Opinion ID: 2760344
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Commonwealth’s Current Appeal

Text: The Commonwealth now argues that we must reverse the District Court because in 2003 Lincoln waived the issue he intends to raise in his reinstated appeal. The Commonwealth’s shifting positions cause us to consider whether to impose an equitable bar (called judicial estoppel) on its new argument. See Nara v. Frank, 488 F.3d 187, 194 (3d Cir. 2007) (applying forfeiture rule in habeas case due in part to the Commonwealth’s manner of handling the matter); Whaley v. Belleque, 520 F.3d 997, 1002 (9th Cir. 2008) (judicially estopping Oregon from taking inconsistent positions in state and federal courts with respect to habeas petitioner’s procedural default); cf. Wood 4 v. Milyard, 132 S. Ct. 1826, 1834–36 (2012) (court of appeals abused its discretion by ignoring state’s waiver of statute of limitations defense under Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996). Judicial estoppel is often applied where (1) a party adopts clearly inconsistent positions at different times, (2) it persuades a court to adopt the earlier position, and (3) this would impose unfair prejudice on its opponent if the Court adopted the later inconsistent position. New Hampshire v. Maine, 532 U.S. 742, 750–51 (2001). All of these factors counsel us to bar the Commonwealth from arguing that the District Court’s Order in Lincoln IV afforded different relief from the Lincoln II Order. There is no question that the Commonwealth’s positions are inconsistent: after oral argument in Lincoln I and at the hearing before Lincoln II, Commonwealth counsel specifically stated that Lincoln’s challenge to plea voluntariness was not waived; now the Commonwealth argues that it was waived. Nor does counsel persuade us that his position before the District Court was a “flustered misstatement.” Reply at 13 n.5. At the District Court hearing in September 2010 he stated he had thought about the issue “since yesterday,” and when the Court clarified that Lincoln would be heard on plea voluntariness on reinstated appeal, counsel replied, “Indeed.” Hr’g Tr. Sept. 28, 2010 at 70:17, 71:2. In 2014, Judge Shapiro indicated that she understood the Commonwealth to have argued that Lincoln’s reinstated appeal would be heard on the merits. Lincoln IV, 2014 WL 1327521 at  (“[T]his [C]ourt . . . had already decided . . . petitioner was entitled to a direct appeal on the merits.”). While the Order the District Court issued in 2011 did not 5 explicitly state that a reinstated appeal must be heard on the merits, a straightforward explanation for this omission is that when drafting the Order, the District Court assumed that the Commonwealth would stand by its word in briefing the reinstated appeal. We therefore reject the Commonwealth’s contention that the District Court “mischaracterized” and “misrepresented” its prior order. Appellants’ Br. 24, 27. Finally, Lincoln incurs unfair prejudice if the Commonwealth is not estopped. As indicated by the writ granted in Lincoln II, from which the Commonwealth did not appeal, Lincoln is currently incarcerated in violation of his constitutional rights. He has earned, more than once now, the right to have the Superior Court hear his plea voluntariness claim on the merits. The Commonwealth’s about-face as soon as this matter left federal court deprived Lincoln of what he and the District Court believed that Court had ordered. The time and place to challenge reinstatement of his appeal on the merits was before the District Court during the proceedings related to Lincoln II. Because the Commonwealth did not take that opportunity to argue that any reinstated appeal would contain no preserved claims 2 (and indeed did quite the opposite), it cannot present that contention now. 2 The Commonwealth now argues that Lincoln was never entitled to any reinstated appeal because we have held that Flores-Ortega does not require such a remedy where a criminal defendant has validly waived her appellate rights. United States v. Mabry, 536 F.3d 231 (3d Cir. 2008). We do not reach this issue because of the estoppel, but we note that Mabry concerned a person under § 2255 who had explicitly waived his appellate rights and is therefore unlike our case. 6