Opinion ID: 2793910
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Effect of an Alford Plea

Text: There is, however, one complication to confront. Havens’s plea was not a typical guilty plea. He did not admit committing the attempted assault, but only that he could be convicted of it. It is a type of guilty plea endorsed by the Supreme Court in North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25 (1970). In that opinion the Court held that the trial judge did not err in accepting the defendant’s guilty plea in light of “the strong factual basis for the plea demonstrated by the State and [the defendant’s] clearly expressed desire to enter it despite his professed belief in his innocence.” Id. at 38. Noting that Supreme Court precedent recognized a trial court’s power to impose a prison sentence after accepting a plea of nolo contendere, the Court did not think it constitutionally significant that the defendant’s plea was denominated a plea of guilty rather than a plea of nolo contendere, 5 Havens’s reply brief in this court states: “Furthermore, the reckless and deliberate conduct of Johnson and other officers at the scene unreasonably created Johnson’s perceived need to use force. Their plan to trap Havens in a confined area and Johnson’s decision to alight from the safety of his vehicle and put himself in the middle of a chaotic situation were reckless and deliberate. Consequently, Johnson and the other officers’ reckless and deliberate conduct made the use of force unreasonable.” Aplt. Reply Br. at 4. Even if we could read this single paragraph as an independent theory consistent with Havens’s attempted assault conviction (and could find support for the theory based on the evidence and clearly established law), it comes too late and is waived. See Coleman v. B- G Maint. Mgmt. of Colo., Inc., 108 F.3d 1199, 1205 (10th Cir. 1997) (“It is not sufficient to merely mention an issue in a reply brief. Issues not raised in the opening brief are deemed abandoned or waived.”). 15 see id. at 35–37, and stated that “an express admission of guilt . . . is not a constitutional requisite to the imposition of criminal penalty,” id. at 37. Thus, an individual may plead guilty “even if he is unwilling or unable to admit his participation in the acts constituting the crime.” Id. Nevertheless, the Heck doctrine derives from the existence of a valid conviction, not the mechanism by which the conviction was obtained (such as admissions by the defendant), so it is irrelevant that Havens entered an Alford plea. See Ballard, 444 F.3d at 397 (“[W]e hold that a conviction based on an Alford plea can be used to impose Heck’s favorable termination rule.”); Smithart, 79 F.3d at 952 (applying Heck to the plaintiff’s Alford plea to assault with a deadly weapon); Carbajal v. Hotsenpiller, 524 F. App’x 425, 428 (10th Cir. 2013), cert. denied, 134 S. Ct. 2697 (2014) (“We agree with the district court that [the plaintiff’s] abuse of process, false imprisonment, and conspiracy claims are barred by Heck. All three claims rest on [the plaintiff’s] allegation that the charges for which he entered an Alford plea were false.”); Green v. Chvala, 567 F. App’x 458, 459 (7th Cir. 2014) (“Like any plea, an Alford plea results in a conviction to which Heck applies.”).6 6 The author (not joined by the other members of the panel) notes, however, that the type of plea entered may well affect the other two defenses raised by Johnson: issue preclusion and judicial estoppel. I address preclusion first. “The Full Faith and Credit Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1738, requires a federal court to give the same preclusive effect to a state-court judgment that the judgment would be given in the courts of the state in which the judgment was rendered.” Jiron v. City of Lakewood, 392 F.3d 410, 415–16 (10th Cir. 2004). Under Colorado law a guilty plea may have preclusive effect in a subsequent civil Continued . . . 16 proceeding. See Allen v. Martin, 203 P.3d 546, 560–65 (Colo. App. 2008); Jiron, 392 F.3d at 417. But in dictum the Colorado Supreme Court has described Alford pleas as the equivalent of pleas of nolo contendere, see People v. Darlington, 105 P.3d 230, 233 (Colo. 2005) (“Nolo pleas may also be referred to as ‘Alford’ pleas.”), while noting that under Colorado law a plea of nolo contendere does not have preclusive consequences, see id. (“The sole distinction we have made between a guilty plea and a plea of nolo contendere is that the latter gives the defendant the advantage of not being estopped from denying her fault in a civil action based upon the same facts.”). I recognize that a Colorado federal district court has said that a Colorado Alford plea has preclusive effect. See Cortese v. Black, 838 F. Supp. 485, 492 (D. Colo. 1993). And that appears to be the rule in a number of jurisdictions. See Blohm v. Comm’r, 994 F.2d 1542, 1553–55 (11th Cir. 1993); Graybill v. U.S. Postal Serv., 782 F.2d 1567, 1573 n.1 (Fed. Cir. 1986); Empl’rs Mut. Cas. Co. v. Van Haaften, 815 N.W.2d 17, 24 (Iowa 2012); Zurcher v. Bilton, 666 S.E.2d 224, 227 (S.C. 2008); Troville v. State, 953 So.2d 637, 640 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2007). But other courts have declined to give preclusive effect to Alford pleas. See, e.g., Carroll v. Commonwealth, 682 S.E.2d 92, 100 n.3 (Va. Ct. App. 2009); Clark v. Baines, 84 P.3d 245, 251 (Wash. 2004); Fleck v. State Farm Ins. Cos., No. 89-L-14-070, 1990 WL 124648, at  (Ohio Ct. App. Aug. 24, 1990). I would not be sufficiently confident of the preclusive effect of an Alford plea under Colorado law to apply issue preclusion here. My concerns about the application of judicial estoppel have a similar origin to my concerns regarding issue preclusion. Under the doctrine of judicial estoppel, “[w]here a party assumes a certain position in a legal proceeding, and succeeds in maintaining that position, he may not thereafter, simply because his interests have changed, assume a contrary position, especially if it be to the prejudice of the party who has acquiesced in the position formerly taken by him.” New Hampshire v. Maine, 532 U.S. 742, 749 (2001) (internal quotation marks omitted). The doctrine “is based upon protecting the integrity of the judicial system by prohibiting parties from deliberately changing positions according to the exigencies of the moment.” Bradford v. Wiggins, 516 F.3d 1189, 1194 (10th Cir. 2008) (internal quotation marks omitted). In Johnson v. Lindon City Corp., 405 F.3d 1065, 1067, 1069–70 (10th Cir. 2005), the court held that judicial estoppel barred the plaintiffs’ unlawful-arrest claim under § 1983 because the plaintiffs had previously entered pleas in Utah court and executed statements in which they admitted that they had attempted to use unlawful force against the defendant police sergeant. Then Bradford held that the plaintiffs were judicially estopped from pursuing their § 1983 claims of false arrest and baseless prosecution because they had previously entered no-contest pleas to disorderly-conduct charges. See 516 F.3d at 1194–95. But the court was reluctant to rely on the plea in itself and pointed to explicit admissions by the plaintiffs at their plea hearing: Continued . . . 17