Court Opinion

ID: 9650316
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:29:18.200513+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:19.908667
License: Public Domain

FARRELL, Associate Judge,
concurring:
I agree that the standard for presentence withdrawal of a guilty plea governs this case, and that under that standard the trial judge should have allowed Pettiford to withdraw his plea to the Jones murder, but not the Garvin murder.
Critical to our decision on both charges, as I see it, is the representation afforded by Pettiford’s trial counsel. That is because the other factors relevant to whether Pettiford met the “fair and just” standard for plea withdrawal—i.e., the timeliness of his motion and assertion of a claim of legal innocence— would not by themselves convince me that the judge abused his discretion in denying withdrawal as to either murder charge. And, as to the Garvin murder, there is no sound basis for saying that counsel faded to perform competently in connection with the plea. Pettiford confessed to the police to complicity in the murder, admitting that he had approached Garvin armed, with two others whom he heard say “you know what we have to do,” and that he fired four shots at Garvin, though assertedly over his head. He also told the police that the killing was drug-related and that he was given a car as payment for his role in it. His counsel identified no arguable basis for winning suppression of the confession. The plea to second-degree murder while armed spared Pettiford exposure to a first-degree murder charge for what was, in essence, a pre-arranged assassination.
The plea of guilty to first-degree murder while armed for the Jones murder is a different matter. On the basis largely of a repre*219sentation by the prosecutor that he would ask permission from his superiors to seek a capital murder indictment in federal court (under newly enacted legislation), counsel advised Pettiford to accept a plea offer to first-degree murder while armed in Superior Court, bringing with it a mandatory minimum term of twenty years in prison. Although the prosecutor had told counsel he had an eyewitness who would tie Pettiford to the shooting, counsel made no further inquiry or investigation concerning the witness— for the reason alone that Pettiford had told his mother and counsel “that he was part of the killing in the sense that he went there with the shooter,” himself armed and knowing “why they were going there.” In counsel’s view as explained at the hearing, asking the prosecutor for the eyewitness’s name, asking to speak with that witness, or having an investigator try to locate the witness to question him were the sort of “things I would have done had the ease gone to trial. I would have prepared for trial differently than preparing for a plea.” When one adds to this counsel’s apparent obliviousness to the uncertainty of the prosecutor’s chances of obtaining a capital murder indictment and conviction,1 the deficiency in counsel’s performance is stark, and the reality that the first-degree murder plea may have been no “bargain” at all makes this a compelling case for presentence withdrawal.
On the other hand, had Pettiford accepted an offer to a plea of second-degree murder rather than face a possible capital murder indictment, it would be harder to question the adequacy of counsel’s performance. Even if he accepted more or less at face value the prosecutor’s claim to have an eyewitness naming Pettiford as an accomplice, a plea to murder-II might have been a genuine trade-off given the prosecutor’s intent to seek the death penalty for this murder of a government witness. An intriguing question, therefore, is whether this court could properly vacate Pettiford’s first-degree murder conviction for the Jones slaying, but leave intact an implicit conviction for the lesser-included offense of murder-II. The government has not argued this as a remedy, however, and I have found no decisions where appellate courts in the plea context have utilized their authority (while vacating a greater conviction) to direct entry of judgment on a lesser included offense. See, e.g., Rutledge v. United States, — U.S. -, -, 116 S.Ct. 1241, 1250, 134 L.Ed.2d 419 (1996). Given the requirements of Rule 11 meant to insure that a defendant knows precisely what he is pleading to, there is obvious reason to be wary of such a remedy in the guilty plea setting. I therefore do not pursue the point further, and agree that Pettiford must be allowed to put the government to its proof on the Jones murder.

. Pettiford’s role seemed at most that of aider and abettor, and whether the U.S. Attorney’s Office would have seen this as an appropriate test case for the new statute is doubtful.