Opinion ID: 201238
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Alleged Deficiencies in Peña's Performance

Text: 45 This record raises troubling questions about Peña's performance. 46
47 It is undisputed that Peña did not independently investigate his client's criminal history before recommending that Colón enter into the plea agreement. Instead, according to Peña, he relied on Colón's representation that he had been convicted only once, for robbery, prior to this case. There is no per se rule that an attorney's failure to investigate independently his client's criminal history before advising him to accept a plea offer is ineffective assistance. Clients should answer truthfully their attorney's inquiries about their past convictions, and lawyers are entitled to rely reasonably on the explicit representations of clients about their criminal histories. See Strickland, 466 U.S. at 691, 104 S.Ct. 2052 (explaining that counsel need not undertake investigations if they reach a reasonable decision that makes particular investigations unnecessary). We agree with one of our sister circuits that a determination of whether reliance on a client's statement of his own criminal history constitutes deficient performance depends on the peculiar facts and circumstances of each case. United States v. Pease, 240 F.3d 938, 941-42 (11th Cir.2001). See also Strickland, 466 U.S. at 691, 104 S.Ct. 2052 (In any ineffectiveness case, a particular decision not to investigate must be directly assessed for reasonableness in all the circumstances, applying a heavy measure of deference to counsel's judgments.); United States v. Russell, 221 F.3d 615, 621 (4th Cir.2000) (When representing a criminal client, the obligation to conduct an adequate investigation will often include verifying the status of the client's criminal record, and the failure to do so may support a finding of ineffective assistance of counsel.) 9 48 In this case, as in many cases involving claims of ineffective assistance of counsel, a factual dispute must be resolved before a court makes any judgment about the effectiveness of Peña's performance in dealing with Colón's criminal history. According to Colón, as recounted to the district court, he gave Peña a document that detailed Colón's full criminal history way at the beginning of their relationship. As we have noted, Peña disagreed with the account Colón gave the district court. He first told the court that [t]he only information [Colón] gave me regarding the prior convictions of him was a charge for robbery and that was all the information I had from him regarding his prior convictions. Then, once Colón pointed out that Peña had the document detailing his criminal history with him in court, Peña admitted that we do have the document that was handed by him but this document was not handed previously to the change of plea hearing. This was handed afterwards. 49 It is somewhat curious that Peña says that he received the document after the change of plea hearing, which was held May 2. The district court commented that Peña was surprised about Colón's career offender status, as revealed in the PSR, at the November 9 hearing. Presumably, if Peña had received the document before receipt of the PSR (transmitted to Peña on October 2, according to the district court docket), he would not have been surprised at the November 9 hearing and would not have waited to renegotiate the plea agreement until after receipt of the PSR. On the other hand, if Peña had received the document from Colón after he received the PSR, it seems likely that he would have said that Colón gave him the criminal history document after Peña received the PSR, not after the change of plea hearing. 50 On remand, the district court will have to engage in fact finding on what information Colón gave Peña about his criminal history and when he gave it to him. If Colón misinformed Peña about Colón's prior convictions when Peña recommended that Colón enter into the original plea agreement, that fact would have to be weighed carefully in deciding whether Peña still should have conducted some independent investigation of Colón's criminal history. 10 On the other hand, if Colón provided Peña with a document accurately detailing his past convictions prior to the recommendation of Peña that he accept a plea agreement that would not withstand scrutiny because of those past convictions, Peña's recommendation would seem to be clear evidence of ineffectiveness of counsel. 51
52 Colón also alleges that Peña did not adequately explain the PSR or the plea agreements. Colón signed both the plea agreement and the amended plea agreement on the day that they were each presented in court. In the peculiar circumstances of this case, these last-minute signings suggest that Colón might have lacked sufficient time to consider the pleas, their ramifications, and any relevant advice Peña offered. Additionally, the appellate record suggests that when Peña received the PSR, he did not discuss the PSR with Colón prior to renegotiating a plea on his behalf with the government. In fact, the material before us suggests that Colón may have seen the PSR and the amended plea agreement for the first time the morning of his sentencing hearing. Moreover, if Peña ever discussed with Colón the possibility of withdrawing the plea in light of the career offender disclosure of the PSR, there is no hint of such discussion in the record. 53 These suggestions of haste and limited communication with Colón add significance to Peña's failures to correct errors in the PSR (misstating the BOL, statutory maximum sentence, and Guidelines sentencing calculation) and in the amended plea agreement (misstating the criminal history category and substituting a  base offense level for a  total offense level). Unnoticed or unaddressed by Peña, these errors reflect the kind of inattentiveness to detail by Peña described by Colón in his pro se motion for change of counsel. The last-minute signings of the plea agreements, coupled with the uncorrected errors in the documents, may be further indicia of ineffective assistance of counsel. 54
55 At the sentencing, Peña said that [w]e did not discharge our responsibility adequately although our position, Your Honor, is that we were from the very beginning trying to help our client, defendant, in terms of the negotiations with the government. This revealing comment was made after Colón insisted that Peña show the document detailing Colón's criminal history to the court. Although Peña may not have intended this statement as an admission of ineffective assistance of counsel, it is an unusual concession for counsel to make, and it is one more indication of possible ineffectiveness that justifies the remand for an evidentiary hearing. 56
