Opinion ID: 672848
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Thompson's Demand for a New Trial or for Sentencing at Base Level 26.

Text: 17 Thompson claims that if he had been properly advised about the effect of the career-offender provisions, he would have initiated plea-bargaining negotiations with the government and might well have been able to do better than simply plead straight up to the indictment, i.e., to both counts as charged. According to Thompson, the district court should either have granted him a new trial (to restore his bargaining power for plea negotiations) or sentenced him as if the career-offender provisions did not apply to him (to reflect the situation that he had believed to exist when he decided to stand trial). 18 If there is a reasonable probability that a properly advised Thompson would have pleaded straight up to the indictment, we think there must also be a reasonable probability that he would first have initiated negotiations to determine whether he could strike a more favorable deal. After all, if willing to plead guilty merely to get a 2-point reduction in his offense level, Thompson would certainly have been willing to plead guilty to get a bigger reduction. And the government has advanced no persuasive reasons why Thompson would not have investigated that possibility before settling for a mere 2-point adjustment. 19 But it takes two to trade; the fact that Thompson might well have initiated plea negotiations does not mean that those negotiations would have been successful. Though the district court could have been clearer about its factual findings and the legal standard that it was applying, we understand its opinion to conclude that Thompson failed to show a reasonable probability that he could have struck a plea bargain under which his base offense level would have been less than 37. Despite Thompson's arguments, we find no error in this conclusion. 20 Citing a new policy of the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia in cases involving less than 50 grams of crack, Thompson argues that if he were to be re-tried now, the trial might well occur in local court rather than in federal court; this move would relieve him from the impact of the federal guidelines and substantially reduce his sentencing exposure. But evidence that Thompson might have received more favorable treatment as a result of changes over time is weak evidence about what he might have obtained in the relevant period. It is still further weakened by Thompson's concession that even under current policies his status as a career offender might have led to his trial in federal court. 21 Thompson next advances a statistic indicating that in one recent year, roughly 70 percent of all federal drug defendants pleaded guilty. This is all but irrelevant. It tells us nothing about the terms on which they were able to enter their guilty pleas, let alone about the specific plea-bargaining practices of the U.S. Attorney's office for the District of Columbia at the relevant time. And even if we could assume that most defendants who plead guilty are getting more for their trouble than a 2-point reduction for acceptance of responsibility, Thompson's statistic tells us nothing about the plea bargains that career offenders are able to strike. 22 Although Thompson describes a variety of hypothetical plea arrangements that might have been appropriate in his case, and would have greatly reduced his exposure, he offers nothing to indicate that the government would have accepted any such plea arrangement. He is thus reduced to an unsubstantiated assertion that the government surely would have agreed to some deal short of what the district court contemplated. Yet Thompson bears the burden of establishing the extent of his prejudice, and this assertion does not suffice. We obviously cannot require him to specify the exact deal that he would have been able to work out during the plea negotiations that never began. But he offers no information--not even the barest sort of anecdotal evidence--about how the U.S. Attorney's office for the District of Columbia approached plea negotiations with career offenders during the relevant period. Indeed, the only information on this point comes from the government, which represented at oral argument that the office's policy during that period would have precluded any plea arrangement that gave Thompson a base offense level of less than 37. We do not rely on this representation because it came up at oral argument rather than before the trial court (or even in the briefs), when Thompson would have had a better opportunity to respond. But the burden is Thompson's, not the government's, and we do not think that he has carried it. 23 We also reject Thompson's argument that he was constructively denied representation altogether at a critical stage of the proceedings, with the result that prejudice should be presumed. Cf. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 692, 104 S.Ct. at 2067. This exception is reserved for a very narrow spectrum of cases. Martin v. McCotter, 796 F.2d 813, 820 (5th Cir.1986) (quoting Chadwick v. Green, 740 F.2d 897, 901 (11th Cir.1984)); see also Hollenback v. United States, 987 F.2d 1272, 1275 (7th Cir.1993) (exception applies only to particularly egregious conduct that is the functional equivalent of actual absence of counsel). For instance, our sister circuits have applied the exception when defense counsel refused to participate in any aspect of the trial, Martin v. Rose, 744 F.2d 1245, 1250 (6th Cir.1984), or conceded during closing argument that the government had proved the only factual issues in dispute beyond a reasonable doubt, United States v. Swanson, 943 F.2d 1070 (9th Cir.1991). Cf. Javor v. United States, 724 F.2d 831, 833 (9th Cir.1984) (pre-Strickland case presuming prejudice where counsel slept through substantial portion of trial). Thompson's case is by no means so egregious. 24