Opinion ID: 1199736
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Concurrence's Prejudice Standard

Text: Judge Berzon's concurring opinion argues that Moore could choose to satisfy the Strickland prejudice prong either under Hill or directly under Strickland as applied through the lens of Kimmelman. See Concurring Op. at 1165. However, Judge Berzon views the Kimmelman/Strickland framework as more appropriate for resolving this case because Hill governs prejudice determinations in plea bargains concerning counsel's advice on whether to take the plea, after motions practice and discovery have set the legal landscape. Id. at 1165. On the other hand, Strickland and Kimmelman, in her view, deal with counsel's failure to create a proper legal landscape by, [for example], failing to file a plainly meritorious suppression motion. Id. at 1165. Judge Berzon concludes that the Kimmelman standard, applied in the plea context, permits prejudice to be established by showing that had defense counsel properly shaped the legal landscape prior to the plea proceedings, the defendant might have obtained a more favorable plea bargain from the prosecutor. Id. at 1165-66. The distinction she attempts to draw is precluded not only by Hill itself, but also by the vast weight of precedent in both the courts of appeals and the district courts. Her legal landscape argument is interesting but it has never been established, much less clearly established, by the Supreme Court. It also raises substantial concerns about federalism and separation of powers. The concurrence's critical mistake is its failure to consider fundamental principles governing the appeal of guilty pleas. A criminal defendant who has entered a plea generally waives his right to challenge defects in the pre-plea proceedings. Instead, a defendant who has entered a plea may not thereafter raise independent claims relating to the deprivation of constitutional rights that occurred prior to the entry of the guilty plea. He may only attack the voluntary and intelligent character of the guilty plea by showing that the advice he received from counsel was not within the standards set forth in McMann [ v. Richardson , 397 U.S. 759, 770-72, 90 S.Ct. 1441, 25 L.Ed.2d 763 (1970)]. Tollett v. Henderson, 411 U.S. 258, 267, 93 S.Ct. 1602, 36 L.Ed.2d 235 (1973); see also McMann, 397 U.S. at 770-71, 90 S.Ct. 1441 (Whether a plea of guilty is unintelligent and therefore vulnerable when motivated by a confession erroneously thought admissible in evidence depends . . . not on whether a court would retrospectively consider counsel's advice to be right or wrong, but on whether that advice was within the range of competence demanded of attorneys in criminal cases.); Ortberg v. Moody, 961 F.2d 135, 137-38 (9th Cir.1992) (Petitioner's nolo contendere plea precludes him from challenging alleged constitutional violations that occurred prior to the entry of that plea. (citing Tollett, 411 U.S. at 266-67, 93 S.Ct. 1602)). With that fundamental principle of pleas in mind, it becomes obvious that Hill provides the only appropriate standard for evaluating claims of ineffective assistance in the plea context. The only thing that can be challenged after a plea is the advice to enter a particular plea, for all other defects are waived by the plea. To be sure, Strickland is not irrelevant to the analysis under Hill ; the Hill Court explicitly adopted the Strickland standard in the context of guilty pleas. We hold, therefore, that the two-part Strickland v. Washington test applies to challenges to guilty pleas based on ineffective assistance of counsel. Hill, 474 U.S. at 58, 106 S.Ct. 366. But the process of applying Strickland to guilty pleas was set forth in Hill, and there is no reason to use a different prejudice analysis than that established in Hill. In Hill, the Court wrote that [i]n many guilty plea cases, the `prejudice' inquiry will closely resemble the inquiry engaged in by courts reviewing ineffective-assistance challenges to convictions obtained through a trial. Id. at 59, 106 S.Ct. 366. [W]here the alleged error of counsel is a failure to investigate . . ., the determination whether the error `prejudiced' the defendant by causing him to plead guilty rather than go to trial will depend on the likelihood that . . . [counsel] would have. . . change[d] his recommendation as to the plea. Id. But this inquiry only goes to the question of whether the advice to enter the plea caused prejudicei.e., whether the defendant would not have pled guilty with better advicenot whether the prosecution might have offered a different plea agreement. Put differently, even accepting Judge Berzon's proposed distinction between the advice to enter a plea and the process of creating the legal landscape in which plea bargaining occurs, if a defendant still would have pled guilty or nolo contendere despite trial counsel's unprofessional