Opinion ID: 781706
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Applicability of the Sixth Amendment

Text: 15 Leonti's ineffective assistance claim arises out of his counsel's conduct during the process of reaching the plea agreement and Leonti's subsequent attempts to cooperate with the government. Leonti states a claim for relief only if the Sixth Amendment guarantees apply to these aspects of a criminal proceeding. 16 Once it attaches, the right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment applies to all critical stage[s] of the prosecution. Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U.S. 682, 690, 92 S.Ct. 1877, 32 L.Ed.2d 411 (1972) (internal quotation marks omitted and emphasis removed); accord United States v. Akins, 276 F.3d 1141, 1146 (9th Cir.2002) (internal quotation marks omitted and emphasis removed). Because defendants are entitled to competent counsel at every stage of a criminal proceeding where substantial rights ... may be affected, Mempa v. Rhay, 389 U.S. 128, 134, 88 S.Ct. 254, 19 L.Ed.2d 336 (1967); accord United States v. Ant, 882 F.2d 1389, 1393 (9th Cir.1989), the right to counsel also applies at critical stages of the sentencing phase in a criminal prosecution. Mempa, 389 U.S. at 134, 88 S.Ct. 254. 17 A critical stage is a trial-like confrontation, in which potential substantial prejudice to the defendant's rights inheres and in which counsel may help avoid that prejudice. Beaty v. Stewart, 303 F.3d 975, 991-92 (9th Cir.2002) (internal citations, quotation marks, and alterations omitted). Critical stages include, for example, post-indictment police lineups, United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 227, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967), arraignments, Hamilton v. Alabama, 368 U.S. 52, 53, 82 S.Ct. 157, 7 L.Ed.2d 114 (1961), and sentencing, Gardner v. Florida, 430 U.S. 349, 358, 97 S.Ct. 1197, 51 L.Ed.2d 393 (1977). 18 Thus, the essence of a critical stage is not its formal resemblance to a trial, but the adversary nature of the proceeding, combined with the possibility that a defendant will be prejudiced in some significant way by the absence of counsel. See, e.g., Wade, 388 U.S. at 228-29, 87 S.Ct. 1926 (police lineup constitutes critical stage because of innumerable dangers, including possibility of improper suggestion and likelihood that the issue of identity will be conclusively determined there); Beaty, 303 F.3d at 992 (group psychiatric treatment sessions did not constitute critical stage because not court-ordered or designed to acquire information to be used at trial).
19 The plea proceeding is a critical stage. See United States v. Fuller, 941 F.2d 993, 995 (9th Cir.1991); Akins, 276 F.3d at 1146. We have therefore found ineffective assistance of counsel in cases where an attorney's failures concerned the process of plea bargaining and reaching the plea agreement. In United States v. Blaylock, we held that the failure to communicate a plea offer to a defendant is ineffective assistance. 20 F.3d at 1465-66; see also United States v. Rivera-Sanchez, 222 F.3d 1057, 1060-61 (9th Cir.2000) (holding that counsel is required to communicate the terms of a plea offer to a defendant, and to ensure that the defendant understands the terms of the offer and its significance). 20 Leonti was also entitled to the effective assistance of counsel in his decision whether and when to plead guilty. If it is ineffective assistance to fail to inform a client of a plea bargain, it is equally ineffective to fail to advise a client to enter a plea bargain when it is clearly in the client's best interest. See Boria v. Keane, 99 F.3d 492, 497 (2d Cir.1996) (examining counsel's failure to advise client of wisdom of accepting a plea). Therefore, Leonti will state a claim under the Sixth Amendment if Kaplan's conduct in delaying Leonti's plea was outside the wide range of professionally competent assistance. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 690, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984).
21 The focused question presented here is whether an ineffective assistance claim can arise out of an attorney's failure to properly assist a defendant in cooperating with the government. We conclude that the profound effect a substantial assistance motion can have on a defendant's sentence qualifies the cooperation period as a critical stage of the criminal process. 22 Cooperating with the government has become a crucial aspect of plea bargaining and sentencing under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. The importance of plea bargaining to the modern criminal process is well-documented, and has been long recognized by the Supreme Court. See Blackledge v. Allison, 431 U.S. 63, 71, 97 S.Ct. 1621, 52 L.Ed.2d 136 (1977); George Fisher, Plea Bargaining's Triumph, 109 Yale L.J. 857 (2000). Because 85% of federal criminal cases are resolved by plea, 1 it is not surprising that sentencing has become the effective focus of a defendant's efforts to secure a favorable outcome. In this regard, many defendants attempt to cooperate with the government in hopes of persuading the government to file a substantial assistance motion. Obtaining such a motion is critical to a defendant's hope of a reduced sentence. With it, the sentencing judge may depart from the guidelines and reduce the defendant's sentence in an amount reflecting, inter alia, the nature, extent, and usefulness of the defendant's assistance. See U.S.S.G. § 5K1.1. 23 Without it, a defendant has little hope of obtaining a reduced sentence. Apart from substantial assistance to the government, the alternative bases for downward departure from the prescribed guideline range are largely limited to specific factual circumstances. See, e.g., id. § 3B1.2 (minimal or minor participant in the crime); id. § 3E1.1 (acceptance of responsibility); id. § 5K2.12 (coercion and duress). For defendants whose cases do not fit within these narrow parameters, cooperating with the government becomes their only recourse for attempting to secure a downward departure. Thus, for many federal defendants, such as Leonti, the only hope of mitigating the often harsh effects of the sentencing guidelines is cooperation with the government. 