Court Opinion

ID: 9499683
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:55:08.01739+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:39.913977
License: Public Domain

MELLOY, Circuit Judge, with whom BRIGHT, Circuit Judge,
joins, dissenting.
I believe that the Government has gained an unfair advantage by withdrawing from its plea agreement with Norris after he pleaded guilty under oath. Therefore, I respectfully dissent.
Initially, I must note that I am not persuaded by Judge Gruender’s plurality opinion and Judge Colloton’s concurrence in their attempts to circumvent what I find to be irreconcilable circuit law. Despite the language in United States v. McGovern, 822 F.2d 739, 744 (8th Cir.1987), United States v. Walker, 927 F.2d 389, 390 (8th Cir.1991), and United States v. Wessels, 12 F.3d 746, 753 (8th Cir.1993), we have repeatedly said that “[p]lea agreements are contractual in nature, and should be interpreted according to general contract principles.” United States v. De-Witt, 366 F.3d 667, 669 (8th Cir.2004); see United States v. Young, 223 F.3d 905, 911 (8th Cir.2000) (using contract interpretation to determine that “the government is entitled to the benefit of its bargain”). I recognize that the factual situations in De-Witt and Young differ from the facts in this case. However, I believe these cases stand for the proposition that plea agreements are contracts, and therefore should be governed as such.
In particular, I do not believe Young is as easily distinguishable as the opinions of Judge Gruender and Judge Colloton suggest. I read Young for the proposition that Young’s withdrawal from the plea agreement itself (not any pre-plea agreement) was the triggering event, or breach, that allowed the Government to reap “the benefit of its bargain.” Young, 223 F.3d at 911. The court in Young made no mention of pre-plea agreements; in fact, the thrust of Young was whether the plea agreement as a whole was a valid agreement. Once the court determined that the plea agreement was valid, traditional contract principles applied, and Young’s failure to follow through on his agreement to plead guilty resulted in a breach. The attempt to reconcile Young with the concept that either party may withdraw from a plea agreement prior to its acceptance by the district court is belied by the penultimate para*1059graph of Young, where this Court expressed its holding:
We are satisfied that, when Young signed the plea agreement, he was aware of the benefits he was securing, the rights he was foregoing, and the consequences of breaching the agreement. We find no evidence that he entered into the agreement involuntarily or unknowingly. Thus, the government is entitled to the benefit of its bargain ....

Id.

