Court Opinion

ID: 9496907
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:38:36.799457+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:53.074013
License: Public Domain

CHERTOFF, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the Court’s denial of the Government’s petition for rehearing en banc.
The panel opinion declines to subject Appellant’s claim to the “plain error” standard of review under Rule 52 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. That Rule provides that where, as here, appellant failed to raise a legal challenge in the district court, we review under the standard set forth in United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 113 S.Ct. 1770, 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (1993). The panel decision is driven by language in United States v. Queensborough, 227 F.3d 149, 156 (3d Cir.2000) and in United States v. Moscahlaidis, 868 F.2d 1357, 1360 (3d Cir.1989).
I am not convinced that we need to read our earlier decisions to compel that an alleged breach of a plea agreement is reviewed de novo even if appellant never complained in the district court. Indeed, our decision in United States v. Thornton, 306 F.3d 1355, 1357 (3d Cir.2002), employed a plain error standard in reviewing a claim that the district court violated a plea agreement. The distinction between a district court violation of a plea agreement and a prosecutor’s violation of a plea agreement is too fragile to support a difference in the standard of review.
*215More important, whatever the prece-dential effect of Queensborough and Moscahlaidis, I believe they have been substantially undercut by the later decision of the Supreme Court in United States v. Vonn, 535 U.S. 55, 122 S.Ct. 1043, 152 L.Ed.2d 90 (2002). There, the Supreme Court held that an error not raised during the course of a guilty plea is reviewed for plain error, as opposed to the lower harmless error standard. The logic of Vonn is fatal to the decision here. As in Vonn, de novo review in this context would invite a defendant to stay silent about an error at the time it could be cured by the district judge, while waiting “to see if the sentence later struck him as satisfactory.” 535 U.S. at 73, 122 S.Ct. 1043.
Finally, the weight of well-reasoned authority in other circuits continues to mount on the side of reviewing alleged breaches of plea agreements under the plain error rule. These cases are most recently canvassed in the decision of In re Sealed Case, 356 F.3d 313 (D.C.Cir.2004).
Because I believe that we should not continue to perpetuate an erroneous standard of review, I would vote to rehear this matter en banc.