Opinion ID: 199110
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Repudiation of the Plea Agreement.

Text: 12 The mainstay of this appeal is the appellant's charge that the prosecutor functionally repudiated the plea agreement by informing the probation officer of his post-plea activities, and made a bad situation worse by uttering pointed remarks about those activities to the court. Since this claim was not aired before the sentencing court, the appellant faces a formidable standard of appellate review. When a defendant has knowledge of conduct ostensibly amounting to a breach of a plea agreement, yet does not bring that breach to the attention of the sentencing court, we review only for plain error. See Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461, 466 (1997); United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 731-32 (1993); see also Fed. R. Crim. P. 52(b). Establishing plain error requires a quadripartite showing: that there was error; that it was plain; that the error affected the defendant's substantial rights; and that the error adversely impacted the fairness, integrity, or public repute of judicial proceedings. See Johnson, 520 U.S. at 467; Olano, 507 U.S. at 732. We sometimes have treated this last prong as a miscarriage-of-justice standard. See e.g., United States v. Alicea, 205 F.3d 480, 484 (1st Cir. 2000). 13 With the standard of review in place, we turn to the facts. The appellant asserts that the government, though arguably adhering to the letter of the plea agreement (it did, after all, recommend both an adjustment for acceptance of responsibility and the agreed sentence) contravened the spirit of the agreement when it presented information regarding the appellant's post-plea activities to the district court. 1 This assertion raises potentially difficult questions concerning how best to reconcile competing centrifugal and centripetal forces: the prosecution's solemn duty to uphold forthrightly its end of any bargain that it makes in a plea agreement, see Santobello v. New York, 404 U.S. 257, 262 (1971), and its equally solemn duty to disclose information material to the court's sentencing determinations, see United States v. Hogan, 862 F.2d 386, 389 (1st Cir. 1988). While these responsibilities admittedly can tug in different directions, we conclude that the government here kept the balance steady and true. 14 The mere furnishing of the information gives us little pause. By statute, [n]o limitation shall be placed on the information concerning the background, character, and conduct of a person convicted of an offense which a court of the United States may receive and consider for the purpose of imposing an appropriate sentence. 18 U.S.C. § 3661. In view of the clear language of this statute, the sentencing judge has a right to expect that the prosecutor and the probation department, at the least, [will] give him all relevant facts within their ken.... Hogan, 862 F.2d at 389. In a nutshell, the government has an unswerving duty to bring all facts relevant to sentencing to the judge's attention. See United States v. Mata-Grullon, 887 F.2d 23, 24 (1st Cir. 1989) (per curiam); United States v. Voccola, 600 F. Supp. 1534, 1538 (D.R.I. 1985). 15 The information gleaned from the SEC was plainly within the compass of this duty. That information bore an easily discernible relationship to the offense conduct and, viewed objectively, cast doubt on the sincerity of the appellant's professions of remorse. Thus, the government, having learned the facts, was obliged to disclose them. See, e.g., Hogan, 862 F.2d at 389; Voccola, 600 F. Supp. at 1538-39. 16 The AUSA's handling of the information at the time of sentencing presents a somewhat different question. A defendant who has entered into a plea agreement with the government, and himself fulfills that agreement, is entitled to the benefit of his bargain. See Santobello, 404 U.S. at 262 (explaining that when a plea rests in any significant degree on a promise or agreement of the prosecutor, so that it can be said to be part of the inducement or consideration, such promise must be fulfilled). Satisfying this obligation requires more than lip service on a prosecutor's part. The Santobello rule proscribe[s] not only explicit repudiation of the government's assurances, but must in the interests of fairness be read to forbid end-runs around them. Voccola, 600 F. Supp. at 1537. 17 There are, however, limits to what a defendant reasonably may expect. See, e.g., United States v. Benchimol, 471 U.S. 453, 455-56 (1985); United States v. Ramos, 810 F.2d 308, 313 (1st Cir. 1987). The government's obligation to furnish relevant information to the sentencing court does not vanish merely because the government has a corollary obligation to honor commitments made under a plea agreement. These two obligations coexist - and prosecutors must manage them so as to give substance to both. 18 Of course, this sort of legal funambulism requires careful balancing. The prosecutor must remain aware of the possibility of conflict. He must discharge both duties conscientiously. And he may not attempt to use one duty as an instrument for thwarting the other. 