Court Opinion

ID: 9836801
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-02 03:15:06.939374+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:45:18.928404
License: Public Domain

CRAWFORD, Chief Judge
(concurring in the result):
I concur in the disposition of this case based solely on appellate government counsel’s concession. See United States v. Williams, 53 MJ 293 (2000)(Crawford, C.J., concurring). This is a case of detrimental reliance with a simple solution — make appellant financially whole. See United States v. Cooke, 11 MJ 257 (CMA 1981); see also United States v. Koopman, 20 MJ 106 (CMA 1985). The Government’s surrender under the cover of United States v. Mitchell, 50 MJ 79 (1999), a case unlike the one at bar, is a mystery to me, for I can find no evidence that appellant’s plea was other than freely, voluntarily, and intelligently made.
Prior to trial, appellant negotiated a pretrial agreement in which the convening authority agreed to suspend any adjudged confinement in excess of 36 months for 12 additional months. Through a combination of deferment and waiver actions, the convening authority also agreed to leave appellant with $400 pay each month until 6 months after the convening authority acted, provided appellant initiated an allotment in that amount payable to Kathleen Hardcastle.
According to a memorandum by Major Schum, appellant’s trial defense counsel, he contacted the Disbursing Office for the 1st Force Service Support Group units at Camp Pendleton, California. Major Schum explained his proposed pretrial agreement, as it related to forfeiture of pay, and also explained appellant would reach the end of his active service while in confinement. Then, Major Schum relates:
The Disbursing Office representative told me that if the convening authority agreed to the specific terms of the proposed agreement, Private Hardcastle would still receive the $400.00 pay per month for his son. The representative believed that the deferment and waiver of automatic forfeitures would keep him from entering a no-pay status while eonfined past his end of active service.
Appellant was sentenced on June 3, 1997, 11 days prior to the end of his enlistment contract with the Marine Corps. In reliance on his defense counsel’s advice and facing a maximum punishment that included, inter alia, 20 years’ confinement, appellant pled guilty to distributing and using methamphetamines. The military judge sentenced him to a bad-conduct discharge, 30 months of confinement, total forfeitures, and reduction to E-l. The record is silent as to what, if any, pay appellant received subsequent to his court-martial.
The record does show that on October 3, 1997, appellant submitted an extensive clemency request to the convening authority pur*304suant to RCM 1105 and 1106, Manual for Courts-Martial, United States (1995 ed.), Although appellant was incarcerated during June, July, August, and September, 1997 (subsequent to the expiration of his enlisted service), there is no mention in any of these clemency matters about Kathleen Hardcastle not receiving $400 a month or the Government failing to keep its end of the pre-trial agreement bargain. On October 17, 1997, the convening authority took action deferring and waiving the forfeitures in accordance with the pretrial agreement.
In September 1998, over a year after his court-martial convened, appellant filed an affidavit claiming that he entered into this pretrial agreement solely to secure the benefit of financial support for his son. Interestingly, appellant has submitted no evidence of what funds, if any, were disbursed to Kathleen Hardcastle in accordance with the pretrial agreement. The Government has produced no pay records, or any other evidence, to show what money, if any, Ms. Hardcastle has received.
Justice has no price tag and pretrial agreements can not always fit within the strictures of contract-law principles. Koopman, supra at 110. However, so long as contract-law principles are not outweighed by Constitutional protections and imperatives, we will follow those principles when examining relevant aspects of pretrial agreements. United States v. Acevedo, 50 MJ 169, 172 (1999); see Government of Virgin Islands v. Scotland, 614 F.2d 360, 364 (3d Cir.1980); cf. United States v. Olson, 25 MJ 293, 297 (CMA 1987).
Both Olson and its purported progeny, Mitchell, are grounded on the precept that if or when an appellant does not receive the benefit of his bargain, the plea will be treated as improvident. Nothing in these decisions prohibits the Government from belatedly compensating an appellant to make him whole. Furthermore, nothing prohibits a lower court from ordering specific performance by the Government to ensure a servicemember gets that to which he or she is entitled.
When the misunderstanding in a pretrial agreement involves fiscal considerations, the better practice is to allow the Government the option of placing both parties in the respective positions for which they bargained. In this case, the Government could have paid appellant $400 per month for the number of months agreed upon, plus interest, and restored appellant to the position for which he freely and voluntarily bargained.
Based on appellate government counsel’s concession, I assume that the Department of the Navy has no mechanism available to make appellant whole. Similarly, I presume that counsel believes that the lower court has no ability to fashion an appropriate remedy for any failure by the Government to live up to its end of the agreement. Accordingly, I join, albeit reluctantly, in setting aside the findings and sentence and permitting the Government the opportunity to shoulder the expense of a rehearing in this case.