Opinion ID: 201728
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: I. The third step (prejudice)

Text: 68 As the majority acknowledges, we are faced with comparing two unknown variables: the limit the district court would have set on drug tests and the number of tests that the probation officer will demand. Ante at ___. In the majority's view, this circumstance makes it nearly impossible for Padilla to show prejudice. Id. Actually, the problem is deeper than that. 69 The plain-error test's third step requires us to assess the probability that the error at issue affected the outcome of the proceeding in which it occurred. To meet the plain-error test, the prejudicial effect on the outcome of the proceeding must be substantial and injurious. United States v. Dominguez Benitez, 542 U.S. 74, ___, 124 S.Ct. 2333, 2339, 159 L.Ed.2d 157 (2004) (internal quotation marks omitted). Typically, when a defendant comes to us alleging that the district court has committed plain error, we are able to ask meaningful questions: Would the judge or jury still have found the defendant guilty, or would the judge have imposed the same sentence, or would the defendant still have entered a guilty plea, if the error had not occurred? We answer those questions by viewing such a claim against the entire record.... It is simply not possible for an appellate court to assess the seriousness of the claimed error by any other means. United States v. Young, 470 U.S. 1, 16, 105 S.Ct. 1038, 84 L.Ed.2d 1 (1985). If we answer those questions yes, we conclude that there was no prejudice from the error. 70 Here, however, we cannot ask that kind of question. This case involves an erroneous delegation of authority to a probation officer. That delegation error was not a ruling preliminary to a guilty verdict, or the imposition of a period of incarceration, or the acceptance of a guilty plea. We cannot assess the likelihood that a known outcome would have occurred even without the error. The error relates only to who imposes a condition of supervised release. For the purpose of evaluating the significance of the delegation error itself, the probability question that is so critical to the prejudice analysis of plain-error review is meaningless. 71 If we focus instead on the consequence of the improper delegation of authority (how many drug tests the defendant will be required to submit to during supervised release), the probability question is still meaningless. The improperly delegated authority has not yet been exercised. Thus we have two unknowns: the number of drug tests the judge never decided to require, and the number of drug tests the probation officer has yet to require. As an appellate court in these circumstances, we are deprived of any meaningful ability to review the plain error for prejudice. In other words, Padilla's failure to show prejudice results not from any infirmities specific to his case, but from an inherent limitation on our ability to analyze the issue of prejudice. We are not applying a test when the subject of the test has zero chance of passing — and no defendant in Padilla's situation will ever be able to show prejudice. In effect, the majority applies a per se rule which will always leave this kind of error uncorrected. 72 The Supreme Court's logic in Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U.S. 275, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 124 L.Ed.2d 182 (1993), is instructive here. In that case, the district court had given the jury an erroneous reasonable-doubt instruction. Although many constitutional errors are amenable to harmless-error review, see Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967), the Court held that the error in Sullivan was not because the entire premise of Chapman review is simply absent, Sullivan, 508 U.S. at 280, 113 S.Ct. 2078. The Court explained: 73 There being no jury verdict of guilty-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt, the question whether the same verdict of guilty-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt would have been rendered absent the constitutional error is utterly meaningless. There is no object, so to speak, upon which harm-less-error scrutiny can operate. 74 Id. 75 As I have said, I reject Padilla's characterization of his sentencing error as structural. However, we are faced with a Sullivan -like problem here. Because we are comparing an unknown with an unknown, we have no object, so to speak, upon which [the prejudice] scrutiny can operate. Id. There are some questions to which no meaningful answer can be given — in other words, where the question's premise simply does not apply. That is the situation here. We are not applying a test to facts, as if the outcome might depend on those facts. Thus, the prejudice analysis of plain-error review in a case such as this is simply illusory. 76 In concluding that this indeterminacy means that Padilla loses on the third step, the majority cites a statement from Jones v. United States: Where the effect of an alleged error is so uncertain, a defendant cannot meet his burden of showing that the error actually affected his substantial rights. 527 U.S. 373, 394-95, 119 S.Ct. 2090, 144 L.Ed.2d 370 (1999). Jones had been convicted of a capital offense and sentenced to death. On appeal, he claimed that an erroneous instruction had led the jury to believe that if it failed to recommend a sentence unanimously (whether life imprisonment or a death sentence), the court would then impose a sentence of less than life. 527 U.S. at 387, 119 S.Ct. 2090. The court in Jones knew the outcome of the process affected by the alleged error: that Jones had in fact been sentenced to death. That type of error lends itself to the traditional prejudice analysis of plain-error review, in which a court must assess the probability of the same outcome even if the error had not occurred. The Court engaged in such a probability analysis when it said that 77 even assuming that the jurors were confused over the consequences of deadlock, petitioner cannot show the confusion necessarily worked to his detriment. It is just as likely that the jurors, loath to recommend a lesser sentence, would have compromised on a sentence of life imprisonment as on a death sentence. 78 Id. at 394-95, 119 S.Ct. 2090. For reasons that I have already explained, that traditional prejudice analysis does not apply to the delegation error at issue in this case. Here, we do not have the equivalent information: namely, how many drug tests probation will require. We are, in short, dealing with a different kind of plain-error problem. Thus the prejudice analysis in Jones has scant relevance to the prejudice issue here. 79 The government insists, however, that we are not dealing with a different kind of plain-error problem. It cites two cases which, in its view, demonstrate that even if a decision was made by the wrong person or institution, the Supreme Court nonetheless applies plain-error review as usual. Those cases are United States v. Cotton, 535 U.S. 625, 122 S.Ct. 1781, 152 L.Ed.2d 860 (2002) (drug quantity omitted from indictment and so decided by judge instead of jury; Court reviewed for plain error); and Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461, 117 S.Ct. 1544, 137 L.Ed.2d 718 (1997) (in prosecution for perjury, the element of materiality was decided by the judge instead of jury; Court reviewed for plain error). In each case, the judge made a decision that the jury should have made. The Court approached the claim of error by reviewing the entire record and concluding that, even if the question had been asked correctly of the jury rather than the judge, the outcome would be the same because the evidence was overwhelming and uncontroverted. Cotton, 535 U.S. at 634, 122 S.Ct. 1781; see also Johnson, 520 U.S. at 470, 117 S.Ct. 1544 (evidence supporting materiality was overwhelming). Those cases did not, however, involve an improper delegation of authority which had never been exercised. They were thus amenable to a traditional kind of plain-error review; they only confirm that we are dealing here with a different kind of error, which necessitates a different approach to plain-error review. 80