the plea

that she faced lifetime parole. The court did not address Fox’s

other arguments.

On November 26, 1990, shortly before the new trial was

to begin, Fox filed a motion seeking, for the first time, to

enforce the previous plea agreement as she understood

it—that is, assuring release after seven and one-half

years—or, in the alternative, preventing the State from

seekingmore than a second-degree murder conviction at trial.

The State argued that, because Fox had successfully

withdrawn her plea of guilty, there was no plea agreement to

enforce. The Superior Court denied “specific performance of

the original case settlement.”

Fox was tried on the original charges of first-degree

murder, first-degree burglary, and the special circumstance

that the murder was committed in the course of a burglary.

On January 28, 1992, the jury returned guilty verdicts on all

charges. On May 13, 1992, Fox again requested that the court

order specific performance of her prior plea bargain, arguing

she was entitled to eligibility for parole in seven and one-half

years. On May 29, 1992, the court denied the motion and

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12 FOX V. JOHNSON

sentenced Fox to life imprisonment without the possibility of

parole.

Fox appealed, asserting, among other things, that “the

trial court erred in denying appellant’s motions for specific

performance of her plea bargain,” citing Santobello v. New

York, 404 U.S. 257 (1971), for the proposition that specific

performance is a remedy for breach of a plea agreement.5 On

March 30, 1994, the California Court of Appeal affirmed

Fox’s conviction. The court concluded that Fox was not

entitled to specific performance of her plea bargain, stating

that:

 

5

 The dissent states that the State changed its position at this point and

“admitted for the first time that, pursuant to the plea agreement, Fox was

to serve ‘about 7 1/2 years.’” Dissent 36. We disagree with this

characterization of the State’s argument.

From the beginning, the State has maintained that the parties

bargained for a sentence of fifteen years to life for second-degree murder.

The State has conceded that, pursuant to the plea agreement, Fox would

be eligible for parole after seven and one-half years, though the only

evidence in the record ofsuch a promise was the exchange between Fox’s

counsel and the prosecutor at the sentencing hearing. The State has also

argued that, notwithstanding such a promise, the minimum parole

eligibility under California case law for Fox’s sentence was ten years, and

thus a promise of eligibility before that time would have been

unenforceable.

Before the California Court of Appeal, the State argued that the plea

agreement was no longer enforceable because Fox had withdrawn her

plea. The statement in the State’s brief that, “pursuant to the plea

agreement, [Fox] would serve about 7 1/2 years” was not, as the dissent

puts it, evidence that the State had previously lied, but rather a shorthand

version of the plea agreement between the parties. The California Court

of Appeal then based its decision on the State’s statement in its brief.

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FOX V. JOHNSON 13

When Fox pled guilty in 1984, she got what

she bargained for, a sentence of 15 years to

life, with a promise of parole in seven and

one-half years. Five years into her sentence

(with only two and one-half years to go), Fox

decided she didn’t like the deal she’d made,

petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus and

succeeded in having her plea set aside, on the

ground she had not been fully advised of the

consequences of her guilty plea (her

alternative ground of duress was rejected).

She clearly felt very strongly that the

obligation of a lifetime on parole was not

something she could accept . . . . She got

exactly what she asked for—her plea was set

aside and the People were required to prove

the charges against her.[6]

6 The Court of Appeal acknowledged “the inevitability of a habeas

petition attacking the competency of the attorney who filed the petition to

set aside Fox’s guilty plea.” However, it noted that such a claim would

necessarily require “an evidentiary hearing to determine what Fox’s

attorneys told her at the time the decision was made to attack the guilty

plea [given that she had already served over four years of her sentence].”

Thus, such a “petition should be addressed to the trial court, not to us.”

The Court of Appeal concluded that Fox received “a sentence of 15

years to life, with a promise of parole in seven and one-half years,” and

thus “got what she bargained for.” However, as Fox acknowledged in her

first habeas petition, she was not entitled to parole after seven and one-half

years under her original sentence. This error is not consequential, because

the Court ofAppeal’s ultimate conclusion—that Fox “got exactlywhat she

asked for” when her habeas petition was granted and the original

conviction set aside—is correct.

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14 FOX V. JOHNSON

Fox then filed a petition for review in the California Supreme

Court, which was summarily denied on June 30, 1994.

On April 22, 1997, Fox filed a new habeas petition in the

Superior Court, which was denied on May 14, 1997. Fox filed

another habeas petition in the Court of Appeal on April 23,

1998. On July 24, 1998, that court remanded for an

evidentiary hearing on whether Fox received ineffective

assistance of counsel in connection with the habeas petition

that resulted in her guilty plea being withdrawn. The Superior

Court “cabined” its inquiry to the question of whether counsel

had advised Fox that, if she successfully withdrew her plea,

she could face a new trial and a longer sentence, including a

potential life sentence without the possibility of parole.

During the two-day hearing, Fox’s habeas counsel, Rowan

Klein, testified that he had advised Fox that, if her habeas

petition were granted, she would go back to square one and

face the possibility of a sentence of life without parole. When

asked if he considered seeking specific enforcement of the

original plea bargain prior to seeking to withdraw the plea,

Klein responded,

I’m sure I did but . . . [the reference to

obtaining parole in seven and a half years

wasn’t] a plea bargain because it’s an attorney

uttering incompetent words at the time of

sentencing. It’s not something that is legally

binding on The Court or the District Attorney,

unfortunately. I mean, you can try and turn it

into that through alliance and whatever, but,

legally, it probably isn’t the strongest

argument. And that’s why I sought relief on

the stronger argument, which was the failure

to advise her of the parole consequences. . . .

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FOX V. JOHNSON 15

My assessment was that the comments of

Bruce Ficht [Fox’s counsel at sentencing] are

. . . an indication that he didn’t know what he

was taking about . . . with respect to the

meaning of a 15-to-life sentence. To me, a

plea bargain is when the parties may have a

discussion at the time of the plea, not when an

attorney makes a gratuitous comment at the

time of sentencing.

The Superior Court denied Fox’s petition, finding that she

had been advised prior to the 1989 grant of habeas “of all the

possible ramifications that were legally available,

including—and it may even have been the death penalty—but

certainly the option of life without the possibility of parole;

that she’d go back to square one.”

On February 9, 2001, Fox filed a new habeas petition in

the California Court of Appeal, which was denied without

explanation or citation to authority on August 15, 2001. On

November 24, 2003, Fox filed a habeas petition in the

California Supreme Court, which was denied on July 14,

2004, in an order stating: “Petition for writ of habeas corpus

is DENIED. (See In re Robbins(1998) 18 Cal.4th 770, 780.).”

Fox filed a pro se 28 U.S.C. § 2254 habeas petition in the

district court on August 13, 2004, claiming that the state

courts denied her due process rights by failing to specifically

enforce her 1984 plea agreement. A magistrate judge

ultimatelyrecommended denying the petition, noting that Fox

had “successfully moved to withdraw her guilty plea before

she was eligible for release on parole; therefore, the State

could not have actually breached the parole agreement in the

manner petitioner claims.” The district court adopted the

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16 FOX V. JOHNSON

report and recommendation, denied the petition, and issued a

certificate of appealability on the question of the specific

performance of Fox’s 1984 plea agreement. This appeal

timely followed.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

The district court’s denial of a petition for a writ of

habeas corpus is reviewed de novo. Jones v. Taylor, 763 F.3d

1242, 1245 (9th Cir. 2014). “[A] federal district court’s

findings and its adoption of the findings of a federal

magistrate judge are reviewed under the clearly erroneous

standard.” Sanders v. Ratelle, 21 F.3d 1446, 1452 (9th Cir.

1994).

Under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty

Act (“AEDPA”), a federal court may not grant a habeas

petition filed by a person in state custody:

with respect to any claim that was adjudicated

on the merits in state court proceedings unless

the adjudication of the claim (1) resulted in a

decision that was contrary to, or involved an

unreasonable application of, clearly

established Federal law, as determined by the

Supreme Court of the United States; or

(2) resulted in a decision that was based on an

unreasonable determination of the facts in

light of the evidence presented in the State

court proceeding.

28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). However, where “no state court has

adjudicated [the] claim on the merits, and the state has

established no procedural bar to its consideration, the

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FOX V. JOHNSON 17

strictures of 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) do not apply, and our review

is de novo.” Riley v. McDaniel, 786 F.3d 719, 723 (9th Cir.

2015); see also Chaker v. Crogan, 428 F.3d 1215, 1221 (9th

Cir. 2005) (applying de novo standard of review to a claim in

a habeas petition that was not adjudicated on the merits by the

state court); Lewis v. Mayle, 391 F.3d 989, 996 (9th Cir.

2004) (same).

AEDPA applies “to a single state court decision, not to

some amalgamation of multiple state court decisions.” Barker

v. Fleming, 423 F.3d 1085, 1093 (9th Cir. 2005). “When

more than one state court has adjudicated a claim, we analyze

the last reasoned decision.” Id. at 1091 (citing Ylst v.

Nunnemaker, 501 U.S. 797, 803–04 (1991)). Under Ylst, we

only look through the last state court decision to a prior

decision on the merits if the last decision is unreasoned, that

is, if the decision “does not disclose the reason for the

judgment.” 501 U.S. at 802; see also Castellanos v. Small,

766 F.3d 1137, 1145 (9th Cir. 2014) (“[A] state supreme

court’s summary denial of discretionary review, which

generally does not state a reason for that denial, is not a

‘reasoned’ decision under AEDPA, and we must ‘look

through’ that unexplained decision to the last court to have

provided a ‘reasoned’ decision.”).

The last “reasoned” decision here was the California

Supreme Court’s 2004 order denying Fox’s habeas petition

with a citation to In re Robbins, 18 Cal. 4th 770, 780 (1998).

However, the citation to Robbins indicated that the decision

rested on the untimeliness of Fox’s petition, not on the merits

of her constitutional claims. See Walker v. Martin, 562 U.S.

307, 313 (2011) (“A summary denial citing . . . Robbins

means that the petition is rejected as untimely.”). The State

has now waived the affirmative defense of procedural default

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18 FOX V. JOHNSON

that formed the basis of the 2004 California Supreme Court’s

reasoned decision. The last reasoned decision on the merits of

Fox’s current claims is the affirmance of her conviction on

direct appeal by the California Court of Appeal in 1994.

The State urges that we apply AEDPA deference to the

1994 Court of Appeal decision. But, we need not decide that

issue. We may “deny writs of habeas corpus under § 2254 by

engaging in de novo review when it is unclear whether

AEDPA deference applies, because a habeas petitioner will

not be entitled to a writ of habeas corpus if his or her claim is

rejected on de novo review.” Berghuis v. Thompkins,

560 U.S. 370, 390 (2010). We conclude that, even under de

novo review, Fox cannot prevail.

DISCUSSION

Fox claims she has a due process right to specific

performance of her original plea deal, in which she alleges

the State promised to release her from prison after seven and

one-half years. For purposes of our analysis, we assume

(without deciding) that the State promised Fox release after

seven and one-half years and that the State breached that

promise. Nevertheless, Fox is not entitled to specific

performance of her plea agreement, because she voluntarily

chose to withdraw her guilty plea, thereby voiding her plea

agreement. There is thus no plea agreement to enforce. Under

these circumstances, there is no precedent suggesting that Fox

was denied due process by denying her specific performance.

