Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/18pdf/17-1026_2c83.pdf
Page Number: 26.0

Cite as:  586 U. S. ____ (2019) 

9 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

(Easterbrook,  C. J.).    And  because  filing  an  appeal  places
the defendant’s plea agreement in jeopardy, an attorney’s 
decision not to file in the face of an appellate waiver does 
not amount to the failure to perform “a purely ministerial 
task”  that  “cannot  be  considered  a  strategic  decision.” 
Flores-Ortega, 528 U. S., at 477.  Even where state law or 
a  plea  agreement  preserves  limited  appeal  rights,  an
attorney does not fail to “show up for appeal” by declining 
to challenge a waived issue.  Nunez, supra, at 454. 

The  deficiency  analysis  in  this  case  would  likely  be
different if Garza had informed his counsel that he desired 
to breach the plea agreements and file an appeal—despite
the waiver and in full awareness of the associated risks— 
for  the  sake  of  an  identified  goal  that  had  any  hope  of 
being advanced by the filing of an appeal.  But the record 
shows that  Garza simply sought a more lenient sentence.
Since that goal could not be advanced by an appeal in this 
case,  counsel  had  no  duty  to  file  one.    The  Constitution 
does not compel attorneys to take irrational means to their 
client’s stated ends when doing so only courts disaster. 

Garza  ultimately  faults  his  plea-stage  attorney  for
failing to put his plea agreements in jeopardy.  But I have 
no  doubt  that  if  a  similarly  situated  attorney  breached  a
plea agreement by appealing a waived issue and subjected 
his  client  to  an  increased  prison  term,  that  defendant 
would argue that his counsel was ineffective for filing the 
appeal.  What Garza wants—and what the majority gives
him—is  a  per se  deficiency  rule  ensuring  that  criminal
defendants  can  always  blame  their  plea-stage  counsel  on
collateral  review,  even  where  they  did  not  ask  counsel  to 
appeal nonwaived claims or breach the plea agreement for 
the  sake  of  some  further  (achievable)  goal.    Declining  to 
file  an  appeal  under  these  circumstances  is  reasonable, 
not deficient.