Opinion ID: 1199736
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Majority's Interpretation of Hill v. Lockhart

Text: The body of the majority's opinion correctly quotes the applicable standard of prejudice for ineffective assistance of counsel claims arising from guilty pleas, but in a footnote, the majority strangely hypothesizes that if, in response to the filing of a suppression motion, the state would have offered Moore a more favorable plea bargain (and he would have accepted it in lieu of going to trial), Moore could still have established Strickland prejudice. Maj. Op. at 1150 n. 26. In other words, the majority believes that even if it is wrong on the merits of Moore's motion to suppress, Moore would be entitled to relief on the grounds that had counsel filed a suppression motion he might have been in a position to argue for a better plea. The majority's innovative and far reaching assertion cannot go unanswered. As support for its novel legal theory that Moore can claim he might have negotiated a better plea bargaina theory that Moore, incidentally, has never arguedthe majority cites to no Supreme Court precedent but only to one of our own cases, United States v. Howard, 381 F.3d 873 (9th Cir.2004). See Maj. Op. at 1150 n. 26. The majority's failure to cite anything else is hardly surprising since, as pointed out above, Hill unequivocally held that, in order 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.  Hill, 474 U.S. at 59, 106 S.Ct. 366 (emphasis added). Moreover, the Supreme Court reaffirmed Hill and thereby rejected the majority's reading in Roe v. Flores-Ortega, 528 U.S. 470, 120 S.Ct. 1029, 145 L.Ed.2d 985 (2000). In that case, the Supreme Court h[e]ld that when counsel's constitutionally deficient performance deprives a defendant of an appeal that he otherwise would have taken, the defendant has made out a successful ineffective assistance of counsel claim entitling him to an appeal. Id. at 484, 120 S.Ct. 1029. In so holding, the Court stated [i]n Hill, we considered an ineffective assistance of counsel claim based on counsel's allegedly deficient advice regarding the consequences of entering a guilty plea. Like the decision whether to appeal [presented here], the decision whether to plead guilty (i.e., waive trial) rested with the defendant and, like this case, counsel's advice in Hill might have caused the defendant to forfeit a judicial proceeding to which he was otherwise entitled. Id. at 485, 120 S.Ct. 1029. The Court proceeded to cite Hill for the proposition that when, in connection with a guilty plea, counsel gives deficient advice regarding a potentially valid affirmative defense, the prejudice inquiry depends largely on whether that affirmative defense might have succeeded, leading a rational defendant to insist on going to trial. Id. at 486, 120 S.Ct. 1029. Yet the majority ignores this language by misconstruing our opinion in Howard, where we stated that [t]o satisfy Strickland 's prejudice prong, [a defendant] must allege that but for counsel's errors, he would either have gone to trial or received a better plea bargain. 381 F.3d at 882. Considered in context, it is clear that our statement in Howard was merely loose language and not a holding. No other panel has ever read Howard the way that the majority now interprets it. Howard cites Hill only in passing, provides no justification for its deviation from our prior case law, does not discuss its novel reading, and did not turn on whether the defendant would have been able to secure a more favorable plea agreement. Moreover, Howard itself does not consistently hold to the majority's reading; every time that a question turned on the standard of prejudice, the Howard court hewed to the accepted construction of Hill that a petitioner must demonstrate that, but for counsel's ineffective assistance, he would not have pled guilty. It interpreted unclear allegations in Howard's pro se brief as a sufficient statement that he would not have entered the plea and would have taken the case to trial if his counsel had not permitted him to plead while incompetent, and stated that [t]his . . . allegation, if true, would establish prejudice. Howard, 381 F.3d at 883. [21] Finally, the majority asserts that the principle it derives from Howard makes good sense because [t]he vast majority of cases in criminal courts are resolved by plea bargains. Maj. Op. at 1150 n. 26. There is some force to this argument, but it is only an argument that the Supreme Court should have adopted the majority's rule, notas required under AEDPAthat it actually did. [22] Indeed, commentators have criticized the holding in Hill precisely because it does not afford relief to many prisoners who received constitutionally deficient representation. See, e.g., Richard Klein, Due Process Denied: Judicial Coercion in the Plea Bargaining Process, 32 HOFSTRA L. REV. 1349, 1369 (2004) (We are left by the [ Hill v. ] Lockhart decision with a most unfortunate result: in the vast majority of instances where an effective, competent counsel could have negotiated a better plea for the defendant than his incompetent counsel did, there will be no remedy.); Emily Rubin, Note, Ineffective Assistance of Counsel and Guilty Pleas: Toward a Paradigm of Informed Consent, 80 VA. L. REV. 1699, 1705-06 (1994) ([I]t is a very rare defendant who insists on taking his case to trial; in most cases, a defendant with the benefit of adequate representation would have eventually pleaded guilty pursuant to a more generous [plea offer than the one he accepted]. Such a defendant has no recourse under Hill because he will be unable to demonstrate that he probably `would have insisted on going to trial.'). The majority simply installs its own view of what Hill should have said, and it infects the entire majority opinion. See, e.g., Maj. Op. at 1140 ([I]nvalidating Moore's formal, tape-recorded confession would have placed him in a far better position to negotiate a reasonable plea and obtain a lesser sentence. . . .); id. at 1148 ([T]he record falls far short of establishing that the potential testimony of Raymond and Ziegler would have been sufficient to cause Moore to accept so harsh a plea agreement. . . .); id. at 1153 ([T]he[failure to] exclu[de] the [formal confession] undermines our confidence that Moore would have entered into so harsh a plea agreement.).