Court Opinion

ID: 9842656
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:11:38.743985+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:13:24.572806
License: Public Domain

HARRY T. EDWARDS, Chief Judge,
concurring in the judgment:
I concur in the judgment of the court. I write separately, however, because I feel that the court’s disposition of the so-called Blackledge/Menna issue under the rubric of “waiver” warrants further explanation.
Appellant Drew has argued to the court that his conviction for violating 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), pursuant to a plea of guilty, must be vacated because the statute, both on its face and as applied in this case, *881violates the Second and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution. The Government, citing United States v. Broce, 488 U.S. 563, 109 S.Ct. 757, 102 L.Ed.2d 927 (1989), argues that Drew is barred from raising these constitutional challenges, because, normally, a guilty plea is not subject to later challenge before an appellate court. Drew, citing Blackledge v. Perry, 417 U.S. 21, 94 S.Ct. 2098, 40 L.Ed.2d 628 (1974), and Menna v. New York, 423 U.S. 61, 96 S.Ct. 241, 46 L.Ed.2d 195 (1975), responds that a defendant normally retains the right to challenge the constitutionality of a statute even following a guilty plea.
The majority opinion holds that Drew’s attempt to invoke the Blackledge/Menna exception fails for two reasons: first, the constitutional issues now raised by Drew were “waived” when he failed to raise them first with the trial court; and, second, the constitutional questions need not be reached by this court, because they do not present a “jurisdictional” question. I fail to comprehend this line of analysis in light of my understanding of the Black-ledge/Menna exception.
There are a number of potential theories of “waiver” and “forfeiture” in the criminal context. One is the well-known “plain-error” rule, most recently explained in full in United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 731, 113 S.Ct. 1770, 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (1993). As the Court noted there, “[n]o procedural principle is more familiar to this Court than that a constitutional right, or a right of any other sort, may be forfeited in criminal as well as civil cases by the failure to make timely assertion of the right before a tribunal having jurisdiction to determine it.” Id. (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Absent “plain error,” objections not timely raised at trial normally cannot be raised on appeal.
Another theory of forfeiture/waiver arises in the context of post-trial, collateral attacks. In such cases, absent a showing of “cause and prejudice,” a defendant is barred from raising a constitutional challenge that could have been raised at trial. See, e.g., United States v. Frady, 456 U.S. 152, 167, 102 S.Ct. 1584, 71 L.Ed.2d 816 (1982).
An entirely different line of inquiry arises with respect to challenges that follow a guilty plea. As noted above, the general rule in such cases is that a conviction pursuant to a guilty plea is not subject to later challenge before an appellate court. See Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614, 621, 118 S.Ct. 1604, 140 L.Ed.2d 828 (1998). The principal exception to this rule is the so-called Blackledge/Menna principle that “a plea of guilty to a charge does not waive a claim that — judged on its face — the charge is one which the State may not constitutionally prosecute.” Menna, 423 U.S. at 62-63 n. 2, 96 S.Ct. 241. The Blackledge/Menna exception does not depend upon whether the objection is labeled “jurisdictional,” at least the Supreme Court has never said this. Rather, the critical issue seems to be whether the constitutional challenge involves a claimed right by the defendant “not to be haled into court at all upon the felony charge.” Broce, 488 U.S. at 575, 109 S.Ct. 757 (quoting Blackledge, 417 U.S. at 30-31, 94 S.Ct. 2098). In Broce, the Court made it clear that the Blackledge/Menna exception is not without limits, holding that a guilty plea barred a later double jeopardy claim where the violation was not clear on the face of the indictment. 488 U.S. at 576, 109 S.Ct. 757.
The question that we face is whether there should be an additional barrier to the invocation of the Blackledge/Menna exception, i.e., whether a defendant must raise the constitutional objection before the trial court first in order to be able to raise it later before an appellate court. The Supreme Court has never addressed this issue.
Nor has this court ever addressed this issue. The majority’s reliance on United States v. Baucum, 80 F.3d 539 (D.C.Cir. 1996), United States v. Badru, 97 F.3d 1471 (D.C.Cir.1996), and United States v. David, 96 F.3d 1477 (D.C.Cir.1996), is mis*882placed. Baucum, Badru, and David are simple “plain error” cases. Even though they talk in terms of “waiver” and “bar,” they can mean nothing more than “forfeiture.” As the Supreme Court said in Ola-no, “[wjaiver is different from forfeiture. Whereas forfeiture is the failure to make the timely assertion of a right, waiver is the intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right.” 507 U.S. 725, 733, 113 S.Ct. 1770, 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (1993) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). If the majority means to suggest that, in a post-trial context, constitutional challenges raised on appeal that were not raised below are automatically waived — with no possible inquiry into plain error — that is simply wrong. The Supreme Court has made it clear that “[a] rigid and undeviating judicially declared practice under which courts of review would invariably and under all circumstances decline to consider all questions which had not previously been specifically urged would be out of harmony with ... the rules of fundamental justice.” Id. at 732, 113 S.Ct. 1770 (quoting Hormel v. Helvering, 312 U.S. 552, 557, 61 S.Ct. 719, 85 L.Ed. 1037 (1941)). The forfeiture analysis as articulated in Olano is the law of the land, and our circuit has no authority to change it to some rigid standard of waiver.