errors in crafting the legal landscape in which the plea was entered, then there is no constitutional prejudice. Judge Berzon's response that Hill did not deal with the creation of pre-trial landscapes while Kimmelman did, see Concurring Op. at 1166-67, only highlights why the Hill standard is the correct one. Under Hill, if it was reasonable to advise a defendant to take a plea, there is no deficient conduct. If counsel has been unreasonable in giving that advice, then we proceed to ask whether the defendant would have taken the plea anyway. In other words, Judge Berzon's concerns about the pre-plea landscape are adequately addressed in the first step of Hill. There is good reason for us to follow Hill in these circumstances. Judge Berzon would have us consider the legal landscape and ask whether the plea bargain outcome would have been improved upon the filing of the meritorious suppression motion that was not filed because of ineffective assistance of counsel. Concurring Op. at 1167-68. We have no way of evaluating whether the prosecutor, having been forced to answer the motion to suppress, would even be willing to offer a new plea bargain, much less whether the prosecutor would have offered an improved plea bargain outcome. Id. Given the multiplicity of factors that a prosecutor must consider when offering a plea bargain, it is highly doubtful that a federal court, reviewing a state prosecutor's decision to offer a particular plea bargain, even has the tools necessary to decide what bargaining posture a prosecutor would take in the face of a hypothetical motion to suppress. When deciding what plea bargain to offer a particular criminal defendant, for example, a prosecutor might consider the willingness of the defendant to cooperate, the defendant's past criminal history, department resources, and pressure from the public in high profile or emotionally charged cases. See Wayte v. United States, 470 U.S. 598, 607, 105 S.Ct. 1524, 84 L.Ed.2d 547 (1985); see also United States v. Estrada-Plata, 57 F.3d 757, 760 (9th Cir.1995) ([T]here is no constitutional right to a plea bargain, and the decision whether to offer a plea bargain is a matter of prosecutorial discretion. (citation omitted)). To further complicate Judge Berzon's proposed counterfactual analysis, all of this second-guessing will be conducted, in most cases, years after the decision to offer the challenged plea bargain. Political winds may have shifted or a new prosecutor may have taken office. Permitting a habeas petitioner to demonstrate prejudice simply by showing that a different plea bargain might have been offered calls for an answer to an impossible question, and will have the effect of unsettling scores of negotiated state convictions, encouraging needless litigation, and creating a mass printing press in the federal courts for writs of habeas corpus. Were this the only side effect of Judge Berzon's method, perhaps it would be tolerable. But there are at least two additional problems. First, it places federal courts in the role of instructing state prosecutorsmembers of the state executive branchof how to conduct plea negotiations, or at least how much prison time a prosecutor is permitted to offer if the state decides to proceed with reprosecution after the writ of habeas corpus issues. To put it mildly, this kind of interference with a state executive branch function raises substantial federalism concerns. Cf. Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898, 933, 117 S.Ct. 2365, 138 L.Ed.2d 914 (1997). Second, and related to the federalism problem, Judge Berzon's approach implicates the separation of powers with potential effects far beyond the current case. [23] Conducting this type of inquiry into whether a better plea bargain would have been available would require the kind of judicial review of prosecutorial decisions that courts have almost uniformly shunned. We have previously described the reasons for avoiding judicial review of the plea bargaining decision: Prosecutorial charging and plea bargaining decisions are particularly ill-suited for broad judicial oversight. In the first place, they involve exercises of judgment and discretion that are often difficult to articulate in a manner suitable for judicial evaluation. Such decisions are normally made as a result of careful professional judgment as to the strength of the evidence, the availability of resources, the visibility of the crime and the likely deterrent effect on the particular defendant and others similarly situated. Even were it able to collect, understand and balance all of these factors, a court would find it nearly impossible to lay down guidelines to be followed by prosecutors in future cases. We would be left with prosecutors not knowing when to prosecute and judges not having time to judge. Assuming these problems of guidance and understanding could be overcome and it is unlikely that