Opinion ID: 624813
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Integrity of Judiciary

Text: The final consideration under plain error review is whether the error affected the fairness and integrity of the judiciary. A defendant forfeits many of his constitutional rights when he enters into a plea agreement with the government. In addition to sacrificing these rights, he relieves the government of its burden to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and eliminates the need for the government to expend its limited time and resources on a full criminal trial. He does so not out of a benevolent concern for the efficient allocation of government resources, but in order to receive the benefits of the bargain into which he has entered. The government's inducement of the defendant's plea, and the consequent forfeiture of his constitutionally-guaranteed rights, requires that a promise or agreement of the prosecutor . . . must be fulfilled. Santobello, 404 U.S. at 262, 92 S.Ct. 495. The integrity of our judicial system requires that the government strictly comply with its obligations under a plea agreement. Mondragon, 228 F.3d at 981. In some cases, when the defendant himself has engaged in conduct that undermined the parties' obligations, strict compliance is not necessary to ensure that the integrity of the judiciary is maintained, notwithstanding the government's breach. See, e.g., Puckett, 129 S.Ct. 1423 (defendant's additional crimes committed prior to sentencing undermined the legitimacy of granting his bargained-for acceptance of responsibility reduction). Here, both breaches undermined the integrity of the judiciary and neither was justified by any misconduct on the part of Whitney. With respect to the government's improper disclosure, its promise of non-disclosure initially made in the informal immunity agreement as a part of the parties' first discussions and reasserted in the plea agreement, induced Whitney to make statements of a possibly inculpatory nature. Allowing the government to breach its reciprocal obligation would violate the judicially-sanctioned plea bargaining process that requires that promises made by the government which induce the forfeiture of the defendant's rights must be fulfilled. Similarly, the government promised to make a low-end guideline sentence recommendation in return for Whitney's willingness to refrain from exercising a number of his rights, including his right to argue for a below-guideline sentence, his right to appeal a within-guideline sentence, and the right to a jury trial to establish his guilt in the first instance. Ignoring the government's failure to adhere to this promise in the face of Whitney's own compliance would substantially challenge notions of fairness and integrity within the judiciary. Thus, in the absence of clearly countervailing factors, the government's breach of the parties' plea agreement must be considered a serious violation of the integrity of the plea bargain process and the judicial system. Whitney has satisfied all four requirements to show that his sentence was affected by plain error, and he is entitled to relief.