57 Few commitments from an attorney to a client are more important than a duty of loyalty, a duty to avoid conflicts of interest. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 688, 104 S.Ct. 2052. On remand, the court must explore whether Peña's interests became adverse to Colón's during the sentencing hearing. There are worrisome indications of such a conflict. 58 We have held that in order to show an actual conflict of interest, a defendant must show that (1) the lawyer could have pursued a plausible alternative defense strategy or tactic and (2) the alternative strategy or tactic was inherently in conflict with or not undertaken due to the attorney's other interests or loyalties. United States v. Soldevila-Lopez, 17 F.3d 480, 486 (1st Cir.1994). Here, the relevant defense strategy was a possible motion for the withdrawal of Colón's plea. Peña might well have argued at the sentencing hearing that Colón should be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea because Colón was unaware of the consequences of his plea, given the impact of his criminal history category under the Sentencing Guidelines and the impossibility of the sixty month sentence agreed to by the parties. See Fed.R.Crim.P. 11(d)(2) (allowing plea withdrawals prior to sentencing when the defendant can show a fair and just reason for requesting the withdrawal). 11 There is no indication in the record that Peña advised Colón at any time after receipt of the PSR of the possibility that he might file with the court a motion to withdraw his plea. 59 A conflict of interest might explain this silence. Such a withdrawal motion would likely implicate Peña's lack of awareness of Colón's criminal history, or his failure to appreciate its significance, in recommending the original plea agreement. 12 Moreover, unaware of the possibility of a career offender sentence for Colón, the court itself arguably might have misled Colón at the change of plea hearing when it suggested to him that if his criminal history category was higher than a II, the Guidelines range he faced was only sixty to seventy-one months (corresponding to a criminal history category of III, when the statutory minimum of sixty months is taken into account). Together, Peña's pre-plea performance and the district court's explanation of the sentence might have provided a fair and just reason for withdrawal of the guilty plea. But Peña, perhaps absorbed in defending his own performance before the judge and inattentive to important details of the plea proceedings, apparently overlooked or chose to ignore the option of a motion to withdraw Colón's plea. 60 This would not be a small oversight. During the sentencing hearing, it would appear to Colón that he had only two options. He could disavow the amended plea agreement and be sentenced as a career offender under the original plea agreement's higher drug quantity calculation. Under that scenario, Colón would be exposed to a Sentencing Guidelines range of 188 to 235 months. Alternatively, he could continue under the terms of the amended plea agreement and be sentenced as a career offender under the amended plea agreement's reduced drug quantity calculation. Under that scenario, Colón would be exposed to a Sentencing Guidelines range of 151 to 188 months. Not surprisingly, he chose the latter course. If he was unaware that there was a third option — the possibility of withdrawing his plea entirely — his choice to go forward with the amended plea agreement was not an informed one. 61 We recognize that the silence of this record on Colón's awareness of the plea withdrawal possibility at this critical juncture of the proceedings may reflect only the inadequacy of the record. Perhaps Peña discussed that possibility with Colón and he rejected it. 13 An evidentiary hearing on remand can explore that question. 62 Also, we are not suggesting that Peña should not have been allowed to defend himself at the sentencing hearing against a charge by his client that he claimed was inaccurate. We only observe that the court's inquiry into Peña's and his client's conflicting versions of Peña's performance arguably put their interests at odds, at least at that juncture, leaving Peña to defend himself against his client's accusations and possibly leaving Colón without conflict-free representation at a crucial point in the sentencing hearing. 63 Other courts have faced the implications of this kind of credibility contest between counsel and client at a critical stage of the criminal proceedings. In Lopez v. Scully, 58 F.3d 38 (2d Cir.1995), the Second Circuit addressed petitioner's contention that he was denied effective assistance of counsel since his attorney labored under an actual conflict of interest during the sentencing proceeding because of the charges of incompetence petitioner brought forth against his attorney during the sentencing hearing. Id. at 41. Specifically, the petitioner filed a pro se motion to withdraw his guilty plea at the beginning of the sentencing hearing, claiming that his attorney had coerced him into pleading guilty. The Lopez court observed that to argue in favor of his client's [position] would require admitting to serious ethical violations and possibly subject him to liability for malpractice; on the other hand, any contention by counsel that defendant's allegations were not true would contradict his client. Id. at 41 (finding a conflict of interest between an attorney and his client when the client alleged that the attorney coerced him into pleading guilty) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Here, as in Lopez, the attorney [arguably] put his own interests ahead of his client's by denying the truth of [his client's] allegations and thereby attacking his own client's credibility. Id. 64 Similarly, when defense counsel denied his client's accusations of wrongdoing at a plea-withdrawal hearing, the Seventh Circuit held that [a]ny contention by counsel that defendant's allegations were not true would (and did) contradict his client. In testifying against his client, counsel acted as both counselor and witness for the prosecution. These roles are inherently inconsistent. United States v. Ellison, 798 F.2d 1102, 1107 (7th Cir.1986). In combination with the other factors cited, there are sufficient indicia of such a conflict of interest here to justify remanding this case for a full evidentiary hearing on Colón's ineffective assistance of counsel claim.