In any case, Baucum, Badru, and David have nothing whatsoever to do with the application of the Blackledge/Menna exception. The court in Baucum discussed Blackledge/Menna because the defendant in that case raised the novel question of whether a facial challenge to the constitutionality of a criminal statute is sl jurisdictional question that can be raised at any time. 80 F.3d at 540. The panel in Baucum recognized that the Blackledge/Menna line of authority lent some support to the defendant’s claim. But Baucum does not purport to apply the Blackledge/Menna exception. In fact, Blackledge/Menna has no direct bearing on the issues in Baucum — it is discussed merely by way of analogy. So I fail to understand the majority’s reliance on these three cases in its resolution of the Blackledge/Menna issue.
The majority opinion appears to suggest that the mere failure to raise a constitutional challenge before the trial court automatically “waives” a defendant’s right to pursue the issues in a subsequent attack under the Blackledge/Menna exception. The Supreme Court has never said this, and, so far as I can tell, none of our sister circuits subscribe to such a rule.
If a court faces a situation in which a defendant has pled guilty to a charge with respect to which it is facially clear that he could not be prosecuted — ie., as that is understood under the Blackledge/Menna principle — it would be an extraordinary proposition to say that the defendant will nonetheless go to jail because he failed to object before the trial court. The Fifth Circuit seemed to recognize this problem in United States v. Knowles, 29 F.3d 947 (5th Cir.1994). The defendant there pled guilty to possession of a firearm in a school zone. Shortly after judgment in Knowles, the court of appeals, in another case, ruled that the underlying statute upon which the charge in Knowles was based was unconstitutional, because Congress had not properly invoked its power under the Commerce Clause when it enacted the statute. The defendant in Knowles never raised this constitutional challenge before the trial court. The court of appeals, however, first employed the “plain error” rule to determine whether to entertain the challenge, then, finding no forfeiture, the court considered the claim on the merits pursuant to the Blackledge/Menna exception. The Fifth Circuit flatly rejected the Government’s claim that the defendant’s guilty plea barred consideration of the constitutional claim:
Noting that a guilty plea generally waives defects in the underlying proceedings, the government also claims that Knowles’s conviction on Count Two is proper because Knowles pleaded guilty. This argument is not persuasive. We have reversed other convictions against defendants who had pleaded *883guilty to charges brought under the Gun Free School Zones Act. See United States v. Handy, 8 F.3d 20 (5th Cir. 1993) (unpublished). We have done so for the well-established reason that a guilty plea does not waive the right of the defendant to challenge the constitutionality of the statute under which he is convicted. See Menna v. New York, 423 U.S. 61, 62-63 n. 2, 96 S.Ct. 241, 242 n. 2, 46 L.Ed.2d 195 (1975) (“[A] plea of guilty to a charge does not waive a claim that — judged on its face — the charge is one which the State may not constitutionally prosecute.”).
Id. at 952.
In other words, the court in Knowles addressed the forfeiture issue through the normal “plain error” lens, and then applied the Supreme Court’s “judged on its face/ the charge is one which the State may not constitutionally ‘prosecute” test in allowing an invocation of the Blackledge/Menna exception. I think this is the correct approach. There are not many cases in which a defendant is going to be able to satisfy both the plain error rule and the Blackledge/Menna standard to gain review where no objection has been raised in the trial court. Nonetheless, the Knowles approach ensures protection for those few defendants whose alleged “guilt” is illusory, because it is clear on the face of the charge that the State had no constitutionally sound basis upon which to prosecute.
Drew argues that section 922(g)(8) violates the Second and the Fifth Amendments. These challenges raise no plain error. As the Supreme Court has noted, a challenge not raised below will not meet the plain error standard unless it “seriously affeet[s] the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings.” Olano, 507 U.S. at 732, 113 S.Ct. 1770 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). The issues raised by Drew do not come close to meeting the high standards of plain error. Indeed, as the Government noted in its brief, Drew’s constitutional challenges are largely baseless. See Br. and Addendum for Appellee at 11 n.5.
I concur in the judgment in the instant case, not simply because Drew failed to raise his constitutional claims before the trial court, but because he has failed to demonstrate any plain error in the judgment based on his guilty plea. Absent plain error, I agree that Drew forfeited his right to raise his claims before this court. Because there is no plain error in this case, there is no reason to address whether Drew’s claim on its face implicates the constitutional power of the Government to prosecute. In short, Drew cannot resort to the Blackledge/Menna exception to raise his constitutional claims.