19 It is against this backdrop that we analyze the appellant's charge that the prosecutor here played fast and loose. The record reveals that, after listening to an extended discourse by defense counsel regarding the post-plea subscription scheme, the court asked the AUSA if he had anything to say in rebuttal. The AUSA responded: 20 The government is bound by its plea agreement and will honor its plea agreement as it should. The information that the Court is referring to here, of course, is post-plea agreement matters [sic] and not known to the government previously. 21 I would comment in this way in response to what you've just been told by counsel, that the defendant submitted some information to some investors. The fact of the matter is that the information that I received from the SEC was found on the Internet and available virtually to the entire financial community and potential investors, it wasn't some minor matter as I understand it. And it was more than just you can earn some money, it had huge figures on it. And in many ways, your Honor, I submit that it mirrors the past activity because it has this deadline of application and so forth. I'm sure the Court has read the material itself, the last portion of it is My Guarantee by Sanjay Saxena. So it's not just the timing of it that concerned the government enough to have provided the material to probation, to the probation department, but also the substantive nature of it that concerns us. 22 At this time, your Honor, the government does not know how much money the defendant may have obtained by this solicitation, or if there is any money under management by the defendant as a result, and I think only the Court can make that inquiry, the government was not in a position to do so. 23 The judge eventually decided that the appellant had not demonstrated an entitlement to a downward adjustment for acceptance of responsibility. He subsequently asked the prosecutor for a specific sentencing recommendation. The prosecutor replied: 24 The government's recommendation in this case is pursuant to our plea agreement. And I'm well aware, your Honor, of the fact that my recommendation is below what the Court has determined the guidelines applicable to be. Nonetheless, bound by that agreement the government does recommend a sentence of 24 months which, of course, was based on the calculations [of] the parties.... 25 Surveying the record in its entirety, we are persuaded that the AUSA's commentary, though not a model of circumspection, did not transgress the plea agreement. We consider it important that the AUSA's remarks came at the court's urging and in direct response to defense counsel's attempt to put an innocent gloss on the post-plea activities. In context, the comments appear reasonably calculated to furnish the court the information that it needed to place those activities in perspective. 26 We also deem it noteworthy that the AUSA approached the matter cautiously. He interspersed his statements with disclaimers about the sketchiness of the available information and the limited extent of the government's knowledge. Perhaps most important, he resolutely stood by the bottom-line recommendation that the government had committed to make, urging a 24-month sentence even after the court had indicated that it would not award an acceptance-of-responsibility adjustment. 27 Despite these countervailing factors, the appellant lobbies for a contrary conclusion. His argument places great weight on two cases in which this court held that the government breached plea agreements. Neither decision assists his cause. 28 In United States v. Clark, 55 F.3d 9 (1st Cir. 1995), the government's sentencing memorandum, after acknowledging that the plea agreement's terms obligated the government not to oppose an adjustment for acceptance of responsibility, went on to state that such largesse would be inappropriate based on post-plea activities undertaken by the defendant. See id. at 12. Because the second statement effectively nullified the government's feeble attempt to meet its original commitment, we found that the government had breached the plea agreement. See id. That is a far cry from the case at hand, in which the prosecutor reported the newly-discovered facts to the court, but nevertheless stuck by the government's agreed recommendations. 29 The appellant's second case, United States v. Canada, 960 F.2d 263 (1st Cir. 1992), is even more readily distinguishable. There, we held that the prosecutor violated a plea agreement because she failed affirmatively to recommend 36 months, as promised, and she went on to emphasize [the defendant's] supervisory role in the offense and then to urge the judge to impose 'a lengthy period of incarceration' and to send 'a very strong message.'  Id. at 269. Here, unlike in Canada, the government at no point suggested - or even insinuated - that the circumstances called for a different sentence than the one it had agreed to recommend. 30 We will not paint the lily. Weighing, on the one hand, the nature of the information relayed by the SEC and its potential relevance to the sentencing determinations that the judge was about to make, and, on the other hand, the prosecutor's comments and the context in which they arose, we hold that the government adequately balanced its promise-keeping and disclosure obligations. See Mata-Grullon, 887 F.2d at 24-25 (holding that the government did not attempt an impermissible end-run around a plea agreement promise when the prosecutor made the agreed recommendation, but accurately informed the court of the purity and danger of the drugs involved in the offense of conviction). Thus, we discern no error - plain or otherwise - in the handling of the disposition hearing. 31