As the Court of Appeal observed, Fox’s successful habeas

petition sought only to withdraw her guilty plea as not

knowing and voluntary, rather than to enforce a plea

agreement. At no point in the habeas proceedings, which

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FOX V. JOHNSON 19

culminated in the state court’s order allowing Fox to

withdraw her plea, did Fox seek to enforce the plea

agreement; rather, she sought to set it—and the

accompanying guilty plea—aside. Although Fox argued that

she was serving a longer sentence than she expected, she

advanced that argument solely to show that she was not

advised of the extent of the sentence she would serve if she

pleaded guilty. She simultaneously argued both her actual

innocence and that the plea was invalid because she was

never informed of the possibility of a parole term following

release. The record indicates that Fox sought to withdraw her

plea so that she could assert defenses to the charges against

her. Indeed, Fox’s habeas counsel testified he made a

strategic decision not to seek to enforce the alleged plea

agreement. Fox did not attempt, until the eve of her trial, to

hold the State to the deal she believed it made with her.

Fox’s current petition rests on the theory that a criminal

defendant has a due process right to bind the government to

a plea agreement even after choosing to withdraw the plea

rather than seek specific performance of the plea agreement.

Fox identifies no precedent recognizing that right, nor have

we found any. Indeed, the weight of persuasive precedent

cuts the other way. We have instead explained that “[w]hen

the district court exercises its power under the Federal Rules

to reject a plea agreement or permit a defendant to withdraw

his plea, it is clear by implication that the parties are

consequently released from their obligations under the plea

agreement.” United States v. Partida-Parra, 859 F.2d 629,

634 n.6 (9th Cir. 1988). Moreover, a defendant who “chose

of his own accord to challenge an aspect of the proceedings

against him, . . . [takes] a calculated risk of” having the

original charges reinstated. Taylor v. Kincheloe, 920 F.2d

599, 603–04 (9th Cir. 1990). The Sixth Circuit has come to

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20 FOX V. JOHNSON

the same conclusion, holding that when a defendant succeeds

in withdrawing a guilty plea entered pursuant to a plea

agreement, the plea agreement is “nullified” and “the

government [is] no longer bound by its promises therein.”

United States v. Jones, 469 F.3d 563, 566 (6th Cir. 2006). In

the course of discussing prosecutorial vindictiveness, the

Fifth Circuit noted “[we] see no distinction between a

defendant’s refusal to plead guilty and a defendant’s

successful withdrawal of a guilty plea . . . . In both

circumstances the defendant has, in essence, refused the

Government’s offer of a plea and exercised his right to force

the Government to prove its case.” United States v. Saltzman,

537 F.3d 353, 361 (5th Cir. 2008). Fox rescinded her plea

agreement; there was nothing left to enforce.7

Fox urges us to apply state contract law. See United States

v. Barron, 172 F.3d 1153, 1158 (9th Cir. 1999) (en banc)

(“[W]e have frequently analyzed plea bargains on contract

principles.”). However, doing so does not aid her. Under

California law, “[r]escission extinguishes a contract,

rendering it void ab initio, as if it never existed.” DuBeck v.

Cal. Physicians’ Serv., 184 Cal. Rptr. 3d 743, 750 (Ct. App.

2015). By obtaining a writ of habeas corpus nullifying her

plea as not knowing and voluntary, Fox also nullified her plea

agreement. Whatever terms were in that agreement are no

longer operative.8

7 Fox does not claim prosecutorial vindictiveness in this habeas

proceeding.

8

 There are limits to the analogy to contract law: “A plea bargain is not

a commercial exchange. . . . On rescission of the agreement, the prisoner

can never be returned to his ‘original position’: he has served time by

reason of his guilty plea and his surrender of basic constitutional rights.”

Barron, 172 F.3d at 1158. In that case, which involved a 28 U.S.C. § 2255

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FOX V. JOHNSON 21

In Santobello v. New York, the Supreme Court held that

the remedies for a breach of a plea agreement were either

specific performance of the agreement or rescission of the

entire agreement and withdrawal of the guilty plea, to be

determined by the state court based on what “the

circumstances of [the] case require.” 404 U.S. 257, 263

(1971). Where rescission is unable to repair the harm done by

the government’s breach, and where the defendant has upheld

her end of the bargain, we have held that “specific

performance [is] the only viable remedy.” Brown v. Poole,

337 F.3d 1155, 1161 (9th Cir. 2003). Indeed, we have

mandated specific performance as a remedy even where the

sentence the prosecutor promised to a defendant was not a

sentence allowed for under state law. Buckley v. Terhune,

441 F.3d 688, 699 (9th Cir. 2006) (en banc).

But, here, rather than seek specific performance, Fox

chose to withdraw her guilty plea, voiding the plea

agreement. She sought one of the remedies under Santobello,

and received it.9 Even if she had sought specific performance,

petition, this court sitting en banc refused to require a retrial, that is to

completely void the guilty plea, when one of the counts of conviction later

turned out to be unlawful. Id. at 1161. However, Barron turned on an

interpretation ofthe scope ofthe relief available under § 2255. Id. at 1159.

Fox seeks relief under § 2254. Thus, we are called on to determine what

due process requires, not what relief Fox might be afforded were she a

federal prisoner.

9 Our recent decision in Cuero v. Cate, —F.3—, 2016 WL 3563660 (9th

Cir. 2016), is not to the contrary. In Cuero, the defendant had pleaded

guilty pursuant to a written plea agreement. The day before sentencing, the

State moved to amend the complaint in a manner that would substantially

increase the defendant’s sentence. The Superior Court granted the motion

and allowed the defendant to withdraw his guilty plea. The defendant

argued in his subsequent habeas petition that the State had breached the

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22 FOX V. JOHNSON

Santobello “leave[s] to the discretion of the state court”

whether the circumstances of the case require specific

performance or an opportunity to withdraw the plea. 404 U.S.

at 263. No binding Supreme Court decision finds a

constitutional violation when a state court chooses the remedy

a petitioner expressly chose or when she maintains her

innocence of the original charges. Nor does any decision of

which we are aware find that a state court abuses its

discretion by declining to enforce a plea agreement which

would impose a term of parole to which the defendant claims

she was never made aware and to which she steadfastly

objects.

Fox now asserts that rescission of the plea agreement

(1) was forced by the State’s breach and (2) she never waived

her right to assert a breach of the plea agreement. We have

found no authority, and Fox cites none, to support her first

plea agreement and sought specific performance. The panel granted the

petition, finding that permitting the defendant to withdraw his guilty plea

was not an adequate remedy and that the Superior Court unreasonably

failed to apply principles of California contract law to the plea agreement.

Unlike the defendant in Cuero, Fox opted not to seek specific

performance in her first habeas petition. Therefore, the Superior Court

here did not fail to reasonably apply the principles of California contract

law when it granted Fox the very remedy she requested.

The dissent disagrees with our characterization of Cuero, stating that

“[h]ere, as in Cuero, the state breached its agreement, and here, as in

Cuero, the breach resulted in the withdrawal of the plea agreement.”

Dissent 59. This is incorrect. Nowhere in Fox’s first habeas petition did

she seek specific performance or argue that the government had breached

the agreement. Instead, from the outset, Fox sought to withdraw her plea,

arguing that “she did not understand” the terms of the agreement and that

her lawyer had provided ineffective assistance. In short, Fox got exactly

what she requested. Cuero did not.

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FOX V. JOHNSON 23

contention. In any event, the State did not coerce Fox to seek

to withdraw her plea, rather than seek to enforce the alleged

agreement. Rather, the State steadfastly maintained that Fox

was entitled to no relief at all. At the time Fox sought state

habeas relief, Santobello was the law of the land. Nothing

prevented Fox, acting with the assistance of counsel, from

seeking specific performance. Yet, she chose not to do so; her

counsel, whose effectiveness is not today at issue, testified

that he considered but rejected that option.

Fox maintains that, even after withdrawing her plea, she

had a due process right to assert a breach of the plea

agreement, and this right was never waived. We agree that

Fox had a constitutional right to enforce the plea agreement,

see Doe v. Harris, 640 F.3d 972, 975 (9th Cir. 2011) (en

banc), and that a waiver of a constitutional right must be

knowing and voluntary, see Schell v. Witek, 218 F.3d 1017,

1023 (9th Cir. 2000). But “even constitutional rights can be

waived if not timely asserted.” Hill v. Blind Indus. & Servs.

of Md., 179 F.3d 754, 758 (9th Cir. 1999). If there were a

time for Fox to assert a breach of her plea agreement, it was

before the guilty plea was withdrawn and the agreement was

rescinded.

By the time Fox sought specific performance, the plea

agreement had been rescinded. We confronted similar

circumstances in United States v. Burdeau, 168 F.3d 352 (9th

Cir. 1999). In Burdeau, the defendant entered into a plea

agreement that specified he was to receive a maximum of ten

years’ imprisonment on a robbery count and would have a

gun charge dismissed. Id. at 355. The defendant later

withdrew his plea and asserted a new defense to the charges.

Id. After the district court ruled that the defense was

unavailable, the defendant sought to reinstate his original plea

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24 FOX V. JOHNSON

deal. Id. The State refused, and we held that the district court

was not required to reinstate the plea. Id. at 358. Burdeau

stands for the proposition that, once a plea agreement is

rescinded, the State need not reoffer the same terms, and the

trial court is not required to enforce the agreement’s nowdefunct provisions.

We agree with our dissenting colleague that the

circumstances of this case are unfortunate. The others

convicted of the offense for which Fox is serving a life

sentenced received lesser terms, and she kept her promise of

cooperation to the State. Indeed, she would have been better

off had the state court never granted her habeas petition; she

would at least now be eligible for parole. But she chose to

rescind a plea agreement that treated her as well as her codefendants, despite her counsel’s advice that this could return

her to ground zero. No Supreme Court authority or other

precedent establishes that the Due Process Clause requires the

enforcement of a plea agreement under these circumstances.

Accordingly, the district court did not err in denying Fox’s

§ 2254 petition.

AFFIRMED.

HURWITZ, Circuit Judge, concurring:

Candace Fox committed a gruesome and senseless crime. 

She was ultimatelyconvicted of first-degree murder, and does

not argue in this § 2254 proceeding that she did not receive a

fair trial.

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FOX V. JOHNSON 25

Nonetheless, as both Judge Smith and Judge Reinhardt

note, this is a troubling case. Fox originally pleaded guilty to

second-degree murder in exchange for her testimony against

a co-defendant. She held up her end of the bargain, testifying

for five hours in a preliminary hearing. Yet both that codefendant and another received lesser sentences than the one

Fox is now serving. Moreover, the record of the plea

bargaining process is, to put it charitably, a mess. At one

point the record suggests that Fox was promised release from

prison after seven and one-half years, and at another reflects

that Fox was clearly advised that her sentence was

indeterminate, and that the parole board would ultimately

decide when she would be released.

But, all this became moot when the superior court granted

Fox’s habeas petition, setting aside her guilty plea and

conviction. That is the remedy she repeatedly sought. 

Indeed, her habeas counsel testified that he thought about

seeking specific performance of the purported plea

agreement, but decided against it. That decision was

motivated by the lack of clarity about precisely what the

purported deal was; although we have assumed today that the

State promised Fox release after seven and one-half years

with good behavior, the record does not clearly establish that

the agreement entitled Fox to release, rather than only parole

consideration.

Fox does not today urge that she received ineffective

assistance of counsel in the state habeas proceedings, and the

state courts have found that she did not. Indeed, the record

suggests that, when she sought habeas relief, Fox was

unwilling to accept the original bargain. She claimed that she

never would have pleaded guilty had she known of the

required term of lifetime parole upon release, and asserted

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26 FOX V. JOHNSON

actual innocence. The State might well have chosen in the

interests of justice to proceed only with second-degree

murder charges against Fox on retrial. But, as Judge Smith

explains, its decision not to do so was not unconstitutional. 

