Court Opinion

ID: 9490811
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:55:21.474631+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:19.926293
License: Public Domain

BECKER, Circuit Judge,
concurring dubitante.
I join in the majority opinion insofar as it vacates the judgment of the district court, but I have problems with its instructions on remand. The majority orders that the matter
be remanded to the district court to determine whether the appropriate remedy is to require specific performance of the agreement or permit the appellant to withdraw his plea. Unless the court can, and is disposed to, impose the sentence agreed to by the parties in accordance with applicable statutes and guidelines, appellant should be afforded the opportunity to withdraw his plea and plead anew.
In my view, this discussion does not give the district court adequate guidance as to what might constitute a proper sentence within the framework of the plea bargain.
The majority has properly concluded that the sentence of twelve months supervised release violated the plea agreement.1 Per*1137haps the majority has in mind that the district court on remand might reduce the term of supervised release to one month conditional on one month home confinement. While that would be a legal sentence, I think that it would breach the plea bargain.
The majority’s analysis, however, suggests that such a sentence could be imposed on remand. It reasons that
Plea agreements are contractual and therefore are to be analyzed under contract law standards. United States v. Moscahlaidis, 868 F.2d 1357, 1361 (3d Cir.1989). “In determining whether a plea agreement has been broken, courts look to ‘what was reasonably understood by [the defendant] when he entered his plea of guilty.’ ” United States v. Arnett, 628 F.2d 1162, 1164 (9th Cir.1979) (quoting United States v. Crusco, 536 F.2d 21, 27 (3d Cir.1976)). The government asserts that a period of home detention may only be imposed as a special condition of either supervised release or probation. See U.S.S.G. § 5F1.2. Therefore, the government maintains that when Appellant entered into a plea agreement providing for one month home detention, the imposition of a period of supervised release was, or should have been, within his reasonable expectations.
I am unsure that the underlined statement is correct. I have substantial reservations about importing into a plea bargain a kind of punishment that the parties did not appear to contemplate.2 Here neither the government nor the defense apparently considered the possibility of supervised release. Perhaps they thought that home detention could be free-standing. At all events, they did not mention supervised release in the plea agreement.
Perhaps the parties reasonably should have expected that home confinement carried with it supervised release. While contract standards may generally apply, I believe that courts must be more circumspect in divining the reasonable expectations of a defendant who enters into a plea agreement than we might be in the case of a contract that does not implicate an individual’s liberty interest. Indeed, if courts construed plea agreements narrowly, as I think they should, the message would be clear that “expectations” such as the one at issue in this case must appear in the text of the agreement.
I would also be troubled if the majority has in mind that the district court might sentence Gilchrist to one month home confinement without supervised release. While the majority declines to reach this question, I believe that such a sentence would be illegal. Under U.S.S.G. § 5F1.2 home detention “may be imposed as a condition of probation or supervised release”. I read this as clearly indicating that home detention is not a freestanding sentence and thus that the District Court is without authority to impose it on Gilchrist as such.3
Notwithstanding these comments, I am not sufficiently sure that the majority is wrong that I style this opinion a dissent, which would require me to vote to remand with directions to vacate the plea of guilty and *1138permit the defendant to go to trial.4 I therefore concur dubitante.

. The district court’s decision to include a twelve month term of supervised release in Gilchrist’s sentence is not the non-sequitur that it appears to be at first glance. Although under U.S.S.G. § 5D 1.1(b) the imposition of a term of supervised *1137release is discretionary where the term of incarceration is less than one year, under U.S.S.G. § 5D1.2(a)(3) if a period of supervised release is ordered, the length of such term is one year for a defendant convicted of a Class E felony. When this is coupled with the fact that home detention may only be imposed as a condition of probation or supervised release, see U.S.S.G. § 5F1.2, it appears entirely possible that the District Court felt that it was required to impose a one year term of supervised release in order to effectuate the plea agreement. In fact, it was not so required since under U.S.S.G. § 6B1.2, the court may accept an 11(e)(1)(C) plea agreement if it departs from the guideline range "for justifiable reasons.”

. As the majority correctly points out, it is well settled that supervised'release constitutes punishment. See Maj op. at 1133. For a list of the recommended conditions of supervised release, which can convert otherwise legal activities like wandering into an unsavory bar, talking with felons or other disreputable characters, or drinking too much into grounds for re-incarceration, see U.S.S.G. § 5B1.4.

. If, of course, the district court were simply to impose the nine month prison term and the fine and assessment but with no supervised release and no home confinement, there would be no problem. And, obviously, there would be no *1138problem if the court permits Gilchrist to withdraw his plea.

. It seems clear that Gilchrist believes that the government no longer can prove a case against him at trial. I presume that a key witness has “gone south” on the government.