Court Opinion

ID: 9493383
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:06:32.137706+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:48.664751
License: Public Domain

NOONAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
With great humanity the court has taken cognizance of a feature of sentencing that is of importance not only to the defendant but to the defendant’s family. Strictly speaking, the court’s statements constitute dicta since they do not control the outcome of the appeal. Batjac Productions Inc. v. GoodTimes Home Video Corp., 160 F.3d 1223, 1232 (9th Cir.1998). Even more unfortunately, the statements are made in a case where the court has no jurisdiction. The government by concession cannot create a jurisdiction that does not exist.
Littlejohn entered into a plea agreement in which he pleaded guilty to distribution of less than 50 grams of cocaine and gave up “the right to appeal any sentence imposed, and the manner in which the sentence is determined, provided that the defendant is sentenced within the statutory maximum and his term of imprisonment is *972240 months or less.” In exchange the government dismissed ten counts which carried life imprisonment as a maximum penalty on each count. Littlejohn was sentenced to twenty years, plus five years supervised release and a special assessment of $100. The government kept its part of the plea agreement. Littlejohn did not keep his.
The current appeal is a thinly-disguised end run around the plea agreement. To assert that the appeal is directed to the voluntary and knowing nature of the plea is to make a fetish of the form given the alleged error — which is about the sentence. In substance it is an attack both on the manner in which the sentence was determined and on the sentence itself. While a plea agreement in some respects differs from an ordinary contract, we try to apply principles of contract law, when appropriate, to its interpretation and implementation. United States v. Keller, 902 F.2d 1391, 1393 (9th Cir.1990). No ordinary contract could be so easily evaded by assertion that a circumstance, comparatively minor in the negotiations, had not been known to either party. See, e.g. Reliance Finance Corp. v. Miller, 557 F.2d 674, 678-79 (9th Cir.1977); see also Farns-worth on Contracts, § 9.1 et seq. (1998). There is no reason for permitting this kind of evasion here.
As the appeal was waived, we lack jurisdiction. United States v. Vences, 169 F.3d 611 (9th Cir.1999).
I respectfully and regretfully dissent.