Still, having had a hand in producing an outcome that

disfavored the one defendant who cooperated with the

prosecution, the State could remedy this situation either

through clemency or by once again offering Fox the chance

to plead guilty to second-degree murder. But, we cannot

order such relief; our role in this matter is constrained.1In a

§ 2254 habeas petition, we are limited to determining whether

the Constitution was violated. Judge Smith clearly explains

why it was not, and I concur in his opinion in full.

REINHARDT, Circuit Judge, dissenting:

Candace Fox’s crime was not a pretty one. Yet, in 1984,

California made her a promise in exchange for her promise of

consideration it badly wanted from her. It promised her that,

if she testified against her co-defendant and pleaded guilty to

second degree murder, she would be paroled, assuming good

behavior, in seven and one-half years. If the State had kept

its word, Fox would have been released from prison over two

decades ago. Instead, because the State brazenly broke its

1

Judge Reinhardt’s dissent is premised on the notion that, although Fox

chose to vacate her plea agreement rather than to specifically enforce it,

the state court violated the Due Process Clause by giving her exactly what

she sought. But neither Cuero v. Cate, — F.3d —, 2016 WL 3563660

(9th Cir. 2016), nor any other case Judge Reinhardt cites so holds. Absent

ineffective assistance, a defendant whose plea agreement is breached is

not limited to the remedy of specific performance; she may seek to vacate

the plea and go to trial. That is the unfortunate choice Fox made here.

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FOX V. JOHNSON 27

promise to her and lied about it to the courts, Fox will now

likely spend the rest of her life in prison, unless the governor

commutes her sentence.

Thirty years ago, in 1986, when Fox filed her first habeas

petition, this case should have had a simple resolution. There

would be no petition before us today if the State had simply

assured Fox that she would receive the term of imprisonment

that she and the State had agreed to when she forfeited her

freedom, or if the State courts that heard Fox’s 1986 petitions

had fulfilled their obligation, under Santobello v. New York,

404 U.S. 257 (1971), to determine the appropriate remedy for

the State’s breach of its plea agreement. Instead, the state

prosecutors repeatedly denied promising Fox even the

possibility of a release in seven and one-half years, despite

the clear evidence to the contrary. The state courts for their

part entirelydisregarded her petitions, although the state court

of appeal later found that she had been promised the parole to

which she had repeatedly told them she was entitled. 

Frustrated with the struggle, Fox sought to withdraw from the

terms of the “agreement” that the State unilaterally imposed

upon her. Instead, although she had already fulfilled her part

of the bargain, the court withdrew her entire plea agreement,

and after serving almost her full seven and one-half year

prison term, Fox found herself involuntarily facing trial

anew—this time on an even more serious charge, one that the

State had promised not to bring.

In the thirty-odd years since Fox first sought to hold the

State to its bargain, she has been failed by many people: the

state prosecutors who abused her trust, the state judges who

failed in their obligation to provide her with an appropriate

remedy for the State’s broken promise, and the attorney who

sought to “withdraw” her plea rather than seek the remedy

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28 FOX V. JOHNSON

she had desired from the beginning—specific performance of

her bargain. The majority, while purporting to recognize that

this is an “unfortunate” situation, concludes that it cannot

provide Fox with a remedy due to the procedural posture of

this case. While it comes as no surprise that my colleagues

honestly believe that our habeas jurisprudence’s rigid

adherence to procedural rules demands a result so antithetical

to justice, I cannot in good conscience concur. In my

opinion, due process, at its core, requires that every judicial

proceeding be fundamentally fair, see Lassiter v. Dep’t of

Soc. Servs., 452 U.S. 18, 24–25 (1981)—and what happened

to Candace Fox is not fair, not by any possible conception of

the word. If due process means anything, it means that the

promise that the State made over thirty years ago should be

enforced and Fox’s unconstitutional sentence of life without

the possibility of parole should be vacated. Fox has more

than served her time. I respectfully dissent.

I. BACKGROUND

The story of this case is one of repeated falsehoods by the

state prosecutors and repeated errors by the state courts, each

condemning Fox to untold years in prison in violation of the

State’s original bargain. While the majority opinion

describes the procedural posture of this case at great length in

order to explain why it believes there is nothing it can do for

Fox—or for justice—its cold recitation of the facts does not

adequately capture the injustice that has occurred. Nor can

the majority opinion or any other obfuscate the plain fact that

after Fox carried out her part of the bargain, the State

obdurately and willfully refused to carry out its.

In 1984, Candace Fox struck a plea agreement with

California prosecutors. The agreement was not reduced to

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FOX V. JOHNSON 29

writing but its terms were clear. Fox would plead guilty to

second-degree murder and testify against her co-defendant. 

In exchange, the State would drop all additional charges

against her. Under this plea, the State promised, she would

be sentenced to 15 years to life, and would be paroled at the

end of seven and one-half years of imprisonment if she

conducted herself properly while incarcerated. Although the

State for many years denied ever making Fox any such

promise, the transcript of her sentencing hearing reveals the

truth, and the state court of appeal ultimately recognized that

it did. As the transcript shows, after the sentencing judge

announced Fox’s sentence of fifteen years to life, defense

counsel objected, and the following exchange occurred: 

[Counsel]: [I]f I may, for the record, Your

Honor, I believe the People

have indicated as part of the

plea bargain that [petitioner

would] be looking at obtaining

probation–parole, excuse me,

in seven and a half years [¶] Is

that correct, [prosecutor]?

[Prosecutor]: That’s correct.

[Trial Court]: All right . . . Also, the court

will order a transcript of these

proceedings to be sent with

[petitioner] to the state prison

just in an abundance of

caution.

Fox fulfilled her end of the bargain. She testified at the

preliminary hearing against her co-defendant for over five

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30 FOX V. JOHNSON

hours. Subsequently, she pleaded guilty to second-degree

murder and commenced serving her sentence. In the course

of doing so, she learned that the state prosecutor had made a

false promise—a promise the State ultimately asserted that it

could not fulfill. A representative of the parole board

informed Fox that under California law she would not be

eligible for parole until she had spent at least ten years in

prison. Further, she learned that after her release she would

be on parole for the rest of her life. Understandably dismayed

to discover that the State had misrepresented the truth to her,

Fox began her thirty year struggle to hold the State to its

word—as it turned out, a hopeless Sisyphean task.

A. 1986 Habeas Petitions

In 1986, Fox filed her first habeas petition in the Los

Angeles Superior Court seeking to ensure that the State

would fulfill its end of the bargain. In it, she explained that,

at the time she entered her plea, she understood that “she

would be entitled to release after seven and one-half years,

provided that she behaved properly in state prison” because

of statements made by “her counsel and by the deputy district

attorney” at the time of her plea. Further, she explained, she

had never been advised that she would be placed on lifetime

parole after release from prison. The superior court denied

her petition on the same day that it was filed, citing only

“page 4 of the plea transcript.”

Immediately thereafter, Fox filed another habeas petition,

this time with the California Court of Appeal. Once again,

she advised the court that the prosecutor had told her that

“she could not serve more than 7-1/2 years of actual

incarceration unless she failed to ‘behave herself’ in state

prison” and that “until recently, [she] ha[d] been unaware that

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FOX V. JOHNSON 31

her sentence entail[ed] a potential life-long period of parole.” 

She did not request withdrawal of her plea. Instead, she told

the court that her “sentencing was unlawful,” and that she

wished the matter to be “remanded for resentencing.”

The resolution of these petitions should have been simple. 

At the time, Santobello v. New York, 404 U.S. 257 (1971) had

been the law of plea bargains for over a decade. In that case,

the Supreme Court held that plea bargains were entitled to

constitutional protection, and that “when a plea rests in any

significant degree on a promise or agreement of the

prosecutor . . . such promise must be fulfilled.” Id. at 262

(emphasis added); see also Buckley v. Terhune, 441 F.3d 688,

694 (9th Cir. 2006) (en banc) (“Under Santobello v. New

York, 404 U.S. 257, 261–62 (1971), a criminal defendant has

a due process right to enforce the terms of his plea

agreement.”). Further, when the government breaches its

promise, the courts have an independent duty to determine

that the defendant receive what he is “reasonably due.” 

Santobello, 404 U.S. at 262. That is to say, it is the

constitutional responsibility of the courts to determine

whether, under the circumstances of the case, the defendant

should receive specific performance of his plea agreement or

be given the opportunity to withdraw his plea. Id. at 264; see

also id. at 267 (Douglas, J. concurring) (“One alternative may

do justice in one case, and the other in a different case.”). 

Despite the State’s clear breach of the plea agreement in this

case, however,1neither the superior court nor the court of

1 Although there has been some debate as to whether Fox was promised

merely consideration for parole in seven and one-half years or entitlement

to parole (assuming good behavior) in seven and one-half years, in either

case the State had breached the agreement by informing her that she

would not even be considered for parole until she had served ten years in

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32 FOX V. JOHNSON

appeal ever conducted a Santobello inquiry to determine the

appropriate remedy for the breach of Fox’s plea agreement. 

Instead, both summarily dismissed Fox’s petition.2

B. 1989 Habeas Petitions

Three years later, Fox again petitioned the superior court

for a writ of habeas corpus, this time with new counsel. In

contrast to her earlier petition, Fox’s new counsel asked to

have her guilty plea set aside on the ground that there had

been newly discovered evidence exonerating her of the

murder, and that her prior counsel had ineffectively advised

her about a potential duress defense. Shortly thereafter, Fox

replaced her counsel, because the woman had “what appeared

to [Fox] like a nervous breakdown” when she had began

“cracking up and laughing” and “talking to herself” in the

courtroom.

The replacement counsel filed a supplemental brief in

support of Fox’s petition in which Fox asked to have her

prison. Because the state court of appeal found in the course of a later

appeal that the promise was one of entitlement to release in seven and onehalf years, that term is used to describe the promise throughout this

dissent.

 

2

 Although a copy of the state court of appeal’s denial is not on record,

both parties have stipulated that the petition was denied as “unripe”—a

highly questionable proposition considering that Fox had been informed

that her minimum eligible parole date was set for 1994, which would

require her to spend at least ten years in prison before being considered for

parole. This strongly indicates that the State had anticipatorily breached

the plea agreement. Any state law to the contrary would unduly burden

Fox’s attempt to vindicate her constitutional rights, as it would require her

to remain in prison longer than her promised sentence, and continue to

remain in prison, while state courts resolved her claim.

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FOX V. JOHNSON 33

guilty plea set aside on two bases. The first ground for relief

was that Fox’s plea was involuntary because she “did not

understand that her period of confinement would exceed

seven and one-half years with good prison behavior.” 

