Court Opinion

ID: 9379734
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-03-16 15:00:20.015759+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:25.583867
License: Public Domain

21-2955
   United States v. Saleh

                            UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
                                FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

                                        SUMMARY ORDER

RULINGS BY SUMMARY ORDER DO NOT HAVE PRECEDENTIAL EFFECT. CITATION TO
A SUMMARY ORDER FILED ON OR AFTER JANUARY 1, 2007, IS PERMITTED AND IS
GOVERNED BY FEDERAL RULE OF APPELLATE PROCEDURE 32.1 AND THIS COURT’S
LOCAL RULE 32.1.1. WHEN CITING A SUMMARY ORDER IN A DOCUMENT FILED WITH
THIS COURT, A PARTY MUST CITE EITHER THE FEDERAL APPENDIX OR AN
ELECTRONIC DATABASE (WITH THE NOTATION “SUMMARY ORDER”). A PARTY
CITING TO A SUMMARY ORDER MUST SERVE A COPY OF IT ON ANY PARTY NOT
REPRESENTED BY COUNSEL.

         At a stated term of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit,
   held at the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, 40 Foley Square, in the
   City of New York, on the 16th day of March, two thousand twenty-three.

   PRESENT:

              RICHARD C. WESLEY,
              RICHARD J. SULLIVAN,
              JOSEPH F. BIANCO,
                    Circuit Judges.
   _____________________________________

   UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

                            Appellee,

                            v.                                     No. 21-2955
   ALI SALEH,

                    Defendant-Appellant.
   __________________________________
For Defendant-Appellant:                              MICHAEL K. BACHRACH, Law
                                                      Office of Michael K. Bachrach,
                                                      New York, NY (Steve Zissou,
                                                      Steve Zissou & Associates,
                                                      Bayside, NY, Anthony L. Ricco,
                                                      New York, NY, on the brief).

For Appellee:                                         SARITHA KOMATIREDDY (Susan
                                                      Corkery, on the brief), Assistant
                                                      United States Attorneys, for
                                                      Breon Peace, United States
                                                      Attorney for the Eastern
                                                      District of New York, New
                                                      York, NY.

      Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Eastern

District of New York (William F. Kuntz, II, Judge).

      UPON      DUE     CONSIDERATION,          IT      IS   HEREBY       ORDERED,

ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that the judgment of the district court is

AFFIRMED.

      Ali Saleh appeals from a judgment of conviction following his guilty plea to

two counts of attempt to provide material support to a foreign terrorist

organization, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2339B(a)(1). The district court sentenced

Saleh to 360 months’ imprisonment, to be followed by a lifetime term of supervised

release. On appeal, Saleh contends that his conviction should be vacated because

his guilty plea was not knowing and voluntary under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules

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of Criminal Procedure. We assume the parties’ familiarity with the underlying

facts, procedural history, and issues on appeal.

      At the outset, we must resolve a dispute regarding the applicable standard

of review. The government contends that we should review Saleh’s challenge only

for plain error, since Saleh never raised his Rule 11 challenge before the district

court. Saleh responds that, liberally construed, his pro se letter, filed two years

after his change-of-plea hearing, did in fact challenge the sufficiency of his guilty

plea under Rule 11. As a result, Saleh contends that the proper standard of review

is harmless error. See United States v. Groysman, 766 F.3d 147, 155 (2d Cir. 2014).

We disagree.

      In his letter, Saleh stated that he wished to withdraw his plea because his

lawyers failed to “properly [i]nform [him] of [his] case” and he feared that counsel

no longer had his “best interest [at] heart.” Saleh App’x at 66. Saleh’s complaints

concerned his counsel’s handling of his case, not the district court’s conduct at the

change-of-plea hearing, and Saleh never suggested that he failed to understand

the nature of the charges against him before pleading guilty. And while we

construe pro se submissions liberally, we cannot manufacture “arguments that the

submissions themselves do not suggest.” Triestman v. Fed. Bureau of Prisons, 470

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F.3d 471, 477 (2d Cir. 2006) (internal quotation marks omitted). Therefore, because

the Rule 11 challenge Saleh presses on appeal was not preserved below, our review

is only for plain error. See, e.g., United States v. Farooq, 58 F.4th 687, 691–92 (2d Cir.

