Opinion ID: 201905
Heading Depth: 6
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Fact Bargaining and the Right to a Jury Trial

Text: 122 The term fact bargaining has been used loosely to cover a variety of situations, from affirmative misrepresentations to a court to more benign agreements by counsel to base sentencing on other factors. Fact bargaining may arise when there are different views of the facts, counsels' ability to prove them, and their consequences. See, e.g., Sarner,  Fact Bargaining Under the Sentencing Guidelines: The Role of the Probation Department, 8 Fed. Sent. R. 328, 1996 WL 671569, at  (Counsel for both sides must assess their prospects for success before a jury, based on a wide variety of conflicting factors that develop during the government's investigation and as available defenses. That the truth appears somewhere in between, after the dust has settled, is a world view shared by most criminal practitioners.... The basic assumption behind plea and fact bargaining is that criminal conduct, like human behavior in other contexts, is never black and white.). 123 Many of the district court's objections are to the inevitable artifacts and consequences of plea bargains. Those consequences have been accepted as beneficial to society and raise no constitutional concerns. Plea bargaining is an essential part of our criminal justice system and is a highly desirable part for many reasons. Santobello v. New York, 404 U.S. 257, 261, 92 S.Ct. 495, 30 L.Ed.2d 427 (1971); accord Blackledge v. Allison, 431 U.S. 63, 71, 97 S.Ct. 1621, 52 L.Ed.2d 136 (1977). Plea bargaining takes place between the prosecution and the defense, and does not involve the court. 124 There are very few rules imposed on the prosecution as to plea bargaining with the defense, save that it may not coerce a plea. For example, Rule 11(c) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which governs Plea Agreement Procedure, says next to nothing on how plea negotiations are to be carried out and does not reach the question of what the attorney for the government and the attorney for the defendant can say to each other. 1A C. Wright, Federal Practice and Procedure § 175.1 (3d ed.1999) (discussing former Rule 11(e), predecessor to Rule 11(c)). 125 While the government may not coerce a defendant into an involuntary plea, the government has a wide latitude in how it reaches a plea. 16 See id. For example, the prosecutor may insist, as a condition of a plea, that the defendant waive all appellate rights. See United States v. Teeter, 257 F.3d 14, 21-23 (1st Cir.2001). The prosecution may insist on a waiver of rights under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963). Under some circumstances, the prosecution may refuse to disclose certain kinds of exculpatory material to the defendant in the course of plea bargaining. See United States v. Ruiz, 536 U.S. 622, 633, 122 S.Ct. 2450, 153 L.Ed.2d 586 (2002). And if the negotiations are not successful, due process is not violated if the prosecutor carries out threats made during the negotiations that the defendant will be reindicted on a more serious charge which will bring higher penalties. Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U.S. 357, 365, 98 S.Ct. 663, 54 L.Ed.2d 604 (1978). 126 Defendants who plead guilty will receive a benefit in sentencing over those who do not, in both charge bargaining and fact bargaining situations. Because they benefit, they neither have any constitutional claim nor have any interest in asserting a claim that their agreement is unconstitutional, unless the plea is involuntary. 17 See id. at 363, 98 S.Ct. 663 (Plea bargaining flows from `the mutuality of advantage' to defendants and prosecutors, each with his own reasons for wanting to avoid trial. (quoting Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742, 752, 90 S.Ct. 1463, 25 L.Ed.2d 747 (1970))). 