Court Opinion

ID: 9472017
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:47:04.370839+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:42.030465
License: Public Domain

HEANEY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. Hill alleges his attorney told him before he agreed to plead guilty that he would be eligible for parole after serving one-third of his sentence less good time, or approximately six years. In fact, Arkansas law requires Hill, as a second offender, to serve at least one-half of his sentence less good time, or nine years. The Fourth Circuit regards as incompetent an attorney who wrongly informs a client contemplating a plea bargain that the client will spend less time incarcerated than the published law mandates. O’Tuel v. Osborne, 706 F.2d 498, 500 (4th Cir.1983); Strader v. Garrison, 611 F.2d 61, 63 (4th Cir.1979). I agree, and would remand Hill’s cause to the district court for an evidentiary hearing.
A defendant who pleads guilty has no less of a right to effective assistance of counsel than the defendant who goes to trial. “When a defendant pleads guilty on the advice of counsel, the attorney has the duty to advise the defendant of the available options and possible consequences.” Beckham v. Wainwright, 639 F.2d 262, 267 (5th Cir.1981) (citing Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742, 756, 90 S.Ct. 1463, 1473, 25 L.Ed.2d 747 (1970)). “A guilty plea must represent the informed, self-determined choice of the defendant among practicable alternatives; a guilty plea cannot be a conscious, informed choice if the accused relies upon counsel who performs ineffectively in advising him regarding the consequences of entering a guilty plea and of the feasible options.” Hawkman v. Parratt, 661 F.2d 1161, 1170 (8th Cir.1981) (citations omitted).
What singles this case out from the myriad of habeas cases in which defendants claim their attorneys misled them into pleading guilty is the allegation that Hill’s attorney misinformed him on the applicable law. In Strader, the defendant’s lawyer assured his client that by pleading guilty and accepting a thirty-year sentence to run concurrently with a prior sentence, the defendant would not extend his prior parole eligibility date. This advice ran contrary to a published regulation of the state department of corrections which required recom-putation of parole eligibility upon imposition of an additional concurrent sentence. In holding that the attorney’s misinformation constituted ineffective assistance of counsel, the Court stated:
This was not just a prediction that was not realized. The lawyer could have discovered the applicable rule had he looked in the published material, but he did not. The result was that Strader entered his guilty plea believing that his new eligibility date would be several years sooner than the regulations permitted.
Strader v. Garrison, supra, 611 F.2d at 63.
Similarly, in O’Tuel v. Osborne, supra, 706 F.2d at 499, the Court found an attorney ineffective when he failed to discover the applicable statute had been amended and consequently informed his client that he would be eligible for parole after ten years instead of the actual twenty.
*574The failure to properly instruct one’s client on the consequences of published law also distinguishes Hill’s case from United States v. Degand, 614 F.2d 176 (8th Cir. 1980), relied on by the majority. Degand claimed his counsel misled him to believe that his state and federal sentences would run concurrently. At sentencing, Degand’s attorney expressed his “hope that your action, Your Honor, would make it possible that we might combine time-wise the ® * * imprisonment in Illinois and the federal punishment at the hands of the Federal Government in this case.” Id. at 178. Any advice Degand’s attorney gave him was based on hope of leniency rather than a misreading of the law. This distinction is important because Degand waived any reliance on his attorney’s assurances of leniency when he acknowledged at the plea hearing that sentencing was in the sole discretion of the trial judge. Nothing said at Hill’s plea hearing would have alerted him to his attorney’s legal error. The court did not address parole eligibility until after accepting the plea. Even then, the court reinforced the attorney’s error by stating Hill would have to serve “at least one-third of his sentence.”
The majority distinguishes the Fourth Circuit precedents by asserting they involved “gross misconduct” by the attorneys. The majority does not attempt to define gross misconduct or distinguish the alleged misconduct of Hill’s attorney. The seriousness of the attorney’s misconduct cannot be calculated by merely figuring the number of years in prison the attorney’s mistake cost the defendant. In Strader, the Court did not state the exact number of years the overlooked regulation pushed back Strader’s parole eligibility date, but noted it was “several.” At any rate, we cannot measure an attorney’s misconduct by the relative seriousness of the defendant’s offense and the consequent length of sentence.' Furthermore, the magnitude of the alleged oversight in this case is no less than in the Fourth Circuit eases. In Strader, the attorney did not look up the department of corrections’ regulations; in O’Tuel, the attorney did not check the statute for amendments; here, the attorney allegedly did not consult the statute applicable to second offenders. In each case, the attorney failed to do the minimal research necessary to ascertain the applicable law. The Strader Court was justified in labeling this failing “gross misconduct.”
I agree with the majority that the state court did not need to inform Hill of his parole eligibility date to assure the volun-tariness of his plea. The collateral consequences rule should not bar an ineffective assistance of counsel claim, however, where an attorney’s misadvice respecting a collateral consequence induces a defendant to plead guilty. The district court dismissed Hill’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim without a hearing because it did not believe the facts alleged raised a constitutional claim. I would remand to the district court to determine whether Hill’s counsel wrongly advised him on his parole eligibility prior to his plea.