Although Fox’s petition termed the plea “involuntary,” the

context of her argument shows that she was actually asserting

that the State was applying a plea agreement to which she had

not agreed and that it had breached its agreement as to the

true plea. The plea was involuntary only to the extent that the

court deemed it to be the agreement that the State claimed it

to be (i.e., no promise of eligibility or entitlement to parole

after seven and one-half years had been made). The plea was

breached, however, if the terms were what Fox asserted they

were and what they actually were: that a promise of

entitlement for parole was part of the plea agreement. As the

excerpt of the sentencing hearing described, and as the

California Court of Appeal later found, under the agreement

that Fox actually entered into, her incarceration could not

exceed seven and one-half years with good behavior; instead,

she would be paroled at that time. See Brown v. Poole,

337 F.3d 1155, 1159–62 (9th Cir. 2003). Thus, the State’s

refusal to even consider Fox for release until she had served

ten years in prison did not render Fox’s plea involuntary, but

rather, constituted a breach of the plea agreement. See

Puckett v. United States, 556 U.S. 129, 137 (2009) (“When

the consideration for a contract fails—that is, when one of the

exchanged promises is not kept—we do not say that the

voluntary bilateral consent to the contract never existed . . .

we say that the contract was broken.”). That Fox sought to

“withdraw” her purportedly “involuntary” plea on this basis

makes it plain that Fox was seeking to “withdraw” only from

the terms of the agreement that the State was attempting to

impose upon her unilaterally, not from the terms of the true

agreement. Moreover, as is explained below, a request to

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34 FOX V. JOHNSON

withdraw includes a request to enforce in cases in which a

plea agreement has been breached by the State. See

discussion infra at 53–67. The second ground for relief

alleged in the supplemental petition was that Fox had not

been advised that she faced a potential lifetime period of

parole after her sentence.

A hearing was held in July 1989 at which the prosecutor

denied that Fox had ever been promised that she could be

released on parole in seven and one-half years. Indeed, it was

disclosed at the hearing that Fox had been assigned a

minimum release date in 1994—which would require her to

spend at least ten years in prison before even being

considered for parole, despite the terms of her agreement. 

The superior court then granted Fox’s petition on an entirely

different basis, holding that her plea was involuntary because

she had not been advised of the lifetime parole period, and

ordered that Fox’s entire plea be set aside. It did so without

reaching the question of whether the State had breached the

agreement or whether, if a breach occurred, withdrawal or

enforcement would be the appropriate remedy. Indeed, it

announced its decision without ever asking Fox if she had a

preferred remedy for the breach, or attempting to determine

whether her request to “withdraw” her plea after she had

already served a substantial portion of her sentence was

knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarilymade. Instead, upon

announcing its decision, it immediately set a trial date.

C. Trial, Sentencing, and Appeal

Twice before trial—once two years before the jury was

empaneled, and another six months before that time—Fox

filed motions asserting that the court should not have

withdrawn her plea because, under Santobello, specific

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FOX V. JOHNSON 35

performance was a remedy that the court should have

considered. (In fact, in Fox’s case, it was the only

appropriate remedy.) At the time of her second motion, Fox

had served virtually the entirety of the sentence she had been

promised would be her maximum, assuming good behavior. 

In its opposition, the State continued to maintain that Fox was

never promised that she would be entitled to parole in seven

and one-half years, and that under California law it had never

been possible for her even to be eligible for parole in seven

and one-half years. The superior court denied both of Fox’s

motions without comment and in a form order. On January

28, 1992, a jury convicted her of first degree murder and first

degree burglary, charges which the State had previously

dropped pursuant to the terms of the plea agreement that it

breached. At this time, of course, Fox had served the entirety

of the promised seven and one-half year term.

Before sentencing, Fox once again asked that she be given

the benefit of her bargain. As she explained, she had been

promised parole in seven and one-half years in exchange for

her testimony against her co-defendant and her plea of guilty,

but had been denied the benefit of her bargain by the State

after she had complied fully with her promise. The due

process clause, she argued, required that she be given an

appropriate remedy for the breach of the promises made to

her, but, she asserted, she did not receive such a remedy. 

Instead, after serving almost the full seven and one-half years,

just months before she was entitled to release, the state court

subjected her to a trial on a more serious charge—a charge on

which the State had promised it would not prosecute her. 

That prosecution was in no way just or fair. As she told the

court in her brief, “[e]ven if acquitted she had already done

the time she bargained for in the beginning.” The State, she

argued, got what it bargained for, and should be “estopped”

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36 FOX V. JOHNSON

from denying the same to Fox after she had detrimentally

relied on its promises throughout her years in prison. Further,

she contended, since the superior court had already vacated

her plea—she should be allowed to plead to a lesser charge

that would give effect to the original agreement of the parties

in compliance with California law. The court denied her

motion and sentenced her to life imprisonment without the

possibility of parole.

Fox appealed and again argued that under Santobello she

was constitutionally entitled to a remedy for the breach of her

plea agreement, and that “[a]fter she had served in excess of

7 1⁄2 years, it was unjust” for the court to allow her only the

option of withdrawing her plea; in doing so, she contended,

it offered her no remedy; rather it presented her with the

fundamentally unfair choice of either accepting a sentence

that increased the period of incarceration provided for by her

original agreement or going to trial in which case she faced

even far greater punishment if convicted. She argued that

rather than a coerced withdrawal, she should have been given

specific performance as the only appropriate remedy for the

State’s breach of the plea agreement.

In response, the State did not deny its promise to Fox, nor

did it claim—as it had in the past—that its promise to her was

unenforceable under California law. Instead, it admitted for

the first time that, pursuant to the plea agreement, Fox was to

serve “about 7 1⁄2 years,” but asserted that its promise was

now unenforceable because the court had withdrawn Fox’s

plea agreement at her request.

In its unpublished 1994 decision, which the State

contends is the last reasoned decision and thus the decision

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FOX V. JOHNSON 37

that we must examine under habeas law,3the state court of

appeal agreed that Fox had been promised release in seven

and one-half years. It found that Fox “bargained for[] a

sentence of 15 years to life, with a promise of parole in seven

and one-half years.” Then, ignoring the fact that the State

had repeatedly denied ever making this promise and that

Fox’s parole eligibility date had been set well after the

expiration of her seven and one-half year term, the California

Court of Appeal inexplicably found that the only reason Fox

had asked to withdraw her plea was that “she didn’t like the

deal she’d made.”4

It then concluded that she had no right to

the bargained-for sentence limited to seven and one-half years

in prison, even though she had fulfilled her part of the

bargain, because she had voluntarily rescinded the plea

agreement. Fox again appealed, and the California Supreme

Court denied her petition for review without comment.5

 

3

See, e.g., Ylst v. Nunnemaker, 501 U.S. 797, 803–04 (1991).

4 Fox, of course, did like the deal she had made. Although the court

determined that she did not like the length of the parole term, her “deal”

said nothing about the length of the term of parole that would follow her

sentence, only that she would be released in the promised seven and onehalf years. Fox had no problem with this deal—her problem was that the

State continuously denied that she could or would be released in

accordance with her deal. See infra pp. 45–49.

5 As this court recently noted in Curiel v. Miller, the California Supreme

Court must rule on a “staggering number of habeas petitions each year,”

and addresses this otherwise insolvable workload problem “by issuing

unelaborated summary denials.” Curiel v. Miller, No. 11-56949, Slip Op.

at 7.

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38 FOX V. JOHNSON

D. Post-Trial State Habeas Petitions

Following the denial of her direct appeal, Fox filed yet

another habeas petition in superior court, once again raising

her claim that she was entitled to specific performance of the

original plea agreement. She also asserted that her prior

habeas attorney had provided ineffective assistance of

counsel in seeking to set aside her plea in 1989 rather than

seeking specific performance or resentencing. Her petition

was denied without comment or citation of authority.

Fox again returned to the California Court of Appeal,

which remanded for an evidentiary hearing on the issue

whether Fox received ineffective assistance of counsel by

filing a habeas petition that resulted in her guilty plea being

withdrawn. In that hearing, the superior court limited its

inquiry to the question whether counsel advised Fox about the

risk that she could face a new trial or a longer sentence. It did

not examine whether the attorney should have advised Fox

about her right to specific performance of her original

bargain.

During the two-day hearing, Fox’s former habeas counsel

testified that he had asked to withdraw her plea because he

believed that the District Attorney would offer a second plea

bargain. He further testified that he had declined to seek

specific performance because he did not believe that the

statements made about the promise of parole during Fox’s

sentencing hearing were “legally binding on The Court or the

District Attorney.” Accordingly, he believed that asking for

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FOX V. JOHNSON 39

withdrawal on the basis that Fox’s plea was involuntary was

a stronger argument.6

Fox’s testimony revealed that the advice given to her by

her habeas counsel was muddled at best. Specifically, she

explained that, although she knew her 1989 habeas petition

asked to have her plea “withdrawn,” she understood that if

that petition were successful, the court would give her the

seven and one-half year period of incarceration that she had

been promised. She testified that, on the basis of the advice

of her counsel, she believed that the court would “adjust some

kind of plea bargain” so that she could receive the promised

seven and one-half years. Fox explained that she had been

informed that by requesting “withdrawal” of her plea, she

would enable the court to invalidate the terms of the bargain

as the prosecutor wrongfully described them and that the

court would then be able to enforce specific performance of

the true agreement by allowing her to change her plea to that

of a lesser charge, one which, under California law, would

allow her to be paroled upon completion of the promised

seven and one-half years.7 Her testimony, in this respect is,

6 That procedure, of course, could still obtain the same result as specific

performance (a seven and one-half year term followed by parole) if Fox

had been allowed to replead after the plea had been withdrawn. As

described below, this appears to be the result Fox hoped to obtain.

7 Although, as the majority reports, Fox was apparently also told that “if

[she] went to trial” she could get a sentence of life without the possibility

of parole, that statement is of little significance in light of the fact that Fox

testified that she was also informed that, if her petition were successful,

she would not have to take the case to trial and could, at the worst, choose

the option of again pleading to second degree murder. She testified that

she had been told that she “could always plead out to second-degree”

which would come with a fifteen-years-to-life sentence. Indeed, she

testified, her attorney told her that the opportunity to plead out to second-

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40 FOX V. JOHNSON

of course, credible because the minimum ten year eligibility

date for parole on which the State insisted was based on a

provision of state law of which the prosecutor was apparently

unaware when he promised her parole after seven and onehalf years. Changing Fox’s plea to a lesser charge would

have enabled the State to comply with its own rules as well as

with the Constitution.

The superior court denied the petition from the bench on

June 2, 1999. Ignoring almost all of the facts set forth above,

it found that Fox’s habeas attorney was not ineffective

because he had advised her that setting aside her plea

agreement could result in a new trial that would expose her to

a sentence longer than the one she was serving, “up to and

including life without the possibility of parole.” 

Subsequently, Fox once more moved her way through the

hierarchy of the California courts. The California Court of

Appeal denied her petition without comment, and the

California Supreme Court denied it as untimely.

E. The Federal Petition

After two decades of litigation in the California courts,

Fox finally turned naively to the federal judiciary. 

Proceeding pro se, she filed a habeas petition under 28 U.S.C.

§ 2254 on August 13, 2004. The State moved to dismiss the

petition as untimely, but the district court held that Fox was

entitled to equitable tolling based on the misconduct of her

habeas lawyer who had resigned from the practice of law

after masterminding what the California Court of Appeal

degree would “always” be “on the table.” According to Fox, however,

neither the prosecution nor the court ever gave her that opportunity or

otherwise complied with the dictates of Santobello.

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FOX V. JOHNSON 41

described (in another case) as a habeas corpus “writ mill,”

designed to “systematically . . . abus[e] the writ process for

his own pecuniary gain.” In re White, 121 Cal. App. 4th

1453, 1458 (2004).8

Originally, in October 2009, a magistrate judge issued a

report and recommendation which concluded that Fox was

8 Richard Dangler, the attorney in question, represented Fox through her

third round of state habeas petitions, those that were filed after her trial. 

