Opinion ID: 165799
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Mandatory application of Guidelines

Text: 38 Porter's last contention is that his waiver is otherwise unlawful and should not be enforced because the district court treated the Guidelines as mandatory. This legal error violates Booker's remedial holding, which severed the mandatory aspects of the Guidelines and made them advisory. See 125 S.Ct. at 756-57. The relevant question, however, is not whether Porter's sentence is unlawful in light of Booker's remedial holding, but whether subsequent changes in the law render his appeal waiver itself unenforceable. 39 Supreme Court precedent is quite explicit that as part of a plea agreement, criminal defendants may waive both rights in existence and those that result from unanticipated later judicial determinations. See Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742, 757, 90 S.Ct. 1463, 25 L.Ed.2d 747 (1970). Brady pled guilty to a life sentence in order to avoid a possible death sentence. See id. at 746, 90 S.Ct. 1463. Thereafter, the Supreme Court invalidated the death penalty provision in the statute on which Brady's conviction was based. See United States v. Jackson, 390 U.S. 570, 88 S.Ct. 1209, 20 L.Ed.2d 138 (1968). Brady argued his guilty plea was involuntary because he based it on the belief he was eligible to receive the death penalty under the statute of conviction. See Brady, 397 U.S. at 746, 90 S.Ct. 1463. The Supreme Court rejected this argument: [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. Id. at 757, 90 S.Ct. 1463. 40 The Supreme Court reiterated the approach followed in Brady in United States v. Ruiz, stating: [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 [including where a] defendant failed to anticipate a change in the law regarding relevant punishments. 41 536 U.S. 622, 630, 122 S.Ct. 2450, 153 L.Ed.2d 586 (2002) (citations and quotation marks omitted). 42 We have previously rejected a challenge to the validity of a plea agreement based on a subsequent judicial determination regarding the scope of the Guidelines. See United States v. Morrison, 938 F.2d 168, 171 n. 4 (10th Cir.1991). Moreover, some of our fellow circuits have already rejected claims that the change in sentencing law resulting from Booker invalidated otherwise lawful plea agreements. See United States v. Sahlin, 399 F.3d 27, 31 (1st Cir.2005) (dismissing as frivolous a claim that Booker rendered otherwise valid guilty plea involuntary and stating the possibility of a favorable change in the law occurring after a plea is one of the normal risks that accompany a guilty plea); United States v. Bradley, 400 F.3d 459, 463-66 (6th Cir.2005) (applying Brady to reject a claim seeking to invalidate plea agreement in light of Booker ). Similarly, we find the change Booker rendered in the sentencing landscape does not compel us to hold Porter's plea agreement unlawful. 43 This outcome is obvious. To hold otherwise would suggest that most appeal waivers in cases pending on direct appeal at the time the Supreme Court decided Booker are unlawful. The essence of plea agreements, however, is that they represent a bargained-for understanding between the government and criminal defendants in which each side foregoes certain rights and assumes certain risks in exchange for a degree of certainty as to the outcome of criminal matters. One such risk is a favorable change in the law. 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. 3 See Hahn, 359 F.3d at 1318. 44 As a closing point, in our view enforcement of Porter's plea agreement does not seriously affect the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of these judicial proceedings. The plea agreement made clear that Porter faced a 40-year maximum sentence for the charged crimes, that he gave up multiple constitutional and appellate rights in exchange for concessions from the government and, though not explicit in the agreement, that he would be sentenced in accordance with the Guidelines then in effect. The sentence imposed by the district court is in conformance with the terms of the agreement and the understanding expressed by Porter at the plea hearing. Porter faced up to 137 months under the applicable Guidelines and received a sentence of 110 months. Accordingly, we find Porter's argument without merit.