Opinion ID: 68623
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Plea Offer

Text: The parties dispute whether Assistant District Attorney Cornelius Regan made a plea offer to defense counsel Julian Murray. Will first learned of a possible plea offer when, in the newspaper the day after his conviction, the victim and her family were quoted as “wonder[ing] why Will . . . didn’t accept the 20-year sentence that was offered to him in a plea agreement.” Will asked 3 No. 07-30772 Murray about the plea offer. This prompted Murray to write a letter to Regan asking that he confirm that Regan made no such offer. Murray wrote that: [a]fter talking with the [victim and her family] you called me and told me that the decision was made by the District Attorney’s Office to proceed to prosecute the case as an aggravated kidnapping. You did mention in passing that you thought the [victim and her family] would like to see Paul do 20 to 30 years in jail, but that was never presented as an offer. I do not mean to suggest that if it had been an offer it would have been one that I would have recommended as being reasonable, or one that my client would have considered acceptable. However, it would have been an offer which I would have been ethically bound to convey to my client. I therefore would appreciate it if you would confirm to me in writing that at the time of our conversation you told me that the District Attorney’s Office had determined to proceed with the case as an aggravated kidnapping.1 Regan did not respond to the letter. There is also a minute entry from a pre-trial hearing reading “[t]he defendant has refused any plea offer, following setting is a priority setting.” However, the accompanying audio transcript captures Murray stating “[w]e were in touch with the District Attorney’s Office up until Thursday to determine whether or not this matter could be resolved by a plea. It was determined that it could not be.” As this is the only reference in that hearing to plea discussions, it is clear the minute entry simply misstated the proceedings. At the post-trial evidentiary hearing, Murray testified that he was “never given any term of years by the D.A.’s office” but that “[t]here were discussions in which I had recommended a certain number of years I would recommend to 1 Aggravated kidnapping carries with it a mandatory sentence of life in prison. The decision to proceed as an aggravated kidnapping forecloses any possibility of a plea offer. 4 No. 07-30772 my client. I never told them he wouldn’t take anything other than that . . . .” Murray testified that he would have recommended ten years, but that he never got to the point where he would make a recommendation to his client because the D.A.’s Office’s informed him they were going to proceed to trial with the aggravated kidnapping charge. Regan testified that the D.A.’s Office brought in the victim’s family because he wanted to ascertain if they would feel comfortable with a plea offer. The family responded that it would be comfortable with twenty to thirty years. Reagan recalled that during a phone conversation with Murray, he mentioned that the family would be interested in a plea from twenty to thirty years, but that Murray informed him that his client would not accept more than three to five years. Regan also testified that in order to make a plea offer, the D.A.’s Office would have had to reduce the charges because aggravated kidnapping carried a mandatory life sentence, and the D.A.’s Office was not willing to reduce the charge unless it knew that he was going to accept twenty to thirty years. Regan testified that he had not responded to Murray’s letter because “[he] didn’t feel it needed any response.” On post-conviction relief, the state district court reviewed the transcript of the evidentiary hearing and made the following findings: In the instant case, defendant claims that counsel failed to advise him that a plea agreement to second degree kidnapping was offered by the State. A review of the defendant’s records indicated that he knowingly entered a plea of not guilty. Further, defendant has not met his burden in proving that he involuntarily entered a plea of not guilty. Further, defendant claim [sic] relate to strategic choices made by his counsel at the time of the defendant’s trial. The defendant’s claims are essentially with his counsel’s decisions regarding defendant’s plea at trial. This is considered trial tactics 5 No. 07-30772 for purposes of evaluating the performance of defendant’s counsel. Thus, defendant’s claim must fail because his counsel’s action at trial was considered trial tactics and under the Strickland test, the defendant has failed to meet the two-prong test. The federal district court interpreted the state court decision as an implied, unarticulated finding that a plea offer of twenty to thirty years had been made. The district court reasoned that the state judge was “faced with two inconsistent versions of the plea discussions,” and that the state court chose Regan’s version. The named “inconsistent versions” were (1) Murray’s denial that he told Regan that Will would refuse any particular number of years, and (2) Regan’s testimony that Murray told him his client would not take more than three to five years. This is the only inconsistency in evidentiary hearing testimony. After describing the evidence presented and recounting the state court’s factual findings, the federal district court concluded that “[t]he trial court apparently made the factual finding that a plea offer of 20 to 30 years was in fact tendered, but rebuffed by defense counsel and without being conveyed to the petitioner.” The district court continued: [h]ad the trial judge accepted defense counsel’s version, that no plea offer was even made, that would have ended the discussion. By couching his decision in terms of defense counsel’s “strategic choices” and “trial tactics” he necessarily found that a plea offer was in fact made, consistent with the prosecutor’s testimony, but was not conveyed due to the “strategic choices” and “trial tactics” of defense counsel. The district court ruled that failing to convey the plea offer to Will amounted to ineffective assistance of counsel that prejudiced Will because he would have accepted the plea offer based on his testimony at the evidentiary hearing. 6 No. 07-30772