Opinion ID: 1463880
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Voluntarily Entered Challenge

Text: We begin with Moussaoui's claim that his plea was involuntary as a matter of law because the district court issued several pre-plea rulings that violated his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights to obtain counsel of his choice; to have personal, pretrial access to classified, exculpatory evidence; to communicate with his counsel about this evidence; to effectively proceed pro se ; to be present during critical stages of the proceedings; and to have compulsory process to present the ECWs at trial. These claims, all of which preceded his guilty plea, are not cognizable on appeal. When a defendant pleads guilty, he waives all nonjurisdictional defects in the proceedings conducted prior to entry of the plea. United States v. Bundy, 392 F.3d 641, 644 (4th Cir.2004). The guilty plea represents a break in the chain of events which has preceded it in the criminal process. Tollett v. Henderson, 411 U.S. 258, 267, 93 S.Ct. 1602, 36 L.Ed.2d 235 (1973). Thus, the defendant who has pled guilty has no non-jurisdictional ground upon which to attack that judgment except the inadequacy of the plea, Bundy, 392 F.3d at 644-45, or the government's power to bring any indictment at all, Broce, 488 U.S. at 575, 109 S.Ct. 757; see United States v. Bluso, 519 F.2d 473, 474 (4th Cir.1975) (A guilty plea is normally understood as a lid on the box, whatever is in it, not a platform from which to explore further possibilities.); see also Blackledge v. Perry, 417 U.S. 21, 29-30, 94 S.Ct. 2098, 40 L.Ed.2d 628 (1974) ([W]hen a criminal defendant enters a guilty plea, he may not thereafter raise independent claims relating to the deprivation of constitutional rights that occurred prior to the entry of the guilty plea. Rather, a person complaining of such antecedent constitutional violations is limited . . . to attacks on the voluntary and intelligent nature of the guilty plea, through proof that the advice received from counsel was not within the range of competence demanded of attorneys in criminal cases. (internal quotation marks and citations omitted)). Relying on United States v. Hernandez, 203 F.3d 614 (9th Cir.2000), Moussaoui maintains that his alleged constitutional violations rendered his guilty plea involuntary. In Hernandez, the Ninth Circuit held that a district court's error in denying the defendant's request to represent himself rendered the defendant's subsequent guilty plea involuntary. See id. at 626-27. In so doing, the court noted that the error at issue was structural, meaning that it undermine[d] the integrity of the trial mechanism itself [11] Id. at 626. Thus, the court reasoned that the refusal by the district court to allow the defendant to represent himself left the defendant only with a choice between pleading guilty and submitting to a trial the very structure of which would be unconstitutional. Id. at 626 (emphasis omitted). Moussaoui argues that his guilty plea is invalid for the same reason. With all due respect, we are not persuaded by the analysis in Hernandez. As noted above, a guilty plea is constitutionally valid if it represents a voluntary and intelligent choice among the alternative courses of action open to the defendant. Alford, 400 U.S. at 31, 91 S.Ct. 160. The Hernandez court's conclusion that the defendant's guilty plea was involuntary was based on a faulty premise, namely, that his only alternative was to submit to an unconstitutional trial. This premise fails to account for the fact that if the defendant proceeded to trial and was convicted, he could seek an appellate remedy for the constitutional violations he alleged. See Bundy, 392 F.3d at 645 ([A] defendant might rationally choose to proceed to trial for the sole purpose of preserving a pretrial issue for appellate review.). Had Moussaoui been convicted after a trial, he, too, could have sought to vindicate his claims on appeal. Thus, the rulings Moussaoui now challenges, even if erroneous, did not render his guilty plea involuntary. [12] In sum, Moussaoui, having pled guilty, has waived all nonjurisdictional errors leading up to his conviction except those affecting the adequacy of his plea. It is to those claims, affecting the adequacy of his plea, that we now turn.