24 Not only is cooperation essential to the interests of defendants facing sentencing, it serves the government's interests by allowing it to command the services of so many defendants with information or connections that are valuable for law enforcement purposes. Given the symbiotic nature of the relationship, it is not surprising that defendants' attempts to cooperate have become such a central part of criminal procedure. We now acknowledge that reality by recognizing attempted cooperation as a critical stage of the proceeding. As substantial assistance has become the last, best hope of so many defendants, the guarantee of competent counsel must apply to the process of seeking such a recommendation. 2 25 It is also apparent, however, that advice about whether and when to cooperate does not exhaust the potential benefits of competent counsel during this period. As Strickland recognized, a lawyer has many and varied duties to a client. 466 U.S. at 688-90, 104 S.Ct. 2052. In addition to keeping the client informed and consulting with the client on important decisions, an attorney generally has a duty to bring to bear such skill and knowledge as will render the adversarial process reliable. Id. Leonti's allegations, as well as common sense, suggest that an attorney's assistance is critical to the cooperation process in a number of respects, including, but not limited to, facilitating communication between the defendant and the government, attending proffer sessions, ascertaining the government's expectations and whether the defendant is satisfying them, communicating the client's limitations to the government, and establishing a record of attempts to cooperate. 26 Of course, a downward departure for substantial assistance is never guaranteed, as the government may rightfully decline to file a substantial assistance motion for any reason, so long as its decision is not arbitrary, based on an unconstitutional motive, or made in bad faith. United States v. Quach, 302 F.3d 1096, 1103 n. 3 (9th Cir.2002); United States v. Murphy, 65 F.3d 758, 762 (9th Cir.1995). However, such a departure is assuredly impossible to obtain without successful cooperation. 27 The nature of substantial assistance under the Sentencing Guidelines distinguishes the period of attempted cooperation from the presentence interview, which we have held is not a critical stage. Baumann v. United States, 692 F.2d 565, 578 (9th Cir.1982). In Baumann, we based our holding primarily on the wide discretion possessed by district judges in determining the appropriate sentence. Id. at 578. Because the district judge was entitled to consider all relevant facts, including those inadmissible at trial, and was not required to impose the maximum sentence or even the recommended sentence, that Baumann was denied the advice of his attorney in deciding whether to submit to a presentence interview was constitutionally insignificant. Id. 28 We later extended that holding to the Guidelines era of mandatory sentencing. United States v. Benlian, 63 F.3d 824, 827 (9th Cir.1995). In doing so, we adopted the holdings of the other circuits to consider the question and implicitly endorsed their reasoning. See id. at 827-28 (citing United States v. Washington, 11 F.3d 1510, 1517 (10th Cir.1993); United States v. Bounds, 985 F.2d 188, 194 (5th Cir.1993); United States v. Tisdale, 952 F.2d 934, 940 (6th Cir.1992); United States v. Johnson, 935 F.2d 47, 50 (4th Cir.1991); United States v. Jackson, 886 F.2d 838, 844-45 (7th Cir.1989)). Rather than the discretionary nature of sentencing, these circuits focused primarily on the non-adversarial nature of a presentence interview, which is commonly conducted by a probation officer. In United States v. Gordon, 4 F.3d 1567 (10th Cir.1993), the Tenth Circuit noted that the right to counsel attaches only at `critical stages of the prosecution. ' Id. at 1571 (quoting Kirby, 406 U.S. at 690, 92 S.Ct. 1877) (emphasis in original). Because the probation officer is not an agent of the prosecution[,] ... has no adversarial role in the sentencing proceedings[,] ... [and] acts as a neutral information gatherer for the judge, the right to counsel does not attach. Id. at 1571-72; see also Tisdale, 952 F.2d at 939-40 (holding that because the probation officer does not act on behalf of the prosecution, a presentence interview is not a critical stage); Jackson, 886 F.2d at 844(A federal probation officer is an extension of the court and not an agent of the government.); Brown v. Butler, 811 F.2d 938, 941 (5th Cir.1987) (holding that there is no right to counsel at a presentence interview because the probation officer is an arm of the court charged with assisting the court in arriving at a fair sentence). 29 By contrast, a defendant's attempts to cooperate are conducted by and at the near-complete discretion of the prosecution itself. While the process is not strictly adversarial in nature, the government is not transformed into a neutral and impartial arm of the court simply because it is seeking information from the defendant. While seeking his assistance, the government continues to simultaneously seek the imposition of a sentence for his crime, in this case one of over 20 years imprisonment. In this way, a defendant's presentence cooperation is somewhat similar to police interrogation. Any speculative benefits he may receive from providing information do not change the essentially adversarial nature of the encounter. 30 In addition to the discretionary nature of pre-Guidelines sentencing, our decision in Baumann pointed to the routine nature of the encounter in denying Sixth Amendment protection to presentence interviews. Baumann, 692 F.2d at 578. We held that a routine presentence interview in a non-capital case does not involve an issue which is nearly as critical as the psychiatric interview to determine future dangerousness in a capital case, held to be a critical stage in Estelle v. Smith, 451 U.S. 454, 471, 101 S.Ct. 1866, 68 L.Ed.2d 359 (1981). By contrast, as we have discussed, attempts to cooperate are critical to sentencing under the Guidelines, and, far from being routine, are marked by significant uncertainty and the accompanying possibilities for prejudice to the defendant's interests. Because the period of cooperation is an adversarial confrontation in which potential substantial prejudice to the defendant's rights inheres and in which counsel may help avoid that prejudice, it is a critical stage of a criminal proceeding. See Beaty, 303 F.3d at 991-92 (internal quotation marks omitted).