Court Opinion

ID: 9458041
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:41:21.464298+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:37.108981
License: Public Domain

THORNBERRY, Circuit Judge
(specially concurring):
I fully concur with the result reached in the instant case and with most of the reasoning employed by the majority. I am unable to agree, however, with any intimation that this Court’s en banc decision in Woodall stands for the proposition that in all cases erroneous sentencing information is cured by the imposition of a sentence below the actual allowable maximum. This Court, in its recent opinion of Johnson v. Wainwright, 5th Cir. 1972, 456 F.2d 1200 [February 25, 1972], makes clear that the Court in Woodall
weighed the effect of the advice as to the harsher punishment on Woodall’s decision and concluded that the likelihood that it would have no effect outweighed the possibility that the prospect of greater punishment would have caused a change in his plea.
At p. 1201. A similar weighing operation is necessary in each such case. The automatic reversal required under such circumstances by this Court’s decisions in Stephen v. United States, 5th Cir. 1970, 426 F.2d 257, and Grant v. United States, 5th Cir. 1970, 424 F.2d 273, overruled by Woodall, was not, in my opinion, replaced by an automatic affirmance rule. Each individual case must be determined on its own facts, based on whether under all the circumstances the incorrect sentencing information had an effect at the time of the plea on the defendant’s decision to plead guilty.
I have no trouble affirming petitioners’ convictions here under this standard. They were told they could receive sentences totalling up to 140 years for their crimes. They could have in fact received sentences totalling almost 100 years. To any reasonable man, knowing his natural life span would not likely extend through either time period, this error could have made no difference in determining whether he would plead guilty or not. On this basis, I would affirm.