Opinion ID: 165817
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Original Sentence and Defendant's Appellate Rights Waiver

Text: 33 We have fully examined the proceedings, as required by Anders, to determine whether there are any legal points arguable on their merits as to the propriety of the June 24 sentence. See 386 U.S. at 744, 87 S.Ct. 1396. Our Anders review of the record in this case indicates that Defendant has three potentially meritorious issues for appeal based on the June 24 sentence: (1) whether a threat of death for purposes of the adjustment in U.S.S.G. § 2B3.1(b)(2)(F) may be made by pointing a firearm; (2) whether the threat of death adjustment may be applied in connection with the imposition of a sentence under § 924(c); and (3) whether Defendant's sentence violated Booker. However, because Defendant waived all appellate rights except those relating to issues raised by the Defendant and denied by the District Court regarding the application of the Sentencing Guidelines, none of the potential issues for appeal can provide a basis to challenge the June 24 sentence if Defendant's waiver of his appellate rights is enforceable. We conclude that the waiver is enforceable, and therefore remand the case to the district court with instructions to reinstate the original sentence. 34 [W]e generally enforce plea agreements and their concomitant waivers of appellate rights. United States v. Hahn, 359 F.3d 1315, 1318 (10th Cir.2004) (en banc). In considering how to resolve appeals brought by defendants who have waived their appellate rights in a plea agreement, we first determine if an appeal falls within the scope of the appellate waiver. Id. at 1325. Second, we ascertain whether the defendant's waiver of his or her appellate rights was knowing and voluntary. Id. Finally, we evaluate whether enforcement of the appellate waiver would result in a miscarriage of justice because the district court relied on an impermissible factor, ineffective assistance of counsel in negotiating the waiver renders the waiver invalid, the sentence exceeds the statutory maximum, or the waiver is otherwise unlawful. Id. at 1327.
35 All of Defendant's potentially meritorious arguments challenging his June 24 sentence fall within the scope of his waiver of appellate rights. Whether a threat of death for purposes of the U.S.S.G. § 2B3.1(b)(2)(F) adjustment may be made merely by pointing a firearm, and whether the threat of death adjustment may be applied in connection with the imposition of a sentence under § 924(c), are issues relating to the application of the Sentencing Guidelines. However, Defendant did not raise these issues during the June 24 sentencing hearing. Therefore, the issues are within the scope of Defendant's appellate rights waiver. 11 36 Whether Defendant's sentence violated Booker does not relate to issues regarding the application of the Sentencing Guidelines within the meaning of Defendant's appellate rights waiver. The phrase the application of the Sentencing Guidelines in the plea agreement, does not refer to the arguments that (1) it was constitutionally impermissible for the district court to engage in factfinding by a preponderance of the evidence to enhance Defendant's sentence beyond the Guidelines range that would otherwise apply based on the facts that Defendant admitted during the plea hearing; or (2) the district court's application of the Sentencing Guidelines in a mandatory fashion was error. After all, Defendant agreed that the court was required to consider the applicable sentencing guidelines and could depart from those guidelines under some circumstances. In so agreeing, Defendant indicated an acceptance of the mandatory Guidelines regime that existed before Booker, rather than a regime in which the Guidelines are advisory and variances from the Guidelines may be justified based on statutory considerations, not just the Guidelines' departure provisions. 37 Our conclusion is buttressed by another court of appeals' observation that Booker arguments may fall within the scope of a defendant's waiver of his or her appellate rights. See United States v. Grinard-Henry, 399 F.3d 1294, 1296 (11th Cir.2005) (`[T]he right to appeal a sentence based on Apprendi/ Booker grounds can be waived in a plea agreement. Broad waiver language covers those grounds of appeal.') (quoting United States v. Rubbo, 396 F.3d 1330, 1335 (11th Cir.2005)), petition for cert. filed, (Apr 05, 2005) (No. 04-9566). Therefore, we hold that all of Defendant's potential arguments on appeal fall within the scope of his appellate rights waiver.