2023) (reviewing Rule 11 challenge for plain error even though the defendant had

previously filed a pro se letter seeking to withdraw his guilty plea).

      To prevail under plain-error review, Saleh must demonstrate that “(1) there

is an error; (2) the error is clear or obvious, rather than subject to reasonable

dispute; (3) the error affected [his] substantial rights, which in the ordinary case

means it affected the outcome of the district court proceedings; and (4) the error

seriously affects the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial

proceedings.” United States v. Cohan, 798 F.3d 84, 88 (2d Cir. 2015) (internal

quotation marks omitted). Against this backdrop, we turn to Saleh’s assertion that

his plea was not knowing and voluntary.

      Before accepting a guilty plea, the district court must “inform the defendant

of, and determine that the defendant understands, . . . the nature of each charge to

which the defendant is pleading.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(b)(1)(G). To satisfy this

obligation, courts need not adopt a particular method of inquiry or recite a set of

magic words.      See McCarthy v. United States, 394 U.S. 459, 467 n.20 (1969)

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(explaining that “matters of reality, and not mere ritual, should be controlling”

(internal quotation marks and alterations omitted)).           Courts must instead

“determine by some means that the defendant actually understands the nature of

the charges.” United States v. Maher, 108 F.3d 1513, 1521 (2d Cir. 1997).

      Having reviewed the transcript of Saleh’s change-of-plea hearing, we

discern no plain error in the district court’s conclusion that Saleh actually

understood the nature of the charges to which he was pleading guilty. At the start

of the hearing, the district court assured itself of Saleh’s competence to plead guilty

and confirmed that Saleh understood everything that had been discussed to that

point in the proceeding. The district court then verified that Saleh had discussed

with his attorney his decision to plead guilty. Finally, the court read aloud from

the plea agreement and from the indictment before asking Saleh if he agreed that

he knowingly engaged in the charged conduct, to which Saleh responded in the

affirmative. We conclude that these procedures were adequate.

      Saleh nevertheless argues that while the district court’s colloquy may have

been sufficient to establish a factual basis for the plea, it failed to establish that

Saleh understood the nature of the charges against him. But the district court read

the charges from the indictment, and the charges themselves – two counts

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involving the same statutory provision – are straightforward.          See 18 U.S.C.

§ 2339B(a)(1) (imposing criminal penalties on anyone who knowingly attempts to

provide “material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization”); see also

Maher, 108 F.3d at 1521 (holding that district courts may satisfy their Rule 11

obligation “by reading the indictment to the defendant where the pertinent count

spells out the elements of the offense and the circumstances indicate that this will

be sufficient”). Moreover, the text of the plea agreement explicitly memorialized

that Saleh had reviewed the agreement with his attorney and “underst[ood] all of

its terms,” which included the crimes charged, and that he was pleading guilty

“knowingly and voluntarily.”       Saleh App’x at 45–46.       We therefore cannot

conclude that Saleh’s plea was not knowing or voluntary.

      Nor has Saleh demonstrated that he would have made a different plea

decision but for the purported Rule 11 error. See United States v. Dominguez Benitez,

542 U.S. 74, 83 (2004) (holding that, on plain-error review, a defendant must “show

a reasonable probability that, but for the error, he would not have entered the

plea”). While Saleh points to his letter to support his contention that he did in fact

attempt to withdraw his plea, the letter, for the reasons explained above, said

nothing about the Rule 11 challenge he now presses on appeal. Indeed, Saleh’s

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own words to the district court demonstrate that his actual concern centered

around his frustration with his attorneys, not his lack of understanding of the

charges at the time of his guilty plea. We therefore reject the challenges Saleh

raises on appeal.

      We have considered Saleh’s remaining arguments and found them to be

without merit. Accordingly, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.

                                    FOR THE COURT:
                                    Catherine O’Hagan Wolfe, Clerk of Court

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