According to the district court, Dangler was paid $5,000.00 and it was

agreed that he would promptly appeal any denial by the Los Angeles

Superior Court, and then, if those petitions were unsuccessful, promptly

file a federal petition within AEDPA’s one year statute of limitations. 

Despite Dangler’s assurances, it took him over 11 months to file a new

petition in the state court of appeal, at which point he filed a petition that

essentially simply copied the petition he had originally filed in the

superior court. Following the court of appeal’s denial, Dangler waited

another 27 months to file a petition in the California Supreme Court, and

again, filed a petition that simply mirrored the one that the court of appeal

rejected. During this time, Fox wrote Dangler numerous letters about the

length of time he was taking to file her petitions, and Dangler repeatedly

assured her that she had nothing to worry about. After Dangler had

resigned from the practice of law, and after the California Supreme Court

denied Fox’s petition as untimely, Dangler sent Fox a letter informing her

that she should file another habeas petition in the California Supreme

Court and that his associate, C. Roman Rector would be willing to

represent her in connection with that petition at no charge, provided that

Rector was retained to file a federal petition for $8,250.00. (Although this

opinion refers to the process of going through the California appellate

system after the completion of proceedings in the superior court as

“appealing” the denial of a petition, the California system consists simply

of filing a new petition with the next level of the judicial system. For

almost all purposes, California treats the post-conviction petitions filed at

the second and third levels as appeals. There is a difference not relevant

here, however, in cases in which the order of filing the petitions is

different, for example filing the first petition in the state supreme court,

which is permissible under California law).

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42 FOX V. JOHNSON

entitled to relief on her request for specific performance. The

magistrate judge reasoned that Fox’s agreement with the State

plainly entitled her to be eligible for release on parole after

seven and one-half years. Contrary to the opinion of the

California Court of Appeal, the magistrate judge held that

Fox clearly did not receive the benefit of her bargain. She did

not, as the state court had reasoned, “decide[] she didn’t like

the deal she’d made,” but instead sought relief because the

State informed her that she was not going to receive the

benefit of the deal she had made. Indeed, the magistrate

judge found, the state court of appeal’s decision was contrary

to clearly established Supreme Court law and based on

unreasonable determinations of the facts, and therefore failed

even the highly deferential standard of review established

under both 28 U.S.C § 2254(d)(1) and (d)(2). Further, the

magistrate judge recommended, that since Fox had served

more than five years of her promised seven and one-half year

sentence at the time her plea was withdrawn in October 1989,

the only appropriate remedy was to enforce, not withdraw,

the bargain.

The State filed objections and the magistrate judge

revised his report. In the amended report and

recommendation, issued in March 2012, the magistrate judge

ruled that Fox had not shown that the state court’s decision

was contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly

established Supreme Court law, and therefore could not

survive the deferential standard of review established under

28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). As explained infra Part II, such a

finding would require that the federal court deny Fox relief

only if she could not overcome the equally deferential

standard set forth in 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2), which governs

unreasonable findings of fact. Inexplicably, however,

although he had previously relied on both 28 U.S.C.

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FOX V. JOHNSON 43

§ 2254(d)(1) and (d)(2) in his original report and

recommendation, the magistrate judge did not address

whether Fox met the standard with respect to unreasonable

findings of fact under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2). The district

court nevertheless adopted the revised report and

recommendation, denied Fox’s petition, and issued a

certificate of appealability. This appeal timely followed.

II. STANDARD OF REVIEW

The majority carefully avoids deciding whether the

strictures of the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty

Act (“AEDPA”) requiring deference to the state court’s

decision apply here. That Act bars further review of any

claim “adjudicated on the merits” in state court, unless the

State’s decision falls within an exception contained in

28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1) or (d)(2). Harrington v. Richter,

562 U.S. 86, 98 (2011). Those exceptions permit a grant of

habeas relief in cases in which the relevant state-court

decision is (1) “contrary to, or involved an unreasonable

application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined

by the Supreme Court,” or (2) “based on an unreasonable

determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented

to the State court proceeding.” 28 U.S.C. §§ 2254(d)(1) and

(2).

As the majority correctly states, AEDPA’s limitations

apply “to a single state court decision, not to some

amalgamation of multiple state court decisions,” and when

more than one state court has adjudicated the claim, we

analyze only “the last reasoned decision.” Barker v. Fleming,

423 F.3d 1085, 1091, 1093 (9th Cir. 2005) (citing Ylst,

501 U.S. at 803–04). Thus, when a decision “does not

disclose the reason for the judgment,” we will “look through”

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44 FOX V. JOHNSON

it and apply AEDPA deference to a prior decision on the

merits. Ylst, 501 U.S. at 802. If the last reasoned decision

states a procedural reason for the judgment, however, we

ordinarily do not apply AEDPA deference and instead,

review the claim de novo if the petitioner can show cause and

prejudice to overcome the procedural default.

Here, the California Supreme Court’s 2004 denial of

Fox’s petition rested on a procedural ground. The State,

however, believes that we should “look through” that

decision both because it has waived Fox’s procedural default

and because the procedural ground in question was merely a

failure to file a timely petition, a ground that would not

disturb the underlying decision on the merits. It therefore

urges that we instead treat the 1994 court of appeal decision

(which was the last decision to announce the reason for its

judgment prior to the 2004 California Supreme Court’s

denial), as the last reasoned decision in this case. Because

that decision addressed the merits of Fox’s claim, it argues,

we cannot grant relief unless that decision falls within one of

the exceptions set forth in 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d).

I, like the majority, do not believe that we need to resolve

the question of which opinion is the last reasoned decision in

this case, and I, like the majority, apply de novo review to

Fox’s claim. I do so because, even assuming that we must, as

the State urges, “look through” the California Supreme

Court’s timeliness decision and give deference to the 1994

court of appeal’s resolution of Fox’s claim on the merits, that

decision is so unreasonable that it fails even AEDPA’s highly

deferential test, and therefore, de novo review applies. See

Hurles v. Ryan, 752 F.3d 768, 778 (9th Cir. 2014) (holding

that, once the court has found that the state court’s decision

meets one of the exceptions listed in 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d),

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FOX V. JOHNSON 45

“we evaluate the claim de novo”). Accordingly, even under

the State’s argument as to the last reasoned decision, de novo

review applies.9

In this case, the California Court of Appeal plainly

misapprehended, and indeed, ignored, material facts, and as

a result based its decision on factual findings that are entirely

unsupported by the record and are for that reason alone

wholly unreasonable. It thus falls within the exception set

forth in Section 2254(d)(2). See Milke v. Ryan, 711 F.3d 998,

1008 (9th Cir. 2013) (“[W]here the state courts plainly

misapprehend or misstate the record in making their findings,

and the misapprehension goes to a material factual issue that

is central to petitioner’s claim, that misapprehension can

fatally undermine the fact-finding process, rendering the

resulting factual finding unreasonable.”) (quoting Taylor v.

Maddox, 366 F.3d 992, 1001 (9th Cir. 2004)). Ironically, in

resolving Fox’s claim adversely, the California Court of

Appeal determined that Fox had been promised “a sentence

of 15 years to life, with a promise of parole in seven and onehalf years,” a critical factual finding that was reasonable and

supported by Fox’s representations as to her plea bargain, by

the transcript of her sentencing hearing, and by the State’s

concession on appeal that under the plea agreement, Fox

9

If the California Supreme Court’s 2004 decision were the last reasoned

decision, of course, Fox would not need to overcome either of the

exceptions listed in 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) because that decision was not a

decision “on the merits.” The normal course of action in such case is to

allow the petitioner the opportunity to show cause and prejudice for his

procedural default, and then, if such a showing is made, to review the

claim de novo. Here, because the State has waived any argument that

Fox’s reliefis procedurally defaulted, Franklin v. Johnson, 290 F.3d 1223,

1230 (9th Cir. 2002), we would proceed directly to the merits and review

the claim de novo.

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46 FOX V. JOHNSON

would serve “about 7 1⁄2 years.” The remainder of that court’s

resolution of Fox’s claim, however, is riddled with

unreasonable factual findings. Although it agreed that Fox

had been promised parole in seven and one-half years, it

wrote that Fox “got what she bargained for,” and that she

asked to have her deal set aside only because she “didn’t like

the deal she’d made.” Those findings not only directly

conflict with the court’s immediately preceding finding as to

the contents of Fox’s plea bargain, but could be made only by

ignoring or overlooking substantial portions of the record, the

State’s concession, and all of the evidence of the State’s

breach of its plea agreement.

Contrary to the state court of appeal’s findings, the record

clearly reflected that at the time she filed her 1989 petition,

Fox was not, in fact, going to get what she bargained for. As

described above, in both her 1986 and 1989 petitions, Fox

asserted that she had pleaded guilty after the deputy district

attorney promised that she would be released on parole,

assuming good behavior, after seven and one-half years, and

that only after she was in the midst of serving her sentence

was she informed that she could not even be considered for

release at the bargained-for time. Specifically, she asked to

withdraw her plea only after representatives from the State

informed her that the prosecutor had made a false promise

and that, under California law, she could not receive the

benefit of her bargain. Indeed, as her 1989 petition made

clear, she filed her petitions for relief because she was

informed by the State that her “minimum eligible release date

[wa]s almost ten years, contrary to seven and one-half years

as stated by [the] Deputy District Attorney.” In fact, in

responding to Fox’s petitions, the prosecution had taken the

position that Fox could not be considered for parole until she

had spent at least ten years in prison, and that any promise

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FOX V. JOHNSON 47

made to the contrary was contrary to California law. The

state court of appeal, however, ignored this and all other

evidence that showed that Fox was not, in fact, “g[etting]

what she bargained for.”

Indeed, the state court of appeal did not even mention that

Fox sought relief in her 1989 habeas petition on the basis that

she was not going to receive parole after seven and one-half

years of incarceration as the State had promised. Instead, it

wrote that there were only two bases for Fox’s 1989 petition

(that she had not been fully advised of the consequences of

her guilty plea, and that she had been ineffectively advised

about her potential duress defense) while ignoring the

primary, most substantial and repeatedly asserted basis for

Fox’s habeas petition (that she was being forced to remain in

prison for at least ten years, in violation of the prosecutor’s

promise regarding parole). Without wholly ignoring this

primary ground and the evidence that supported it, the court

of appeal could not have concluded that “[f]ive years into her

sentence (with only two and one-half years to go), Fox

decided she didn’t like the deal she’d made.” The record

shows exactly the opposite: Fox sought relief not because she

did not like the deal she had made, but because the State

refused to acknowledge the deal into which it had entered and

also contended that it lacked the power to deliver on its part

of the bargain.

The state court of appeal also unreasonably found that

Fox was granted “the relief she so desperately

wanted”—withdrawal of her plea and a trial at which the

State could try to prove the charges against her. Fox’s pretrial motions, which were filed well in advance of the actual

trial, make clear that a new trial was not the relief she desired. 

