Court Opinion

ID: 9746906
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 14:43:44.941209+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:18.091079
License: Public Domain

SCHWELB, Associate Judge,
dissenting:
As my colleagues in the majority acknowledge, Eldridge explicitly concedes in his brief that he is not entitled to prevail either on his motion to withdraw his plea, see Super Ct.Crim.R. 32(e), or on his motion to vacate sentence, see D.C.Gode § 23-110 (1989), unless he is able to demonstrate manifest injustice. Wilson v. United *700States, 592 A.2d 1009, 1013 (D.C.1991) (per curiam); McClurkin v. United States, 472 A.2d 1348, 1352 (D.C.1984). In my opinion, he has made no such showing.
My colleagues do not deny that Eldridge was duly advised of the offenses of which he would be found guilty under the terms of the revised plea agreement. It is likewise undisputed that he was told of the maximum sentence for each crime to which he was entering a plea, including the crime of burglary (which was the subject of the added charge). Eldridge also expressly admitted that he had committed the burglary which Count 20 addressed. The defect which my colleagues perceive in this proceeding is that Eldridge apparently was not explicitly advised that he was now pleading guilty to nine counts instead of eight, and that his exposure was increased accordingly-
It would no doubt have been preferable if the judge or trial counsel had specifically told Eldridge that the number of counts in the original plea package had been increased in the revised agreement. I cannot agree, however, that the apparent failure so to advise him resulted in manifest injustice. In fact, Eldridge was apparently being offered a pretty good deal, for a large majority of the charges against him were dismissed. His trial counsel apprehended that if his client rejected the revised plea offer, he might be convicted of all thirty-seven counts. The attorney was also concerned that the government might learn of still further rapes and burglaries. Imprisonment for the rest of Eldridge’s life could thus become a virtual certainty, rather than a possibility.
The increase in Eldridge’s potential sentencing exposure occasioned by the revised plea agreement was more theoretical than real. Under the original package, Eldridge was to plead guilty to two rape-related charges, each carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, as well as to six other charges; considering all eight counts, he could have received sentences totalling fifty-five years to life. In other words, even before the ninth count was added, the judge could have kept Eldridge under lock and key for most of the remainder of his life. After Eldridge entered a plea to Count 20, all but nine of the thirty-seven counts were dismissed, and Eldridge’s exposure was only marginally different under the revised plea agreement.1 Moreover, the sentence imposed by the judge was substantially less than the maximum which he could have imposed under the original eight-count plea agreement.
Eldridge knowingly and voluntarily entered pleas of guilty to the commission of brutal, armed, and in most cases sex-related crimes against five different women.2 It was he who initially failed to go through with the previously negotiated plea agreement. Under these circumstances, I discern no injustice, manifest or otherwise, in the trial judge’s resolution of the case. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.

. This may have been what the prosecutor meant when he referred to the changes in the plea agreement as "slight.” It is true that El-dridge was sentenced to serve no less than five years and no more than fifteen on Count 20, which was not part of the original package. We do not know, however, whether the same sentences would have been imposed on the other counts under the original package; the judge "may have chosen to spread the aggregate sentence over all of the counts.” Bean v. United States, 606 A.2d 770, 772 (D.C.1992) (per curiam).

. My colleagues do not discuss the facts of the crimes which Eldridge committed. Briefly, according to the prosecution’s proffers, almost all of which he conceded to be accurate, Eldridge raped and robbed two victims’in separate incidents; choked a third woman and beat her about the head and breasts, intending to rape her; choked and punched a fourth woman; and burglarized the apartment of a fifth woman after swinging a chair at her, pulling her sweater over her head, and removing her jewelry. With due respect to my colleagues, I do not understand how the severity and depravity of Eldridge's crimes could be irrelevant to the question whether the sentence resulting from the perceived defect in the trial court's proceedings was “manifestly unjust.”