When comparing the situation in Young with the situation here, it is evident that Norris should also receive the benefit of his bargain. In the Yotmg case, Young and the Government entered into a valid plea agreement. Young breached the plea agreement before the court accepted it. Because the Government was willing to perform, the court determined that the Government was entitled to the benefit of its bargain. Here, it was the Government that breached before the court accepted the agreement, and it was Norris who was willing to perform. If we were willing to abide by traditional contract principles in Young, we must apply those principles here, as well.
We do not have to decide the simple issue of whether Young applies when the roles are reversed, however, because Norris went further than simply signing a plea agreement.12 At his change-of-plea hearing, Norris went to the podium, the court swore him in, and the court “address[ed][him] personally in open court.” Fed.R.Crim.P. 11(b)(1). The court then led him through the Rule 11(b)(1) requirements: it made sure Norris understood the nature of the charge he was pleading to and the maximum possible penalty; it told him that anything he said during the course' of the proceeding that is later determined to be false could subject him to prosecution for perjury; it determined that Norris knew what he did was against the law; it determined that Norris knew the pros and cons of pleading guilty to this charge; it determined that Norris understood he was waiving his right to a jury trial; it explained that counsel would be appointed for him; it told him that he had the right to subpoena witnesses on his on behalf at trial, and to confront and cross-examine witnesses that the Government would call; and it determined that he knew he was giving up the right to appeal his guilty finding to a higher court. The court then asked Norris’s attorney to summarize the terms of the plea agreement. The plea agreement required Norris to plead guilty to Count One of the indictment: conspiracy to distribute more than fifty grams of crack cocaine. Norris did that, stating, “I did it.... I knew it was against the law.” The court then had Norris confirm that Norris’s signature was on the bottom of the plea agreement and that he was given sufficient time to read and discuss it with his attorney. It was at this point, when the court had nearly completed its Rule 11 inquiry, that the Government interjected and withdrew from the agreement. The plea agreement in this *1060case was no longer executory; Norris had fully performed under the agreement.
The plurality opinion makes broad statements based on both Supreme Court and Eighth Circuit law that plea agreements have no real meaning “unless and until the trial judge approves the bargain and accepts the guilty plea.” McGovern, 822 F.2d at 744. It points to no cases, however, in which the defendant has actually performed his part of the bargain. This is what makes the present case fundamentally different from Mabry v. Johnson, 467 U.S. 604, 104 S.Ct. 2543, 81 L.Ed.2d 437 (1984), and any case we have decided, where one of the parties to the plea agreement withdrew prior to one party actually performing all that he promised to do in exchange for the other party’s promise.
While I believe contract-law principles alone warrant specific performance of the agreement in this case, the fact that this is a contract between the Government and a criminal defendant regarding his liberty carries additional significance. We require more than just contract law protections in plea bargain cases in order to safeguard the defendant’s constitutional rights. See United States v. Van Thournout, 100 F.3d 590, 594 (8th Cir.1996) (stating that a plea agreement “must be attended by constitutional safeguards to ensure a defendant receives the performance he [or she] is due”) (emphasis added). Because plea agreements, “necessarily implicated the integrity of the criminal justice system,” the Government must be held “to a greater degree of responsibility” during plea negotiations than the defendant. United States v. Wood, 378 F.3d 342, 348 (4th Cir.2004) (citing, in part, McGovern, 822 F.2d at 743) (internal marks omitted).13
As a result of the unique setting for such agreements, the Government’s breach has constitutional significance. Although I am willing to accept the proposition that the mere signing of a plea agreement does not carry constitutional import, I believe that the entry of a guilty plea by a defendant has independent constitutional ramifications. See Hall v. Luebbers, 341 F.3d 706, 716 (8th Cir.2003) (“If the defendant has not pled guilty or the trial court has not accepted a plea and entered judgment, the defendant has not been deprived of his constitutional rights.”) (emphasis added). The entry of a guilty plea requires a court’s involvement and it includes the waiver, under oath, of several important constitutional rights. It also strongly implicates the defendant’s liberty interest. Once the court is involved and has accept*1061ed the defendant’s waiver of his constitutional rights, even if not taking the formal step of accepting the plea agreement itself, the Government can no longer withdraw from the agreement. At this point, the advantage the Government gains from the guilty plea becomes unfair, see Wessels, 12 F.3d at 753, and violates the defendant’s right to fundamental fairness under the Due Process Clause. U.S. Const, amend. V.
As the Court stated in Santobello v. New York, 404 U.S. 257, 92 S.Ct. 495, 30 L.Ed.2d 427 (1971), all of the benefits of plea bargaining “presuppose fairness in securing agreement between an accused and a prosecutor.” Id. at 261, 92 S.Ct. 495. While there is “no absolute right to have a guilty plea accepted” by the court, a defendant’s plea “must, of course, be voluntary and knowing and if it was induced by promises, the essence of those promises must in some way be made known.” Id. at 261-62, 92 S.Ct. 495. According to the Court in Santobello, the plea bargaining phase
must be attended by safeguards to insure the defendant what is reasonably due in the circumstances. Those circumstances will vary, but a constant factor is 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.
Id. at 262, 92 S.Ct. 495.
Norris’s plea, which was tendered to the court, was based on the Government’s promise that it would not “file any additional charges or pursue additional forfeiture action against defendant arising out of the present offenses or investigation.” Norris had seen the evidence the Government had against him for his acts in 2001, and he agreed to the Government’s offer based on this information. Thus, according to Santobello and Mabry, the Government must now perform its end of the bargain. This proposition is particularly true under the facts of this case, where the Government attorneys knew at the time the agreement was signed that they did not intend to perform as promised, yet did not disclose that fact to the defendant, his attorney, or the court until after the Rule 11 proceeding was essentially complete.
Judge Gruender’s plurality opinion holds that Norris cannot yet prove that the Government has gained an unfair advantage by its failure to meet its end of the bargain. It states that “the proper time for this Court to rule on the issue is after the Government’s proceedings against Norris are complete.” The plurality admits that use of Norris’s admission of guilt by the Government “would almost certainly constitute an unfair advantage,” and they are undoubtedly correct.14 However, the Government has already gained an advantage by convincing Norris to admit, in open court, his part in a conspiracy to distribute more than fifty grams of crack cocaine and provide factual details of his involvement. This information will inform every decision the Government and Norris now make: *1062the Government’s decision to offer Norris another plea agreement, the terms of that agreement, decisions the Government makes regarding sentencing recommendations, and any decisions the Government and Norris would make should Norris decide to go to trial. The Government would gain that advantage, I admit, even if Norris had merely signed the plea agreement. Had Norris withdrawn from the plea agreement before he pleaded guilty, any advantage gained by the Government would not have been unfair. Similarly, had new evidence been discovered relating to Norris’s case, or had the Government withdrawn prior to the Rule 11 inquiry, any advantage would not have been unfair because Norris would have known that this was a risk. However, because the Government waited until Norris had fully performed under the agreement before withdrawing, the advantage it gained in this case is unfair.
Further, the plurality opinion’s purported remedy of allowing Norris to appeal this issue in the future has very little practical effect. By the time Norris is “allowed” to argue unfair advantage, he will likely have already entered into a new plea agreement because he is now faced with a twenty-count indictment, far more prison time, and a significant amount of evidence against him. Not only will his next plea likely have a clause forbidding him from appealing under most circumstances, it will likely be held valid and binding by the future appellate court because it will have been entered into knowingly and voluntarily. See Mabry, 467 U.S. at 508-509, 104 S.Ct. 2543 (“It is only when the consensual character of the plea is called into question that the validity of a guilty plea may be impaired.”). The Court in Santobello did include as a possible remedy giving the defendant the chance to withdraw his guilty plea and enter into a new one; however, the Court assumed that the defendant in that case would “plead anew to the original charge.” Santobello, 404 U.S. at 263, 92 S.Ct. 495 n. 2. Whatever option Norris now chooses will place him in a worse position than he was before the Government withdrew its consent to the plea agreement. Because it waited to withdraw that consent until after Norris had fully performed, I believe the Government deprived Norris of his constitutional right to due process.
For the foregoing reasons, I part ways with the majority, and I would grant Norris’s motion for specific performance of the plea agreement.