She tried vigorously to avoid a new trial and sought

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48 FOX V. JOHNSON

reinstatement of all parts of the plea bargain that she insisted

she had made. This was not a case in which the defendant

gambled a life in prison in the hope of being acquitted and

later regretted the outcome. It was one in which the

defendant had, from the very beginning, surrendered her right

to trial in exchange for a promise of parole after serving

seven and one-half years of imprisonment and, for decades

thereafter continuously sought to enforce that promise. The

state court of appeal, however, did not even discuss the

contents of Fox’s pre-trial attempts to secure a remedy

consistent with her original plea bargain.10

Most troubling, the state court of appeal unreasonably

found that Fox’s “predicament”—that is, a lifetime in state

prison without the possibility of parole—was “entirely a

result of her own actions without any fault of the prosecutor

or the court.” Indeed, it stated, the prosecutor “did nothing to

breach the plea agreement.” The record clearly and

affirmatively establishes, however, that Fox’s “predicament”

was, in fact, exclusively the fault of the State. Fox pleaded

guilty on the basis of the prosecutor’s representations that she

would be paroled in seven and one-half years, assuming good

behavior. As it turned out, however, the prosecutor had

misinformed her on that critical point. Whether through

negligence or incompetence, the prosecutor failed to inform

10 Both the majority and the concurrence apparently agree with the state

court of appeal that Fox “got what she asked for” when the state court

withdrew her plea. The facts and extensive procedural history of this case

make clear, however, that Fox had, at all times, sought to receive the

benefit of the bargain she had originally made. See supra at pp. 30–40;

see also infra at pp. 61–64. Further, as explained infra pp. 53–67, because

the State had breached its promise to Fox, the state courts had a duty to

independentlydetermine the appropriate remedy for this breach, which the

courts did not do here.

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FOX V. JOHNSON 49

Fox that state law prohibited a release at the promised time. 

After she had performed her part of the bargain, Fox learned,

from a representative of the State, that, contrary to the

prosecutor’s promise, she would not be paroled until she had

spent at least ten years in prison. When she tried to explain

her “predicament” to the State and to its judiciary, the

prosecution falsely denied ever making such a promise, and

further denied having the authority to do so. The state court

of appeal ignored all of this critical information when

determining that “her predicament [was] . . . without any fault

of the prosecutor,” and that the prosecutor “did nothing to

breach the plea agreement.”

The evidence that the California Court of Appeal ignored

was vital to Fox’s claim. The entire basis of her appeal was

that she was entitled to specific performance of the State’s

obligations following her performance of her part of the

bargain and that the court had unlawfully withdrawn her plea

after the State’s breach without offering her that option. The

state court of appeal had before it, “yet apparently ignore[d],”

all the evidence that was central to Fox’s claim that the State

had breached the plea agreement. Thus, we do not accord

AEDPA deference to its decision. See Milke, 711 F.3d at

1008–1010. Rather, we must review Fox’s claim de novo. 

See Hurles, 752 F.3d at 778 (“If we determine, considering

only the evidence before the state court, that the adjudication

of a claim on the merits . . . was based on an unreasonable

determination of the facts, we evaluate the claim de novo, and

we may consider evidence properly presented for the first

time in federal court.”).11

11 In the alternative, I would also find that the California Court of Appeal

decision was contrary to and an unreasonable application of clearly

established Supreme Court law because it made no mention of, or

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50 FOX V. JOHNSON

III. DISCUSSION

The enforcement of promises that are made in exchange

for defendants’ waivers of their freedom is a matter of sound

public policy and profound constitutional importance. Well

over ninety percent of criminal convictions are based on plea

bargains, and each of those convictions depends on public

faith in the integrity of the government’s promises. More

important, defendants surrender their fundamental rights and

liberties in exchange for these promises, and robust

constitutional protections must be in place to ensure that the

entirety of the plea process is just and fair. See, e.g., Missouri

v. Frye, 132 S. Ct. 1399 (2012); Santobello, 404 U.S. 257. 

Accordingly, a guilty plea vests the defendant with “a due

process right to enforce the terms of his plea agreement,”

ensuring protections for his sacrifice of fundamental

freedoms and for the integrity of the government’s word. See

Buckley, 441 F.3d at 694 (citing Santobello, 404 U.S. at

261–62); see also Cuero v. Cate, 2016 WL 3563660 (9th Cir.

June 30, 2016); Doe v. Harris, 640 F.3d 972, 975 (9th Cir.

2011) (“Under the Due Process Clause, criminal defendants

have a right to enforce the terms of their plea bargains.”);

Brown, 337 F.3d at 1159 (9th Cir. 2003).

This case, which comes before us after decades of

litigation, started off with a relatively simple premise that

reference to, California contract law in determining whether the State had

breached its promise. See Ricketts v. Adamson, 483 U.S. 1, 5 n.3 (1987);

see also Buckley, 441 F.3d at 695 (“Thus, under Adamson, California

courts are required to construe and interpret plea agreements in accordance

with state contract law.”). In addition, I believe that it was an

unreasonable application of Santobello to fail to analyze whether specific

performance was the more appropriate remedy for the State’s obvious

breach.

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FOX V. JOHNSON 51

should have had a relatively simple resolution. In exchange

for Fox’s agreement to waive her fundamental right to a trial

by a jury of her peers and her agreement to testify against her

co-defendant, the State promised her that she would be

paroled, assuming good behavior, in seven and one-half

years. Then, after it received everything it needed from

her—her testimony and her freedom—the State breached its

promise. It informed her that she would not be considered for

parole until she had spent at least ten years in prison, and

indeed, denied ever agreeing to anything different. After this

breach, Fox had an indisputable right to enforce her plea

bargain.

While the majority correctly states that Fox’s counsel did

not expressly request specific performance until after her plea

had already been withdrawn, in her 1986 petition to the

California Court of Appeal, she had contended that her

sentencing was unlawful and had requested that the case be

remanded for resentencing in accordance with her plea. 

Further, under Santobello v. New York, state courts have a

duty to determine whether due process requires specific

performance of the broken plea agreement, regardless of

whether the defendant expressly requests only withdrawal. 

404 U.S. at 262; id. at 267 (Douglas, J. concurring). In this

case, the state courts did not consider the appropriate remedy

for the State’s breach of the plea, and indeed, did not even

acknowledge the fact that the State breached its agreement. 

Instead, the Los Angeles Superior Court withdrew Fox’s plea

agreement and forced her to go to trial after she had already

delivered the consideration required by her plea bargain and

had served the majority of the promised seven and one-half

years. As a result of the court’s rulings and the State’s

continuingmisrepresentations, Fox was condemned to pursue

a series of legal actions that resulted in her being where she

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52 FOX V. JOHNSON

is today—behind bars for life, in violation of the State’s

promise.

Had the state court fulfilled its obligation to determine the

appropriate remedy for the breach the first time Fox requested

relief, it undoubtedly would have concluded, as has every

court that has faced the question, that under the

circumstances, the only remedy that satisfies the demands of

due process is specific performance of the breached plea

agreement. See, e.g., Cuero, 2016 WL 3563660; Brown,

337 F.3d at 1161. Although, in making the determination of

the proper remedy, “considerable” weight must be given to

the defendant’s specific request, that weight is of no force

unless the court is satisfied that the defendant understands

and has considered the effects of choosing one option rather

than the other. Here, the court never presented Fox with her

options, nor did it assure itself that her waiver of the right to

specific performance was knowing, intelligent, and voluntary.

To the contrary, the record shows that Fox’s request for

“withdrawal” was coerced and that, given the choice, she, like

any other rational person, would have selected specific

performance. Indeed, the transcripts from her 1999

evidentiary hearing show that the only reason she sought to

“withdraw” her plea was so that she could be given the

opportunity to plead to a lesser charge, one that would entitle

her to the promised seven and-one half years without causing

the State to violate California law. In short, she wanted

specific performance all along.

The majority apparently believes that, simply because

Fox’s plea was withdrawn—by unconstitutional means or

otherwise—there is nothing we can do to fix this injustice. 

That is incorrect. See Cuero, 2016 WL3563660 (holding that

a defendant may be given the benefit of his original bargain

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FOX V. JOHNSON 53

even after the plea has been withdrawn). In my view, the

state courts acted arbitrarily, unreasonably, and contrary to

law by withdrawing Fox’s plea without conducting an

adequate inquiry as to the appropriate remedy for the State’s

breach. Fox was entitled to a meaningful remedy, and as

every court since Santobello has concluded, withdrawal

cannot remedy a breach when a defendant has, like Fox,

already cooperated with the government or served a

substantial portion of her sentence. Because Fox did not

knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily waive her

constitutional right to that remedy, her 1992

conviction—which was secured over her objections and in

violation of her rights—cannot stand. Specific performance

of the original bargain should now be granted, and Fox, who

has served a sentence exponentially in excess of the seven

and one-half years that she was promised, should be released

immediately.

A. Fox had a Constitutional Right to Enforce the

Terms of her Agreement after the State’s Breach

In Santobello v. New York, the Supreme Court first held

that “when a plea rests in any significant degree on a promise

or agreement . . . such promise must be fulfilled.” 404 U.S.

at 262. There, New York prosecutors struck a deal with a

defendant, and promised that if he pleaded guilty to a lesserincluded offense, the prosecutor would make no

recommendation as to the defendant’s sentence. Id. at 260. 

After considerable delayin scheduling hissentencing hearing,

the petitioner sought to withdraw his guilty plea. In turn, a

new prosecutor neglected his predecessor’s promise, and

recommended the maximum sentence allowable. Id. The

Supreme Court held that the defendant was constitutionally

entitled to a remedy for the prosecutorial breach. Id. at 264. 

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54 FOX V. JOHNSON

It then remanded to the state court to determine “whether the

circumstances of this case” and the “interests of justice”

required specific performance of the promise, in which case

the petitioner would be resentenced, or withdrawal of the

plea, the relief sought by the petitioner. Id. As Justice

Douglas explained in his critical concurrence, “[o]ne

alternative may do justice in one case, and the other in a

different case.” Id. at 267.12

When Fox sought to enforce her bargain, Santobello had

been the governing law with respect to plea bargains for over

a decade. Fox’s habeas petitions made clear that her plea

rested in significant part on the prosecutor’s promise that she

would be entitled to parole in seven and one-half years, but

that she had been expressly advised by prison authorities that

she would not even be considered for parole at the agreedupon time. In fact, she had been informed by state authorities

that she could not be made eligible for parole until after ten

years. Thus, it was clear that the State had no intention of

keeping its promise. Indeed, state prosecutors repeatedly

denied ever agreeing to the evident terms of their bargain.

12 Santobello was decided 4–3, with Justice Douglas’s concurrence

serving as the critical fourth vote. (From September 1971 until roughly

one month after Santobello was decided in December 1971, the Supreme

Court functioned with only seven justices. This was not a result of any

Senate obstructionism, however. Rather, inSeptember 1971 Justice Black

resigned, and six days later, Justice Harlan died). The dissenting justices

did not disagree with the Court’s central holding that the constitution

guarantees a remedy for broken plea bargains. Instead, they believed that,

in this case, the defendant needed to be permitted to withdraw his guilty

plea, particularly because, unlike Fox, he had not yet been sentenced for

the crime. Thus, in Santobello, withdrawal would have had minimal, if

any, prejudicial effect on either the defendant or the State.

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FOX V. JOHNSON 55

Thus, under Santobello, Fox had a constitutional right to

a meaningful remedy for the State’s breach, and the state

courts had a duty to ensure that Fox received what she was

“reasonably due”—to determine whether, under the

circumstances of this case, the interests of justice required

specific performance of the bargain or withdrawal of her plea. 

The state courts declined to do so. There is no indication that,

at any point in the decades-long state proceedings, the state

courts ever considered what remedy would appropriately

rectify the State’s breach or that they ever considered specific

performance. By failing to do so, the State denied Fox the

remedy to which she was constitutionally entitled: specific

performance of her plea agreement.