38 Defendant's waiver of his appellate rights was knowing and voluntary. When determining whether a waiver of appellate rights is knowing and voluntary, we especially look to .... whether the language of the plea agreement states that the defendant entered the agreement knowingly and voluntarily .... [and] for an adequate [Rule] 11 colloquy. Hahn, 359 F.3d at 1325 (citation omitted). 39 In this case, both conditions are met. Defendant signed, dated, and initialed the appellate rights waiver in his plea agreement. Defendant signed a similar waiver in his Petition to Enter Pleas of Guilty in open court in the presence of his attorney. In that petition, Defendant stated that he offered his pleas freely and voluntarily, with full understanding of all the matters set forth ... in th[e] petition. Finally, the terms of the plea agreement were reiterated during Defendant's plea hearing. At that hearing, the district court specifically asked Defendant whether he understood the appellate rights waiver, and Defendant stated that he did. 40 To the extent that Defendant might argue that the Supreme Court's decisions in Blakely and Booker, both of which were issued subsequent to his original sentencing, somehow changed the way that courts conduct and review sentencings to such an extent that Defendant's waiver of his appellate rights was not knowing and voluntary, that argument is without merit. 12 The Supreme Court has made it clear that a defendant's decision to give up some of his rights in connection with making a plea — including the right to appeal from the judgment entered following that plea — remains voluntary and intelligent or knowing despite subsequent developments in the law. After all, absent misrepresentation or other impermissible conduct by state agents, ... a voluntary plea of guilty intelligently made in the light of the then applicable law does not become vulnerable because later judicial decisions indicate that the plea rested on a faulty premise. Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742, 757, 90 S.Ct. 1463, 25 L.Ed.2d 747 (1970). A defendant is not entitled to withdraw his plea merely because he discovers long after the plea has been accepted that his calculus misapprehended ... the likely penalties attached to alternative courses of action. Id.; see also United States v. Ruiz, 536 U.S. 622, 630, 122 S.Ct. 2450, 153 L.Ed.2d 586 (2002) ([T]his Court has found that the Constitution, in respect to a defendant's awareness of relevant circumstances, does not require complete knowledge of the relevant circumstances, but permits a court to accept a guilty plea, with its accompanying waiver of various constitutional rights, despite various forms of misapprehension under which a defendant might labor.) (footnote omitted); id. (citing as one possible misapprehension that defendant failed to anticipate a change in the law regarding relevant punishments) (quotations omitted); Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614, 619, 118 S.Ct. 1604, 140 L.Ed.2d 828 (1998) (We further held [in Brady ] that [the defendant's] plea was intelligent because, although later judicial decisions indicated that at the time of his plea he did not correctly assess every relevant factor entering into his decision, he was advised by competent counsel, was in control of his mental faculties, and was made aware of the nature of the charge against him.) (citations and quotations omitted). 41 In accordance with these principles, the Eleventh and Sixth Circuits have determined that a defendant's pre- Booker waiver of the right to appeal was knowing and voluntary. See Grinard-Henry, 399 F.3d at 1297 ([Defendant] knowingly and voluntarily waived his right to appeal his sentence on the grounds he asserts on appeal....); United States v. McGilvery, 403 F.3d 361, 362-63 (6th Cir.2005). 42 Similarly, other courts of appeals have concluded that defendants' pre- Booker guilty pleas were voluntary and intelligent. See United States v. Bradley, 400 F.3d 459, 463 (6th Cir.2005) (Plea agreements ... may waive constitutional or statutory rights then in existence as well as those that courts may recognize in the future.... [W]here developments in the law later expand a right that a defendant has waived in a plea agreement, the change in law does not suddenly make the plea involuntary or unknowing or otherwise undo its binding nature. A valid plea agreement, after all, requires knowledge of existing rights, not clairvoyance.); United States v. Sahlin, 399 F.3d 27, 30 (1st Cir.2005) (We reject [the defendant]'s claim that he should be permitted to withdraw his guilty plea because it was not voluntary, being based on an understanding of a sentencing scheme rendered erroneous by Booker. In ordinary circumstances Booker provides no basis to vacate the entry of a pre- Booker guilty plea on grounds of lack of voluntariness.) (footnote omitted). 43 Finally, we have noted that a defendant's waiver of his appellate rights is not otherwise unlawful based on the subsequent issuance of Booker. See United States v. Porter, No. 04-4009, 2005 WL 1023395, at -, 405 F.3d 1136, 1145 (10th Cir. May 3, 2005) ([W]e find the change Booker rendered in the sentencing landscape does not compel us to hold [the defendant]'s plea agreement unlawful.... To allow defendants or the government to routinely invalidate plea agreements based on subsequent changes in the law would decrease the prospects of reaching an agreement in the first place, an undesirable outcome given the importance of plea bargaining to the criminal justice system.). Therefore, it seems clear that in this case, Defendant's waiver of his appellate rights was knowing and voluntary.