. Nor do we have to decide the respective rights of the parties when the Government obtains new information about a defendant after the plea agreement is signed. No such new information was obtained in this case. As the district court found, and Judge Gruen-der's plurality opinion discusses, the decision to not honor the unexecuted plea agreement resulted from a file review by AUSA Ambrose, not the receipt of new evidence. Moreover, in this case the Government went ahead and signed the agreement on the morning of the plea proceeding after the file review and with full knowledge of all relevant information. Certainly, nothing new was learned in the few minutes between the execution of the agreement and the plea proceeding where the contract was repudiated.

. Judge Gruender’s plurality opinion also cites McGovern for the proposition that plea agreements implicate the integrity of the criminal justice system. One can only wonder how the plurality's analysis enhances the integrity of the criminal justice system when it acknowledges that the Government attorneys knew they would not honor the agreement as-written prior to its signing. As the plurality opinion notes, AUSA Ambrose decided the evening before the plea proceeding, and before the signing of the agreement, that he was imposing an interpretation of the agreement that was clearly at odds with its express language. Yet neither he nor AUSA Mahoney felt compelled to advise the defendant that the Government would not honor the agreement as drafted prior to its signing, or to inform the court of its decision prior to plea proceedings; AUSA Mahoney waited until the defendant had essentially completed the Rule 11 colloquy to convey this crucial change in interpretation.
The plurality accepts the government’s proposition that it may withdraw from a written signed plea agreement for any reason, or no reason at all, at any time prior to its acceptance by the district court. Assuming that to be true, as the plurality opinion holds, the credibility and good faith of the U.S. Attorney is seriously called into question when it exercises that discretion. It is hard to envision how such a loss of credibility by the U.S. Attorney enhances the integrity of the criminal justice system.

. Judge Gruender's plurality opinion and Judge Colloton's concurrence both take the Government at its word when it promised this Court that it will not use Norris’s plea colloquy statements against him in any proceeding for any purpose. However, the Government candidly admitted at oral argument that its promise to not use Norris’s statements is on no higher legal footing than the promises made in the written plea agreement, which the Government filed with the court and then repudiated. Under the analysis of the plurality’s opinion and Judge Colloton’s concurrence, the Government’s promise not to use the statements against Norris would be no more enforceable than the breached promise in the plea agreement.