B. The Only Appropriate Remedy for this Breach was

Specific Performance

Had the State inquired into the appropriate remedy for the

breach of Fox’s plea agreement, it undoubtedly would have

come to the conclusion that the only appropriate remedy in

this case was to grant specific performance. Fox had fulfilled

her end of the bargain. She testified for several hours against

her co-defendant and, by all accounts, comported herself as

a model inmate in the years she spent in prison before filing

her habeas petitions. Unlike the defendant in Santobello who

had not yet been sentenced at the time of the breach, see

404 U.S. at 259–60, Fox had already forfeited her freedom

and spent a substantial amount of time in prison before she

learned of the state’s breach. In these circumstances, as

courts across the country had recognized at the time of Fox’s

petitions, specific performance was the only just and

meaningful remedy. Withdrawal simply would not provide

the return to the status quo that a proper remedy requires

because “[e]radicating the impact of [Fox’s] testimony is

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56 FOX V. JOHNSON

impossible,” and giving her the opportunity to replead after

such a long confinement is, at best, “superficial and

unrealistic.” Geisser v. United States, 513 F.2d 862, 871 (5th

Cir. 1975); see also United States v. Finkbeiner, 551 F.2d

180, 184 (7th Cir. 1977) (“Under the circumstances of this

case it would be unjust to simply vacate the guilty plea, which

theoreticallywould allow the state to reindict [the defendant.]

Since he has already performed his side of the bargain,

fundamental fairness demands that the state be compelled to

adhere to the agreement as well.”) (emphasis added); United

States v. Duff, 551 F.2d 185, 187 (7th Cir. 1977) (“Since

Ferris has substantially begun performing his side of the

bargain, it would not be fair to vacate the plea and require

him to go through the procedure anew.”); Palermo v. Warden,

545 F.2d 286, 296–97 (2d Cir. 1976) (“Remand for

withdrawal of the guilty plea would indeed have been

meaningless[.]”); Krager v. United States, 388 F. Supp. 595,

599 (D. Mass. 1975) (“To vacate [the defendant’s] plea, after

he has already served more than four years, would be an

empty gesture.”); State v. Tourtellotte, 88 Wash. 2d 579, 585

(Wash. 1977) (en banc) (“If we do not enforce the agreement,

the state would be permitted to play fast and loose with an

accused’s constitutional rights to its advantage and his

detriment.”) (internal quotation omitted).

The three decades that followed have only served to

reinforce the notion that when a defendant has already served

a substantial prison term or has already provided the

bargained-for cooperation with the government, specific

performance is the only remedy for the governmental breach. 

Indeed, this court held as much in Brown v. Poole, 337 F.3d

1155 (9th Cir. 2003), a case remarkably similar to this one. 

There, as here, a petitioner in California custody had been

promised parole eligibility in seven and one-half years

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FOX V. JOHNSON 57

despite the fact that state law required her to be in prison for

at least ten years before being considered for parole. 

Although the agreement was evident on the face of the state

court transcripts, the State asserted that the prosecutor had no

right to, and in fact did not, promise eligibility for or

entitlement to parole in seven and one-half years. In Brown

we held that the petitioner was “entitled to a remedy” for the

breach of her plea agreement, and that because she “ha[d] met

the terms of the agreed-upon bargain, and paid in a coin the

state cannot refund,” “[r]escission of the contract [wa]s

impossible[.]” Id. at 1161. Accordingly, specific

performance was “the only viable remedy.” Id.; see also

Buckley, 441 F.3d at 699 (holding that, in similar

circumstances, “[r]escission of the plea agreement cannot

repair the harm caused by the state’s breach”).13

Even more recently, in Cuero v. Cate, this court held that

a defendant who has performed his part of the bargain is

entitled to specific performance after a state’s breach even

after he has already withdrawn the bargain. 2016 WL

3563660. There, the defendant pleaded guilty to two felonies

pursuant to an agreement with the state that he would receive

a maximum of 14 years, 4 months in prison and 4 years of

parole. Id. at *1. After he pleaded guilty, the state prosecutor

13 This is also the approach that has been taken by state courts that have

followed Santobello’s mandate and inquired as to whether specific

performance is an appropriate remedy. See, e.g., Shanklin v.

Commonwealth, 730 S.W. 2d 535, 537 (Ky. Ct. App. 1987). This has

been true even where, as here, the plea agreement was originally

erroneously set aside. See Brooks v. Narick, 243 S.E. 2d 841, 843 (W.V.

1978) (“We hold that withdrawal of his guilty plea was a coerced act

caused by the state’s breach of the plea bargain, and Brooks is entitled to

reinstatement of the guilty plea and specific performance of the

agreement.”).

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58 FOX V. JOHNSON

moved to amend the criminal complaint to allege additional

prior charges which, if allowed, would result in an

indeterminate 64 years to life under California’s three strikes

law. Id. at *2. This amendment clearly breached the plea

agreement and undoubtedly violated the defendant’s rights,

but the California Superior Court permitted it, and as a result,

Cuero withdrew his guilty plea. Id. As we explained,

allowing Cuero to withdraw his guilty plea “was no remedy

at all” because it did not “‘repair the harm’ caused by the

prosecutor’s breach.” Id. At *7–8. To the contrary, we

explained, the withdrawal “exposed Cuero to the risk of going

to trial and receiving an indeterminate 64 years to life

sentence. This is hardly the ‘remedy’ Cuero would have

elected had he been given a choice.” Id. “Because Cuero had

already performed, ‘fundamental fairness demands that the

state be compelled to adhere to the agreement as well.’” Id.

at *8. Further, we explained, specific performance was

“necessary to maintain the integrity and fairness of the

criminal justice system” because “‘[i]f a defendant cannot

rely upon an agreement made and accepted in open court, the

fairness of the entire criminal justice system would be thrown

into question. No attorney in the state could in good

conscience advise his client to plead guilty and strike a

bargain if that attorney cannot be assured that the prosecution

must keep the bargain.’” Id. at *8 n.14. (quoting State v.

Tourtellotte, 564 P.2d 799, 802 (Wash. 1977) (en banc). In

other words, because withdrawal of the plea bargain had been

coerced by the State’s breach and because withdrawal was an

inadequate remedy for that breach, specific performance of

the withdrawn plea was required.

The majority believes that Cuero is distinguishable

because of the procedural posture of that case, namely, that

Cuero initially argued breach and sought specific

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FOX V. JOHNSON 59

performance in state habeas court. That distinction, however,

is without a difference. Here, as in Cuero, the state breached

its agreement, and here, as in Cuero, the breach resulted in

the withdrawal of the plea agreement. In both cases, the

withdrawal “exposed” the defendant to the fundamentally

unfair risk of a potential life sentence. In both cases, the

withdrawal of the plea was meaningless, as it afforded “no

remedy.” See id. at *7. Accordingly, in both cases the proper

result as a matter of law was to enforce the original terms of

the bargain, not to withdraw the plea. In Cuero, however, we

reinstated the defendant’s withdrawn bargain, and here, we do

not. Put simply, the majority’s theory that withdrawal of the

plea “nullifies” the defendant’s ability to specifically enforce

a bargain, even though the withdrawal had been coerced by

the State’s breach, is inconsistent with our holding in Cuero.

14

In short, in every case to have addressed the question,

courts have recognized that, when the State breaches its plea

14 Indeed, the difference between the procedural posture in Cuero and

this case is not so great as the majority suggests. Both requested specific

performance only after their plea had already been withdrawn. In Cuero,

the defendant pleaded guilty to the charges in the amended complaint

subsequent to the withdrawal of his original plea, but before he requested

specific performance. See id. at *2 (“[T]he Superior Court allowed Cuero

to withdraw his guilty plea and enter a new plea agreement[.]”); see also

Cuero v. Cate, 2011 WL 7769328, at *2 (S.D. Cal. 2011) (explaining that,

subsequentto the amended complaint “Cuero withdrewhis previous guilty

plea, and entered into a negotiated plea to the charges contained in the . . .

amended complaint, admitted two prior felonies contained therein, and a

stipulated 25-years-to-life-sentence.”). Cuero did not request specific

performance until his post-conviction habeas petition before the California

Court of Appeal. See Cuero, 2011 WL 7769328, at *6. In contrast, Fox

first requested specific performance at an even earlier procedural stage: 

after the withdrawal of her plea, but before her subsequent conviction at

trial.

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60 FOX V. JOHNSON

agreement after the defendant has already substantially

performed his part of the bargain, withdrawal of the plea is no

remedy at all. Accordingly, by failing to give Fox specific

performance of her bargain and instead withdrawing her plea,

the State denied her the constitutional remedy to which she

was entitled.

The majority would apparently distinguish all prior

reported cases on the patently erroneous assumption that Fox

voluntarily decided in 1989 to abandon the plea deal the State

had guaranteed her in order to seek to establish her innocence

in a new trial. It simply defies all logic and reason to believe

that Fox, having bargained for her release on parole following

seven and one-half years of imprisonment, having delivered

the testimony the State demanded in return for her relatively

short period of incarceration, and having served five years of

that seven and one-half year term, would have voluntarily

decided to refuse to serve her remaining two and a half years

in order to undergo a new trial on a more serious charge with

a possible, indeed almost certain, term of life without parole. 

This is particularly obvious as she had little if any evidence

of innocence, had never seriously denied her guilt, and the

evidence of that guilt was overwhelming. Under a proper

reading of the record in this case, nothing whatsoever

supports themajority’s counter-factual conclusion or suggests

so unlikely and irrational an intent on Fox’s part. Rather, at

all times her effort was to obtain, by one means or another,

the state-promised limitation of seven and one-half years to

the sentence she was serving and was close to completing. 

See supra pp. 39–40; see also infra pp. 61–64.

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FOX V. JOHNSON 61

C. The State is not Excused from its Obligation to

Provide A Meaningful Remedy by the Coerced

Withdrawal of Fox’s Guilty Plea

The majority believes that the State’s withdrawal of Fox’s

plea was appropriate because that was the remedy she sought. 

There are several problems with this conclusion. First, it is

directly contrary to Santobello, which held that the remedy

must be selected by the state court based on the circumstances

of the case, not dictated solely by the defendant’s request. 

Santobello, 404 U.S. at 262–63; id. at 267 (Douglas, J.

concurring). Although a defendant’s request for a specific

remedy is to be given “considerable” weight, that choice is

meaningless where, as here, the court does not know whether

the defendant has been fully advised of the possible options

and where the court has failed to determine the voluntariness

of the defendant’s request. Second, the context of Fox’s

request for withdrawal shows that she did not want to

withdraw the plea to which she had agreed, or to face trial on

the charges to which she had pled, let alone to a more serious

charge on which the State had agreed not to prosecute her. 

Rather, she believed that her motion to “withdraw” from the

State’s version of the agreement would allow her to replead

to an offense that would ensure that she would receive the

benefit of her bargain. Third, Fox’s request for “withdrawal”

was coerced by the State’s false representations regarding the

nature of the plea agreement—she would not have filed a

petition at all if not for its repeated false denials of its

promise to her. Finally, as already discussed, specific

performance was the only proper remedy for the State’s

breach under the circumstances of the case. Fox’s request for

a different remedy constituted, at most, an involuntary,

unknowing, and uninformed waiver of her constitutional right

to the only true remedy: specific performance. The “waiver”

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62 FOX V. JOHNSON

thus is void, or at the least voidable, and cannot serve as the

basis for denying Fox the constitutional remedy to which she

is entitled.

Under Santobello, courts have an obligation to determine

independently which remedy comports with due process and

fundamental fairness, regardless of the defendant’s initial

request.15Id. at 262–63; id. at 267 (Douglas, J. concurring). 

