Opinion ID: 903291
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Judicial Participation in Plea Negotiations

Text: Rule 11 allows a district court to accept or reject a plea agreement. Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(c)(4) - (5). Further, “a court must be free, in certain respects, to take an ‘active role’ once the agreement is disclosed.” United States v. Miles, 10 F.3d 1135, 1140 (5th Cir. 1993) (citation omitted). In fact, the rule mandates this scrutiny. See id. (citations omitted). Rule 11 also requires that the district court “address the defendant personally in open court and determine that the plea is voluntary and did not result from force, threats, or promises (other than promises in a plea agreement),” and “determine that there is a factual basis for the plea.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(b)(2), (b)(3). However, Rule 11 prohibits the sentencing court from participating in plea negotiations: “An attorney for the government and the defendant’s attorney, or the defendant when proceeding pro se, may discuss and reach a plea agreement. The court must not participate in these discussions.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(c) (emphasis added). We have characterized Rule 11’s prohibition of judicial involvement as a “bright line rule,” United States v. Rodriguez, 197 F.3d 156, 158 (5th Cir. 1999), and “an absolute prohibition on all forms of judicial participation in or interference with the plea negotiation process,” United States v. Adams, 634 F.2d 830, 835 (5th Cir. Unit A Jan. 1981).6 Thus, while the rule “requires 6 Westlaw and Lexis have designated United States v. Adams as “superseded” by statute or regulation based on the reasoning of non-Fifth Circuit cases that Adams was decided prior to the enactment of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. However, we have relied on Adams in full, including its remedy, as recently as 2010. See United States v. Self, 596 F.3d 245, 250 (5th Cir. 2010) (relying on Adams to vacate the defendant’s conviction and sentence and to reassign to a different judge on remand following the district court’s participation in 14 Case: 11-50482 Document: 00512279158 Page: 15 Date Filed: 06/18/2013 No. 11-50482 cons. w/ 11-50484 that a district court explore a plea agreement once disclosed in open court[,] . . . it does not license discussion of a hypothetical agreement that it may prefer.” Miles, 10 F.3d at 1140 (citation omitted). We have recognized this bright line rule for several reasons. First, “it serves to diminish the possibility of judicial coercion of a guilty plea, regardless of whether the coercion would cause an involuntary, unconstitutional plea.” Id. at 1139 (citations omitted). Indeed, “pressure is inherent in any involvement by a judge in the plea negotiation process.” Rodriguez, 197 F.3d at 159. Second, “such involvement ‘is likely to impair the trial court’s impartiality. The judge who suggests or encourages a particular plea bargain may feel a personal stake in the agreement . . . and may therefore resent the defendant who rejects his advice.’” Miles, 10 F.3d at 1139 (omission in original) (citations omitted). Third, a judge’s “participation in plea discussions creates a misleading impression of the judge’s role in the proceedings. As a result of his participation, the judge is no longer a judicial officer or a neutral arbiter.” Id. (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Rather, the judge “becomes or seems to become an advocate for the resolution he has suggested to the defendant.” Id. (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).
Pena alleges that the district court violated Rule 11 when it participated in plea negotiations by stating that Pena should resolve the “SDVO matter” before the court would accept his guilty plea for the instant offenses. Pena argues that the court improperly proposed a “hypothetical agreement,” as it “attempted to resolve a pending civil matter and possible criminal allegations plea negotiations). Thus, while these sources categorize Adams as no longer good law in part, this designation is incorrect. 15 Case: 11-50482 Document: 00512279158 Page: 16 Date Filed: 06/18/2013 No. 11-50482 cons. w/ 11-50484 against Pena by conditioning acceptance of Pena’s plea on resolution of those matters.” The government maintains that the district court’s comments “did not rise to the level of participation,” as they “are best characterized as an off-the-cuff attempt to shape the administrative conditions under which it would accept the plea itself, and not an injection into the discussion of the terms of the agreement.”
