Court Opinion

ID: 9497970
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:04:56.715089+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:32.176545
License: Public Domain

KLEINFELD, Circuit Judge,
with whom GOULD and TALLMAN, Circuit Judges, join,
dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc:
I respectfully dissent from denial of rehearing en banc.
The error that we need to correct was made, not by the panel in this case, but by our en banc decision in Ellis v. United States District Court.1 The panel in this case correctly noted2 that the Ellis en banc decision overturned the established *1102circuit law, United States v. Cordova-Perez,3 which had been followed by the three-judge panel in Ellis. While perhaps the panel should have read the Supreme Court’s decision in Ohio v. Johnson4 as limiting the logic of Ellis, I think that the panel in the case at bar correctly read Ellis as taking us on a course that made such a limitation difficult.
Ellis, though, was wrong. In our en banc decision, we let a prosecutor and defendant bind a court to a second degree murder conviction. The district court had tried to vacate the plea because the pre-sentence report showed that the crime was a cold-blooded, premeditated, thrill killing — as clear a first degree murder as there could be. We rejected the district court’s decision based on a misreading of a Supreme Court decision that had reversed us in quite a different context, United States v. Hyde.5 Now we continue down the mistaken path we chose in the Ellis en banc.
I thought that the district court judge was right in Ellis, and explained why in the repudiated panel opinion in that case.6 And I explained why the en banc decision was mistaken in my dissent from the en banc decision in Ellis.7 My reasoning is in print and need not be repeated here.
Now we reap what we sowed in Ellis. Again a defendant ties the court into needless knots, preventing a just resolution of the case that would take into account the defendant’s actual conduct. I would have taken this case en banc to correct the mistake we made in the Ellis en banc decision, and its consequence in this case.

. Ellis v. United States Dist. Court, 356 F.3d 1198 (9th Cir.2004) (en banc).

. United States v. Patterson, 381 F.3d 859, 864-65 (9th Cir.2004).

. United States v. Cordova-Perez, 65 F.3d 1552 (9th Cir.1995).

. Ohio v. Johnson, 467 U.S. 493, 104 S.Ct. 2536, 81 L.Ed.2d 425 (1984).

. United States v. Hyde, 520 U.S. 670, 117 S.Ct. 1630, 137 L.Ed.2d 935 (1997).

. Ellis v. United States Dist. Court, 294 F.3d 1094 (9th Cir.2002), vacated, 313 F.3d 1094 (9th Cir.), and superseded, 356 F.3d 1198 (9th Cir.2004).

. Ellis, 356 F.3d at 1228-41 (Kleinfeld, J., dissenting).