they could be there is an added constitutional consideration based on the peculiar relationship between the Office of the United States Attorney and the federal district courts: The United States is necessarily a party to every criminal case presented to a district court. It would raise serious separation of powers questionsas well as a host of virtually insurmountable practical problemsfor the district court to inquire into and supervise the inner workings of the United States Attorney's Office. The very breadth of the inquiry . . . would require that the government divulge minute details about the process by which scores, perhaps hundreds, of charging decisions are made. The court would also have to consider the validity of various rationales advanced for particular charging decisions, which would enmesh it deeply into the policies, practices and procedures of the United States Attorney's Office. Finally, the court would have to second-guess the prosecutor's judgment in a variety of cases to determine whether the reasons advanced therefor are a subterfuge. United States v. Redondo-Lemos, 955 F.2d 1296, 1299-1300 (9th Cir.1992) (footnotes and citations omitted), overruled on other grounds, United States v. Armstrong, 48 F.3d 1508, 1515 n. 5 (9th Cir. 1995) (en banc); see also Wayte, 470 U.S. at 607-08, 105 S.Ct. 1524 (recognizing that the broad discretion afforded the executive to evaluate such factors is not readily susceptible to the kind of analysis the courts are competent to undertake); United States v. Banuelos-Rodriguez, 215 F.3d 969, 976 (9th Cir.2000) (en banc) (Courts generally have no place interfering with a prosecutor's discretion whom to prosecute, what charges to file, and whether to engage in plea negotiations.). To be sure, prosecutorial discretion, including the discretion to negotiate plea bargains, does not give the executive branch license to violate a criminal defendant's due process rights, and courts widely agree that a prosecutor cannot hide discriminatory motives under the guise of prosecutorial discretion. See United States v. Arenas-Ortiz, 339 F.3d 1066, 1068 (9th Cir.2003) (One important restriction on prosecutorial discretion, however, is that `the decision whether to prosecute may not be based on an unjustifiable standard such as race, religion, or other arbitrary classification.' (quoting United States v. Armstrong, 517 U.S. 456, 464, 116 S.Ct. 1480, 134 L.Ed.2d 687 (1996)) (internal quotations removed)); Redondo-Lemos, 955 F.2d at 1299 (Given the significance of the prosecutor's charging and plea bargaining decisions, it would offend common notions of justice to have them made on the basis of a dart throw, a coin toss or some other arbitrary or capricious process.). But it is one thing to say that the executive branches of either the federal or state governments cannot prosecute selectively, for there are methods through which the judiciary can evaluate such claims. It is an entirely different, and far more bothersome, thing to instruct district courts to ask whether the plea bargain outcome would have been improved upon the filing of the meritorious suppression motion. Concurring Op. at 1167-68. That analysis would require inquiry into the precise questions that this court has said courts should avoid and which the Constitution likely protects from judicial intrusion. See Redondo-Lemos, 955 F.2d at 1299-1300. Judge Berzon responds by claiming that this is the type of inquiry that courts regularly undertake in ineffective assistance of counsel claims. See Concurring Op. at 1169-70. Rather than considering the prosecution's actions, Judge Berzon says that her approach would focus on the defendant's and defense counsel's choices, defense counsel's judgment, and defense counsel's actions. Id. at 1170. But if the question posed is whether the plea bargain outcome would have been improved upon the filing of the meritorious suppression motion, as she says it ought to be, id. at 1167-68, I fail to see how that could be done without looking at the prosecution's decisions in the first instance. Id. at 1170. In an ineffective assistance of counsel claim following a trial, where the counterfactual question posed to the court concerns evaluating what a jury might have done, at least the evidence presented to the jury and the legal instructions it was given are available for review. In contrast, in a plea bargain situation, there is no record at all about what other deals the prosecution might have offered. [24] If, in contrast, the question is whether, but for counsel's ineffective assistance, a defendant would [be] in a better position to negotiate with the prosecutor, as Judge Berzon articulates the test later on, id. at 1170, the new standard would entirely swallow Hill. Numerous cases decided under Hill can also be characterized as deal[ing] with counsel's failure to create a proper legal landscape by failing