Court Opinion

ID: 9476245
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:51:00.829705+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:12.243862
License: Public Domain

HATCHETT, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
I join in the disposition of this case, but for reasons quite different from those expressed by the majority. The district court should be affirmed because no agreement existed. Perdue rejected the offer for an agreement. He cannot now urge the terms of a non-existent “agreement.”
Perdue is engaging in legal “sleight-of-hand.” The government’s offer was for a shorter sentence recommendation in exchange for Perdue’s cooperation and testimony. Perdue rejected the offer. That is the end of the matter.
Perdue now seeks to add a term to the non-existent agreement; he says, “since the government offered a shorter sentence recommendation in exchange for my testimony, the other side of the offer must have been that without my testimony, ’the government would recommend a longer sentence.” He then continues, “I got a longer sentence; therefore, the longer sentence must mean that the government is not entitled to my testimony under any circumstances.” Perdue’s definition of “longer sentence” is his rejection of the offer for the shorter sentence. The simple answer is that the government’s offer did not contain a longer sentence recommendation provision.
Why would the government enter into an “agreement” for a longer sentence without testimony? Such a provision would make no sense. In the absence of an agreement, *988the government would make no recommendation at all and leave the sentence to be imposed to the court. Therefore, Perdue’s “longer sentence” simply means the sentence he received in the absence of an agreement for a shorter sentence.
When an agreement exists, its terms are important; when no agreement exists, as in this case, no terms exist.