Opinion ID: 624813
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Clear Breach

Text: The Supreme Court has recognized that the government's breach of the parties' plea agreement is undoubtedly a violation of the defendant's rights. Puckett, 129 S.Ct. at 1429. In this case, the U.S. Attorney breached the plea agreement in two respects. First, the AUSA stated that she had agreed not to use any of [Whitney's] information supplied . . . during his debriefing against him for sentencing purposes, but went on to tell the court that Whitney supplied information to [her] during his debriefing session that put him[] in a supervisory role. Not only was this statement in clear breach of the plea agreement, but the government admitted that it was violating the agreement in the course of the very same statement. [4] Second, the government breached its agreement by implicitly arguing for a sentence greater than the terms of the plea agreement specified that the prosecution would recommend: the low end of the applicable guideline range. Although a sentencing recommendation need not be made enthusiastically, United States v. Johnson, 187 F.3d at 1135, when the government obligates itself to make a recommendation at the low end of the guidelines range, it may not introduce information that serves no purpose but to influence the court to give a higher sentence. Id. This prohibition precludes referring to information that the court already has before it, including statements related to the seriousness of the defendant's prior record, Mondragon, 228 F.3d 978, statements indicating a preference for a harsher sentence, United States v. Franco-Lopez, 312 F.3d 984, 992 (9th Cir.2002) (quoting Johnson, 187 F.3d at 1135), or the introduction of evidence that is irrelevant to any matter that the government is permitted to argue. Johnson, 187 F.3d 1129. Such statements are recognized as introduced solely for the purpose of influencing the district court to sentence [the defendant] more harshly. Id. at 1135. In the instant case, the U.S. Attorney asserted that Whitney was a good thief, and pointed to past offenses already included in the record before the court to contend that Whitney had re-victimized his victims from a previous identity theft committed prior to the commission of this offense. This conduct is substantively indistinguishable from that in Mondragon, in which the prosecutor responded to the defense's characterization of the defendant's crimes as petty by pointing out the serious nature of the prior offenses and noting the frequency of the defendant's prior failures to appear and instances of resisting arrest, all of which were evident in the defendant's record. 228 F.3d at 979. Here, as in Mondragon, the [AUSA's] comments did not provide the district judge with any new information or correct factual inaccuracies, [and therefore] the comments could have been made for only one purpose: to influence the district court to impose a harsher sentence than that suggested by appellant's counsel. Id. at 980. In this case, the defendant was precluded from requesting a below-guidelines sentence by the parties' contract, and he did not do so. Thus, the AUSA's statements, refuting the defense counsel's characterization of Whitney's criminal history, could only have been intended as an argument for a sentence greater than the within-guideline sentence requested by the defense. Mondragon is distinguishable from this case but not in a material respect. While Mondragon involved a plea agreement that required the government to take no position with regard to the defendant's sentence and Whitney's plea agreement affirmatively required the prosecution to recommend a sentence at the low end of the guidelines, the court recognized the prosecutor's statement in Mondragon as violative of the parties' agreement because it was an argument intended to persuade the court to adopt a sentence higher than that advocated by the defendant's counsel, not merely because it represented a position. The principles in Mondragon therefore apply whenever the prosecutor's statements serve no purpose but to argue for a harsher sentence than that which he was obligated to recommend. The government's position is that the advisory nature of the guidelines renders it necessary for it to make an argument to justify even its low-end guideline sentence recommendation. It contends that in this case the court might have elected to depart downward from the guideline range, and the statements of the prosecutor were intended to ensure that such a departure would not occur. The government's argument is disingenuous. Here, the defendant did not request a below-guideline sentence, and, in fact, he could not do so under the terms of his plea agreement. Additionally the presentence report recommended a sentence that was more than double the low-end guidelines range, and the district court gave no indication that it would consider imposing a sentence lower than that which the government was obligated to recommend. The government's statements regarding Whitney's criminal history and his success as a thief could only have been intended to persuade the court to impose a sentence higher than the within-guideline sentence that the defendant was bound to request, and not to guard against an unsolicited downward departure. Although the prosecutor uttered the requisite words by recommending a sentence at the low-end of the guidelines, her additional statements constituted an argument for a higher sentence, breached the government's obligation to recommend a low-end Guideline sentence, and likely had an impact on the far-above-guideline sentence imposed. We reject the government's contention that it was compelled to provide an argument in order to support its low-end guidelines sentence recommendations. To the contrary, permitting it to argue implicitly for a harsher sentence when there is no indication of a possible below-guidelines sentence would render its obligation to recommend a low-end sentence illusory. See Franco-Lopez, 312 F.3d at 988-89 (recognizing that the government may breach its obligations under its plea agreement by complying with the explicit terms of the agreement in such a way that renders its promises illusory). In light of Mondragon, the government's breach was clear or obvious under the law, United States v. Gonzalez-Zotelo, 556 F.3d 736, 741 (9th Cir.2009) (internal quotation marks omitted). The prosecutor's reference to inculpatory statements made by Whitney during the course of his cooperation bore on the applicability of the two-level sentencing enhancement as well and similarly constituted an obvious breach. Both violations therefore satisfy the first two prongs of plain error reviewthat there must be an error and that it must be plain.