44 Enforcing Defendant's waiver of his appellate rights will not result in a miscarriage of justice. Hahn details the only four situations in which enforcement of an appellate waiver may result in a miscarriage of justice. 359 F.3d at 1327. Two are clearly not at issue in this appeal: The district court did not rely on an impermissible factor, cf. id., and we cannot evaluate in this direct appeal whether ineffective assistance of counsel in negotiating the waiver renders the waiver invalid. Cf. id.; see United States v. Galloway, 56 F.3d 1239, 1240 (10th Cir.1995) (en banc). Only the other two situations detailed in Hahn, which arise when the sentence exceeds the statutory maximum or the waiver of appellate rights is otherwise unlawful, see 359 F.3d at 1327, are even arguably relevant. 45
46 To determine whether a sentence exceeds the statutory maximum within the meaning of Hahn, we first must determine the statutory maximum to which Hahn refers. We look first to the plain meaning of the phrase statutory maximum. Ordinarily and naturally, the phrase statutory maximum refers to the longest sentence that the statute punishing a crime permits a court to impose. Thus, it seems likely that meaning is intended in Hahn. 47 This conclusion is buttressed by the interpretation of statutory maximum in case law contemporaneous with Hahn. Four years prior to our decision in Hahn, the Supreme Court held in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000), that [o]ther than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. at 490, 120 S.Ct. 2348. After Apprendi and before Blakely, we applied Apprendi only where a sentencing court had imposed a sentence above the statutory maximum permitted by the statute of conviction, regardless of what fact finding the court, rather than the jury, conducted [under the Guidelines] to impose a sentence within that statutory maximum. United States v. Price, 400 F.3d 844, 847 (10th Cir.2005) (collecting cases). Thus, in the time between Apprendi and Hahn, which was decided a few months before Blakely, courts nearly unanimously interpreted the phrase statutory maximum according to its plain meaning. 48 That Blakely and Booker take a different approach in defining statutory maximum does not undercut the conclusion that the plain meaning of the phrase was intended in Hahn. In Blakely, the Court gave a new term of art meaning to the phrase statutory maximum when it stated that the statutory maximum for Apprendi purposes is the maximum sentence a judge may impose solely on the basis of the facts reflected by the jury verdict or admitted by the defendant. Blakely, 124 S.Ct. at 2537 (quotation and emphasis omitted); see Price, 400 F.3d at 847. In Booker, the Court reiterated Blakely's clarification in applying Blakely to the federal sentencing guidelines. See 125 S.Ct. at 749. 49 However, the Blakely/Booker definition of statutory maximum has always been qualified with the phrase for Apprendi purposes, and has only been applied in sentencing guidelines cases. In holding that the term of art meaning for statutory maximum applies in sentencing guidelines cases, the Supreme Court has not mandated that every time the phrase statutory maximum is invoked, the Blakely/Booker definition should apply. Indeed, the use of statutory maximum in Blakely and Booker is distinguishable from the phrase's use in Hahn — a case with no connection to the sentencing guidelines concerns that motivated Blakely and Booker. 50 Hahn instead addressed the enforceability of appellate rights waivers. We have never based the validity of an appellate rights waiver on the application of sentencing guidelines. Rather, we have long considered a waiver's enforceability in light of whether the sentence the district court imposed was within the statutory maximum provided for the offense of conviction. The cases cited by Hahn for the prospect that appellate rights waivers are subject to exception for sentences that exceed the statutory maximum make this clear, in that they are themselves based on holdings that clearly embrace the plain meaning of statutory maximum. 13 51 The conclusion that the plain meaning of statutory maximum should control in interpreting Hahn is bolstered by the Eleventh Circuit's decision in an analogous situation. See Rubbo, 396 F.3d at 1330. In Rubbo, the defendant, prior to Blakely and Booker, entered into a plea agreement in which she waived her rights to appeal her sentence unless the sentence exceeds the maximum permitted by statute. 396 F.3d at 1333 (quotation omitted). The defendant argued that her appeal waiver did not preclude her from challenging the constitutionality of her sentence under Booker, because her sentence was in excess of the statutory maximum as Blakely and Booker apply that term. See Rubbo, 396 F.3d at 1331-32. 52 The Eleventh Circuit rejected the defendant's premise that [the] `statutory maximum' for Booker purposes is the same thing as `the maximum permitted by statute' for purposes of [the defendant]'s appeal waiver, noting: 53 The two are not the same. The context in which the terms are used and the meaning they convey are different.... 54 In the Apprendi/Booker line of decisions, the Supreme Court used the term statutory maximum to describe the parameters of the rule announced in those decisions, a rule that had nothing to do with the scope of appeal waivers. The term was defined in a specialized, which is to say a non-natural, sense. It was defined that way not only for semantic convenience but also in order to justify and explain the holdings the Court entered in those decisions. Everyone knows that a judge must not impose a sentence in excess of the maximum that is statutorily specified for the crime. By labeling a sentence that the judge may not impose under the Apprendi/Booker doctrine as one in excess of the statutory maximum, the Court may have sought to call into play that well-known principle of law. 55 Whether it did, however, is not the point for present purposes. The point here is that the definition of statutory maximum the Supreme Court used to describe and explain its holdings in those cases says nothing about what [the defendant] and the government meant when they used the term the maximum permitted by statute in the appeal waiver. 