Given the sanctity of Rule 11’s absolute prohibition on any form of judicial involvement in plea negotiations, we conclude that, albeit unintentionally, the district court here stepped over the line and violated Rule 11 when it suggested that Pena must resolve the SDVO matter before the court would accept Pena’s plea in the instant offenses. See Crowell, 60 F.3d at 203 (citing Miles, 10 F.3d at 1139-40) (“When a court goes beyond providing reasons for rejecting the agreement presented and comments on the hypothetical agreements it would or would not accept, it crosses over the line established by Rule 11 and becomes involved in the negotiations.”)). As noted, Pena and the government present different accounts of exactly what the district court said during the off-the-record chambers conference, in addition to the court’s own assertion of what it said. Pena asserts that the district court said that it would not accept a plea unless Pena first resolved the SDVO matter by returning monies that the district court believed Pena had misappropriated. The government asserts that the district court said it would give Pena full credit for acceptance of responsibility if he resolved the SDVO matter concurrently with his plea in the instant proceedings. The government also maintains that the specific SDVO matter that the court referred to was the interpleader action, which was also pending before the district court. The 16 Case: 11-50482 Document: 00512279158 Page: 17 Date Filed: 06/18/2013 No. 11-50482 cons. w/ 11-50484 district court likewise suggested at both the hearing and in its order in May 2011 that it told Pena that he should resolve the civil interpleader action prior to pleading guilty to the instant offenses. Regardless, we agree with Pena that any version constitutes participation in plea negotiations in violation of Rule 11, for several reasons. First, the district court’s statements connote the possibility that the court had already made a determination as to Pena’s guilt in the instant offenses and preferred a guilty plea. See Rodriguez, 197 F.3d at 160 (“The clear implication of the judge’s statements at the pretrial hearing was that the judge desired a plea.”); Miles, 10 F.3d at 1141 (“By trying to facilitate a plea bargain, the judge indicated that he desired an agreement; this is pressure enough.” (quoting United States v. Barrett, 982 F.2d 193, 196 (6th Cir. 1992))). In particular, both the government’s and the district court’s versions of the court’s statements would constitute the court’s own plea bargain. See Adams, 634 F.2d at 836 (concluding that the district court participated in plea negotiations when “the judge offered a plea bargain to [the defendant] on her own initiative”). The district court’s statements also implied that Pena was liable for wrongdoing, i.e., misappropriating funds, in an unrelated matter. Second, the fact that the court made the statements while plea negotiations between Pena and the government were ongoing is crucial: We have noted the distinction between a sentencing court’s comments before the parties have disclosed the terms to the court and the court’s statements after this time. See Crowell, 60 F.3d at 204. For instance, in Crowell, the district court’s comments reflected its “feeling that a penalty significantly more severe than that allowed under the first plea agreement would be necessary for an agreement to be acceptable,” which the court made known to the parties before the second agreement was in final form. Id. at 204. We stated, “the fact that 17 Case: 11-50482 Document: 00512279158 Page: 18 Date Filed: 06/18/2013 No. 11-50482 cons. w/ 11-50484 this comment was injected into the discussions while the parties were still preparing the second agreement is critical. It is precisely this type of participation that is prohibited by Rule 11.” Id. The instant case is similar to United States v. Daigle, in which we concluded that the district court erred by participating in plea negotiations when it engaged in an off-the-record discussion with the parties in chambers regarding the defendant’s guilty plea and sentence. 63 F.3d 346, 347 (5th Cir. 1995). During the chambers conference in Daigle, the district court informed the defendant that, if “he fully cooperated, that 90% of the time [the court] will follow the [sentencing] recommendation of the U.S. Attorney.” Id. at 347, 349. The defendant understood this statement to mean a nine-year “cap” of prison time based on the court’s statements during the subsequent guilty plea hearing. Id. at 348. At that hearing, the court stated: “All right, so if nine years is what y’all agreed upon and that’s the recommendation made to me, and there is substantial cooperation, that’s the cap of nine years, okay?” Id. at 348-49. We concluded that the district court participated in the plea negotiations based on the court’s statement that it follows the government’s sentencing recommendation “90% of the time” if the defendant cooperates. Id. at 349. We noted that the district court’s statement during the hearing “strongly support[ed] [the defendant’s] contention that he understood the court to be indicating a ‘cap’ of nine years if the government so recommended.” See id. at 348-49. Here, the government’s principal argument against the conclusion that the district court’s statements constituted involvement is that the comments “did not rise to the level of participation.” Rather, insists the government, the statements “are best characterized as an off-the-cuff attempt to shape the administrative conditions under which it would accept the plea itself, and not an injection into the discussion of the terms of the agreement.” Commendably, 18 Case: 11-50482 Document: 00512279158 Page: 19 Date Filed: 06/18/2013 No. 11-50482 cons. w/ 11-50484 however, the government also concedes that Pena’s interpretation of the district court’s statements is reasonable–that they reflected the court’s insertion of a “condition” into the terms of his plea. See, e.g., United States v. Ekwerekwu, No. 93-9126, 1995 WL 136519, at  (5th Cir. Mar. 17, 1995) (vacating and remanding the defendant’s conviction and sentence after concluding that the district court participated in plea negotiations and noting that we “must appropriately consider Ekwerekwu’s reasonable perception” of the district court’s potential lack of objectivity). It is also noteworthy that the government’s argument on this issue focuses more on the harmlessness of the court’s statements than on whether the statements constituted error under Rule 11 in the first instance. We conclude that the district court participated in Pena’s plea negotiations in violation of Rule 11. Although the record discloses no basis to conclude that the court’s error was intentional, we nevertheless must heed Rule 11’s brightline prohibition of all judicial participation in plea negotiations and recognize the district court’s error. See Barrett, 982 F.2d at 196 (“Regardless of the judge’s objectivity, it is the defendant’s perception of the judge that will determine whether the defendant will feel coerced to enter a plea.”) (citation omitted). This error was plain in light of our well-settled circuit law prohibiting a court’s participation in plea negotiations.