127 The fact that the defendant who pleads gets a benefit over those who go to trial and are convicted is a necessary artifact of any plea bargaining regime. The law long ago determined there was nothing unconstitutional or illegal about any burden on trial rights caused by such a differential. While confronting a defendant with the risk of more severe punishment clearly may have a `discouraging effect on the defendant's assertion of his trial rights, the imposition of these difficult choices [is] an inevitable' — and permissible — `attribute of any legitimate system which tolerates and encourages the negotiation of pleas.' Id. at 364, 98 S.Ct. 663 (quoting Chaffin v. Stynchcombe, 412 U.S. 17, 31, 93 S.Ct. 1977, 36 L.Ed.2d 714 (1973)). The Supreme Court has unequivocally recognize[d] the constitutional propriety of extending leniency in exchange for a plea of guilty and of not extending leniency to those who have not demonstrated those attributes on which leniency is based. Corbitt v. New Jersey, 439 U.S. 212, 224, 99 S.Ct. 492, 58 L.Ed.2d 466 (1978); see also id. at 223, 99 S.Ct. 492 (There is no doubt that those homicide defendants who are willing to plead non vult may be treated more leniently than those who go to trial, but withholding the possibility of leniency from the latter cannot be equated with impermissible punishment as long as our cases sustaining plea bargaining remain undisturbed.). [A]fter trial, the factors that may have indicated leniency as consideration for the guilty plea are no longer present. Alabama v. Smith, 490 U.S. 794, 801, 109 S.Ct. 2201, 104 L.Ed.2d 865 (1989) (citing Brady, 397 U.S. at 752, 90 S.Ct. 1463). It is clear that [t]he fact that those who plead generally receive more lenient treatment, or at least a government recommendation of more lenient treatment than co-defendants who go to trial, does not in and of itself constitute an unconstitutional burden on one's right to go to trial and prove [one's] case. United States v. Rodriguez, 162 F.3d 135, 152 (1st Cir.1998). 128 There is a different concern, of constitutional dimension, that the government not act vindictively in retaliation against the exercise of rights by a defendant. See North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 725, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 23 L.Ed.2d 656 (1969). But the Pearce line of decisions deals with circumstances different from Olivero's case and arises in the context of 1) resentencing in a second trial after the defendant has obtained a new trial by appeal or collateral attack or 2) resentencing after the defendant has successfully withdrawn a guilty plea. See Pearce, 395 U.S. at 725, 89 S.Ct. 2072 (Due process of law, then, requires that vindictiveness against a defendant for having successfully attacked his first conviction must play no part in the sentence he receives after a new trial.); Smith, 490 U.S. at 795, 109 S.Ct. 2201. 129 The Supreme Court has said that how the government acts during plea bargaining raises no vindictiveness concerns, but only concerns of whether the plea was voluntary. 18 Indeed, in Bordenkircher, the Court held that the due process concerns expressed in the Pearce line of cases about punishment or retaliation are simply not present in a plea bargaining situation. [I]n the `give-and-take' of plea bargaining, there is no such element of punishment or retaliation so long as the accused is free to accept or reject the prosecution's offer. 434 U.S. at 363, 98 S.Ct. 663. Here, the defendant withdrew from the plea agreement, so the knowing and voluntary test under Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238, 242, 89 S.Ct. 1709, 23 L.Ed.2d 274 (1969), does not come into play. 19 130 Even assuming there is, post- Bordenkircher, some role for a vindictiveness analysis in this situation, see United States v. Goodwin, 457 U.S. 368, 380 n. 12, 384, 102 S.Ct. 2485, 73 L.Ed.2d 74 (1982); Smith, 490 U.S. at 802-03, 109 S.Ct. 2201, the concern is with prosecutorial vindictiveness, not with the possibility that defendants face some burden on the right to trial in the form of a risk of a higher sentence. See Blackledge v. Perry, 417 U.S. 21, 27-28, 94 S.Ct. 2098, 40 L.Ed.2d 628 (1974); cf. Johnson v. Vose, 927 F.2d 10 (1st Cir.1991). The district court focused on burden on a defendant's trial rights and did not find vindictiveness. Indeed, there was no basis for a conclusion either that Olivero's rights to trial were burdened or that he was the subject of vindictiveness. 20 A defendant simply has no right to a sentence, after trial, that is as lenient as a sentence he could have had earlier in a plea bargain. See McMillian v. United States, 583 F.2d 1061, 1063 (8th Cir.1978) (Appellant's claim, is, in essence, that a trial court is bound by the most favorable offer as to sentence made by the prosecutor during the course of plea negotiations, regardless of whether that offer is accepted or rejected by the defendant. This claim is fatuous.). 131