Court Opinion

ID: 9498352
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:15:20.51182+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:47.015654
License: Public Domain

HEANEY, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur because I agree with the majority that the district court’s scheduling order did not render Darrian Jordan’s guilty plea involuntary, and because there is no indication that the government arbitrarily withheld its motion for the third level of the acceptance of responsibility adjustment. Cf. Wade v. United States, 504 U.S. 181, 186-87, 112 S.Ct. 1840, 118 L.Ed.2d 524 (1992) (holding that the district court may compel the government to move for a sentence reduction based on a defendant’s substantial assistance where the government’s failure to do so is not rationally related to a legitimate government end). However, I write separately to question a scheduling order that exposes a defendant to Jordan’s dilemma of either litigating his suppression motion or qualifying for the full three-level acceptance of responsibility adjustment.
This is not the first time our court has been presented with this hurried approach to case scheduling. In United States v. Kolbe, 109 Fed.Appx. 129 (8th Cir.2004) (unpublished per curiam), we were faced with a similar scheduling order. There, the district court denied the defendant the third level of the acceptance of responsibility adjustment because he pled guilty three days after the district court’s deadline, but before the court had decided the merits of his suppression motion. It was certainly not our intention, in affirming that defendant’s sentence, to suggest a court may regularly order defendants to make up their minds to plead guilty or not guilty before even receiving a hearing on potentially dispositive motions. Such a procedure strikes me as unfair to the defendant, and I question the majority’s assertion that it “fits squarely into the district court’s ability to manage its own docket.” Ante at 725. As Judge John R. Gibson recently reminded district courts, the goal of clearing crowded dockets cannot take precedence over the interests of the parties. Catipovic v. Peoples Cmty. Health Clinic, 401 F.3d 952, 958-59 (8th Cir.2005) (Gibson, J. concurring). That notion bears repeating here: Judicial efficiency is an important concern, but it does not eclipse society’s interest in protecting the accused’s right to a fair proceeding. In Jordan’s case, however, the record supports the sentence imposed, and thus I concur.