to take some strategic action. Concurring Op. at 1165. See, e.g., Weaver, 455 F.3d at 970-71 (9th Cir.2006) (applying Hill to counsel's failure to investigate mental defect defense); Langford, 110 F.3d at 1386-87 (using Hill in guilty plea case alleging ineffective assistance of counsel based on failure to file various suppression motions). And filing a potentially meritorious suppression motion will always strengthen defense counsel's bargaining position (at least until a potentially adverse ruling is handed down). If the possibility that a more favorable plea bargain might have been offered if a potentially meritorious motion was not filed is sufficient to establish Strickland prejudice after a guilty plea, virtually every plea bargain in the country is now open to habeas relief. Viewed within the proper standard of review under AEDPA, it was not an unreasonable application of Supreme Court law for the Oregon courts to evaluate Moore's claim under Hill. The case fits squarely within the rule of Hill: Moore asserts that his trial counsel failed to advise him that a motion to suppress might be successful. On the basis of that advice, Moore pled no contest to the charge of felony murder. Other courts considering such claims have uniformly looked to Hill for the correct standard. [25] Given that the federal courts have been applying Hill 's prejudice requirement to situations similar to the one presented by this case, it is difficult to see how a state court should have been able to divine this kind of extension of Strickland and Kimmelman. Judge Berzon's prejudice standard is not only not clearly established Supreme Court law; it is also contrary to all other federal authority. I therefore puzzle over Judge Berzon's objection that I do not cite to any case holding that her reading of the prejudice standard is precluded by Hill, see Concurring Op. at 1169, for all the cases she cites applying the Kimmelman standard occurred after a trial and did not involve the plea context. She also fails to respond to the numerous cases I have cited which apply Hill in the guilty plea context, other than to say that [s]ome other cases . . . assume (as Judge Reinhardt does today) that Hill also applies in the motions context when a plea bargain is involved, as well as in the advice context. Id. From that, despite the absence of any case applying her proposed distinction to a guilty plea case, she draws the inexplicable conclusion that these cases do not provide support for using Hill as the exclusive standard in such circumstances. Id. The Supreme Court would have had difficulty being more clear than it was in Hill about the proper prejudice standard for guilty pleas. It said, We hold, therefore, that the two-part Strickland v. Washington test applies to challenges to guilty pleas based on ineffective assistance of counsel. In the context of guilty pleas,. . . to satisfy the `prejudice' requirement, the defendant must show that there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's errors, he would not have pleaded guilty and would have insisted on going to trial. The Hill Court did not recognize Judge Berzon's distinction between pre-trial landscape setting ineffective assistance claims and advice to enter guilty plea claims, and she cannot point to a single federal court since Hill that has done so. Until the Supreme Court tells us otherwise, her proposed distinction is foreclosed by Hill. See Carey v. Musladin, 549 U.S. 70, 127 S.Ct. 649, 654, 166 L.Ed.2d 482 (2006) (Given the lack of holdings from this Court ..., it cannot be said that the state court `unreasonabl[y] appli[ed] clearly established Federal law.' (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1))). The concurrence's argument is a disguised attempt implicitly to extend Howard to permit satisfaction of Strickland 's prejudice prong by demonstrating simply that a more favorable plea might have been obtained, instead of doing it explicitly in the manner advocated by Judge Reinhardt. See Maj. Op. at 1150 n. 26. Although Judge Berzon couches her argument as giving defendants the choice of proving prejudice under what is commonly perceived as the more difficult Strickland standard rather than proving prejudice under Hill, her approach actually achieves the opposite effect: Instead of being required to demonstrate that he would not have pled guilty but would have insisted on going to trial, Moore would only be required to demonstrate that he might have obtained a more favorable plea agreement. This attempt misconceives the nature of plea bargaining, potentially violates principles of federalism and separation of powers, and ignores Supreme Court precedent on how to conduct the prejudice inquiry following plea agreements. Even if I were to agree that an ambiguity about the relationship between Hill, Kimmelman, and Strickland existed, it is not our job on AEDPA review to resolve it.