56 Rubbo, 396 F.3d at 1334 (citations, footnote omitted). Looking to the parties' intent, the Eleventh Circuit held that the parties instead meant the usual and ordinary meaning of the phrase exceeds the maximum permitted by statute — the upper limit of punishment that Congress has legislatively specified for the violation of a statute. Id. at 1334-35 (quotations omitted). 57 The Eleventh Circuit is not the only court of appeals to interpret the phrase statutory maximum in this way. See United States v. West, 392 F.3d 450, 460 (D.C.Cir.2004) (stating that the most reasonable inference is that the phrase statutory maximum in the exception to a defendant's appellate rights waiver refers to the maximum fines and periods of imprisonment for violations of the statutes of conviction). Relatedly, we have held that an exception to a defendant's waiver of his appellate rights for a sentence `above the maximum statutory penalty provided in the statute of conviction' does not refer to the maximum penalty that the court could have imposed under the Guidelines based on the facts that the defendant admitted, but rather to the maximum provided in the statute of conviction. Porter, 405 F.3d, at 1142-1143, 2005 WL 1023395, at . 58 Moreover, using the Blakely/Booker definition of statutory maximum in interpreting Hahn would be improper because doing so would render it virtually impossible for a defendant to waive his or her Sixth Amendment Booker rights. After all, if we were to use the Blakely/ Booker definition of statutory maximum in interpreting Hahn, a defendant could appeal his or her sentence, alleging a constitutional Booker error (or Blakely challenge), and raise that issue regardless of a general waiver of appellate rights in the plea agreement. Yet that result would stand in tension with established Sixth Amendment case law. The Sixth Amendment is the basis for the Blakely/Booker line of authority. See Blakely, 124 S.Ct. at 2534; Booker, 125 S.Ct. at 746; see also Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 476, 488, 120 S.Ct. 2348 (applying Fifth and Sixth Amendments to a state through the Fourteenth Amendment). And it is axiomatic that a defendant may waive his Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury. Booker, 125 S.Ct. at 774 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (citing Patton v. United States, 281 U.S. 276, 312-13, 50 S.Ct. 253, 74 L.Ed. 854 (1930), abrogated on other grounds by Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78, 90 S.Ct. 1893, 26 L.Ed.2d 446 (1970)); see also Blakely, 124 S.Ct. at 2541 (noting that nothing prevents a defendant from waiving his Apprendi rights). 59 Accordingly, we hold that statutory maximum in Hahn refers to the upper limit of punishment that Congress has legislatively specified for the violation of a given statute. In this case, Defendant's sentence did not fall beyond that limit, and Defendant's waiver of his appellate rights is not unenforceable based on the length of Defendant's sentence relative to that statutory maximum. 60
61 For a waiver to be otherwise unlawful, the error must seriously affect the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings, as that test was employed in United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 732, 113 S.Ct. 1770, 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (1993). Hahn, 359 F.3d at 1327 (quotations and alteration omitted). It may be argued that enforcing Defendant's waiver of his appellate rights will cause a miscarriage of justice because enforcing that waiver will result in Defendant's being imprisoned for an additional ten months as a result of bringing this appeal. According to this argument, by reversing the July 9 sentence, considering Defendant's potential arguments to the original sentence waived, and ordering the district court to reimpose the original sentence, we are discouraging defendants from exercising their appellate rights. 62 This argument misses the mark. It is not the enforcement of Defendant's appellate rights waiver that results in our invalidation of his July 9 sentence. Rather, it is the fact that the district court lacked jurisdiction to impose that sentence. Even if we were to consider the merits of Defendant's potential arguments addressing the June 24 sentence, we might still conclude that the district court did not err in imposing that sentence. 14 Therefore, the enforcement of Defendant's waiver of his appellate rights is not determinative of Defendant's receiving a higher sentence, and does not therefore result in a miscarriage of justice. 63 Moreover, we note that our decision to enforce Defendant's waiver of his appellate rights leaves Defendant in the same position in which he would have been if the district court had not improperly resentenced him. Had the district court not improperly resentenced Defendant, Defendant would have been facing a 135-month sentence and would have been able to appeal only issues raised by the Defendant and denied by the District Court regarding the application of the Sentencing Guidelines. Based on our decision, Defendant will face the same 135-month sentence and will be unable to obtain relief for issues included within his appellate rights waiver. Since our decision merely restores the status quo prior to the district court's improper action, our decision to enforce the appellate rights waiver does not result in a miscarriage of justice. Indeed, not enforcing the appellate rights waiver, merely because doing so would result in Defendant receiving a higher sentence than he received as a result of the district court's decision to resentence him on July 9, would be a real miscarriage of justice. After all, that would mean that this Defendant, out of all the defendants who knowingly and voluntarily waived their appellate rights, would obtain relief from that waiver — and this only because of the district court's improper decision to resentence Defendant. Therefore, we hold that enforcing Defendant's waiver of his appellate rights will not result in a miscarriage of justice.