Indeed, a number of cases since Santobello have recognized

that due process requires specific performance in

circumstances similar to Fox’s: i.e., in cases in which the

defendant initially requested withdrawal of his plea. See, e.g.,

Cuero, 2016 WL3563660; Duff, 551 F.2d at 186–87; Brooks,

243 S.E. 2d at 843.

Of course, as Justice Douglas’s critical concurrence in

Santobello suggests, a defendant’s choice of relief should

ordinarily be given “considerable” weight in determining

which remedy due process requires, but that choice is without

force unless it was voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently

 

15 This requirement serves a practical purpose. That withdrawal of the

plea is, in cases like Fox’s, not a constitutionally valid remedy is now

established. Thus, a defendant who requests withdrawal may, in fact, be

waiving a right to which he is constitutionally entitled. Judges, who

understand the consequences, legal and practical, of particular remedies,

are in the best position to ensure that the defendant understands his

options and constitutional rights before the plea is withdrawn—just as a

judge must ensure that the defendant understands his options and his

constitutional rights before his plea of guilty is accepted in the first place. 

In fact, in many cases, the judge may be the only person capable of

ensuring that the defendant understands his options, because many

defendants are not represented by counsel during state collateral

proceedings. Moreover, those who are represented are not afforded

constitutional protection against the incompetence of their counsel. See

Pennsylvania v. Finley, 481 U.S. 551, 554 (1987).

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FOX V. JOHNSON 63

made. Here, although Fox asked to “withdraw” the plea, the

context makes clear that she wished to “withdraw” only from

the terms of the agreement that the State sought to

unilaterally enforce against her, not from the plea bargain as

she (correctly) understood it. Her petition stated that she “did

not understand that her period of confinement would exceed

seven and one-half years with good prison behavior.” The

truth was, of course, that her confinement could not, under

the terms of the actual plea agreement, be longer than seven

and one-half years with good behavior. See Brown, 337 F.3d

at 1161. Indeed, the state court of appeal found as much

following the State’s concession on Fox’s direct appeal. It

was only under the State’s fallacious version of the

agreement, which it attempted unilaterally to enforce against

her, that Fox could be imprisoned for longer than seven and

one-half years without parole.

Fox simply had no objective reason to seek to invalidate

the actual plea agreement that promised her parole after the

agreed-upon period, nor is there any reason to believe that she

would have agreed to do so but for the State’s breach of its

promise. At no point prior to withdrawal did the superior

court ask Fox whether she wished to withdraw her plea and

face the possibility of trial or whether she wished to seek

specific enforcement. Further, as she testified at the 1999

hearing, she believed her motion to “withdraw” would

guarantee her the mutually agreed-upon seven and one-half

years by allowing her to receive the opportunity to replead to

a lesser offense—one that would permit compliance with

California sentencing law while still allowing her the

promised limited term of imprisonment. Indeed, shortly after

the court withdrew Fox’s plea, she moved for specific

performance, making clear that she had only sought to

“withdraw” from the plea that the State represented to be the

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64 FOX V. JOHNSON

bargain—a plea to which she in fact had never agreed. Thus,

it is impossible to conclude, as the majority so facilely does,

that Fox voluntarilywithdrew her plea. Indeed, Fox’s request

to withdraw was coerced by the State’s repudiation of the

bargain. If not for the State’s actions, she in all likelihood

would not have filed the motion to withdraw, and even if she

had, the withdrawal would have been unlawfully coerced or,

to put it differently, unknowing, uninformed, and involuntary.

Finally, the state court cannot be excused from its duty to

consider, and ultimately, grant specific performance as a

remedy simply because another ground existed for

withdrawal separate and apart from the State’s breach

regarding its promise of parole after seven and one-half years. 

The court withdrew Fox’s plea without addressing the State’s

breach. It did so on the ground that Fox had not been advised

of a different parole term required by state law to be included

in her sentence: lifetime parole. State law at the time

permitted a defendant who had not been advised of the length

of the parole term following his release from prison to

withdraw his plea. See In re Carabes, 144 Cal. App. 3d 927,

928, 933 (Ct. App. 1983). Carabes did not, however, address

the case in which there has been both a failure to advise the

defendant about a term of the plea agreement and a breach of

the agreement itself; it certainly did not address a case in

which the plea had been breached after the defendant had

already substantially performed his part of the agreement. 

Even if Fox could withdraw her plea on the basis of the

failure to advise her of the duration of parole, doing so would

not provide a constitutionally adequate remedy for the breach

of the plea agreement, and would, in effect, allow the State to

breach the agreement with impunity.

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FOX V. JOHNSON 65

In my view, the result under the Due Process Clause is

clear: when there has been both a breach of the plea

agreement and some other, non-constitutional violation, (or

even a constitutional one) the state court must consider the

violations together in determining the appropriate remedy, or

at the least it cannot rule on the remedy for the other violation

without also considering the proper remedy for the breach of

the plea agreement. Santobello clearly states that a defendant

must be provided with a remedy for the State’s breach, and

that, in a number of circumstances, withdrawal will not be

proper even when the defendant requests it. 404 U.S. at

262–63; see also id. at 267 (Douglas, J. concurring). 

Numerous cases since Santobello have held that when a

defendant has substantially performed his end of the bargain,

withdrawal is no remedy at all. See, e.g., Cuero, 2016 WL

3563660; Brown, 337 F.3d at 1161. It therefore follows that,

when there has been a breach and some other procedural plea

violation, courts must consider whether specific performance

is the appropriate remedy, even if withdrawal would be

appropriate for the procedural violation alone. Any other

result would deny defendants who have performed their part

of the bargain the constitutional remedy for the State’s breach

of the plea agreement to which they are entitled.16 Here, the

16 It may, of course, be the case that a defendant truly wishes to

withdraw his plea, even despite a breach. In such circumstances, a

defendant’s knowing, voluntary, and intelligent waiver of his

constitutional right to specific performance is something that the state

courts should consider when devising an appropriate remedy. See

Buckley, 441 F.3d at 699 n.11 (“[I]n a case in which the state has already

received the benefit of the bargain, the harm caused by its breach is

generally best repaired by specific performance of the plea agreement,

although a defendant may, if he so chooses, elect instead to rescind the

agreement and take his chances from there.”). A court cannot know

whether the defendant has made an appropriate “choice” of withdrawal,

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66 FOX V. JOHNSON

state court failed even to consider the State’s breach of the

plea agreement, and disposed of Fox’s claim solely on the

basis of the procedural violation. In doing so, it deprived Fox

of her right to due process of law.

Two years after the state superior court revoked Fox’s

plea agreement, the California Supreme Court cautioned

lower courts against the very sin committed by the superior

court when it withdrew Fox’s plea without addressing the

State’s breach. The court explained that in “any given case,

there may be a violation of both the advisement requirement,

or the plea bargain, or both” and that when both types of error

are present and the defendant has already begun serving his

sentence, the defendant’s agreement should be specifically

enforced, rather than withdrawn because “permitting him to

withdraw his guilty plea cannot restore the status he enjoyed

before sentencing.” People v. Walker, 819 P.2d 861, 864

(Cal. 1991).17 Thus, the California Supreme Court belatedly

recognized, as a matter of state law, what courts across the

country had previously held as a matter of federal

constitutional law: when a defendant has substantially

performed his end of the bargain, or served a substantial

however, if it never informs the defendant of his rights, presents the

defendant with his options, and makes the inquiry necessary to determine

whether the request for withdrawal is voluntary. In this case, Fox’s efforts

to enforce the agreement pre-trial demonstrate clearly her preference for

enforcement over withdrawal of the plea.

17 Walker was subsequently overruled to the extent that it had held that

failure to advise a defendant of restitution where the plea bargain was

silent as to restitution was not a breach of the agreement, but merely a

failure to advise. See People v. Villalobos, 277 P.3d 179, 185 (Cal. 2012)

(in bank). That does not affect the result here, however. In fact, it makes

the constitutional violation even clearer.

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FOX V. JOHNSON 67

portion of his sentence, withdrawal of the bargain cannot

provide the constitutional remedy for the State’s breach that

due process requires.

The superior court had two opportunities to remedy its

failure to provide Fox the constitutional remedy to which she

was entitled when, post-Walker, Fox filed her pre-trial

motions explaining that withdrawal was an inadequate

remedy for the breach of her plea. The court failed to take

advantage of those opportunities, and instead, without

discussing whether the earlier withdrawal was appropriate or

constitutional, denied both motions bymeans of a form order. 

The court then had a third opportunity when Fox asked for

the benefit of her original bargain at sentencing, where she

explained that “there is and was no way that allowing her to

withdraw her plea” after so many years in prison “was fair or

just.” The state court again did not correct its prior errors,

and instead, sentenced Fox to life imprisonment without the

possibility of parole. These orders also were arbitrary and

capricious and furthered the State’s deprivation of her right

to a constitutional remedy for the State’s breach of the plea

agreement.18 Moreover, barring commutation of her sentence

by the governor, they sealed Fox’s fate for life.

D. The Appropriate Remedy is Now to Grant Fox the

Relief She Sought Thirty Years Ago

In short, Fox’s plea agreement should never have been

withdrawn by the state court. Doing so was contrary to the

mandate of Santobello, its progeny and due process (as well

18 No prejudice to the court or the State could even arguably have been

used to justify the denial of Fox’s pre-trial (or even post-trial) motions

existed.

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68 FOX V. JOHNSON

as to California law). Further, it allowed the State to breach

its agreement with impunity, and instead, forced Fox alone to

bear the burden of the State’s constitutional errors. That

burden is a heavy one. Even though the State originally

agreed that the service of a prison sentence of seven and onehalf years prior to release on parole was sufficient for the

crime to which she pled, Fox will now likely die in prison for

that very same conduct.

The majority believes that its decision is unavoidable

because even if Fox was, at one point, entitled to specific

performance, the time for that remedy has long passed. Once

the state court withdrew her plea bargain (whether voluntarily

or not), the majority argues, there was no longer an agreement

for it to enforce. This decision is in conflict with our recent

decision in Cuero v. Cate, in which we granted specific

performance after a plea had already been withdrawn. Even

absent the existence of Cuero, however, I do not believe that

the fundamental fairness that due process requires can be so

simply disregarded in the guise of adherence to a prior unfair

and unconstitutional judicial action. An injustice cannot

become just merely through the State’s compounding of its

error and the passage of time.

Because the state court withdrew Fox’s plea without

considering the remedy of specific performance and because

withdrawal of her plea was involuntary, Fox was denied the

constitutional remedy required for the State’s breach. Her

subsequent efforts to reinstate and enforce that plea

agreement were also unconstitutionally denied. The resulting

conviction of Fox for a more serious crime on which the State

had promised not to prosecute her cannot stand. Accordingly,

this court should now do what should have been done three

decades ago: enforce the plea agreement upon which Fox and

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FOX V. JOHNSON 69

the State mutually agreed. It necessarily follows that we

should vacate the conviction on the charge of first degree

murder.

Fox, who has served over twenty-five years in excess of

the seven and one-half years that she was promised, should be

released forthwith. She has already suffered more than

enough from the State’s violation of her constitutional rights. 

I agree that we are incapable of remedying this travesty

entirely, because we cannot give Fox back the extra twentyfive years she has spent in prison. I do not agree, however,

that we are unable to prevent the further perpetuation of this

inexcusable travesty of justice and become parties to the

unprecedented violation of Fox’s constitutional rights. I

respectfully dissent.

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