Court Opinion

ID: 9492048
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:30:58.238147+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:04.928565
License: Public Domain

GRABER, Circuit Judge,
with whom O’SCANNLAIN, TROTT and SILVERMAN, Circuit Judges, join, dissenting:
I respectfully dissent.
Preliminarily, there are four areas in which I agree with the majority:
1. The government waived its opportunity to rely on a theory of procedural default.
2. Barron is entitled to some form of relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255.
3. By asking the court to vacate a conviction, Barron is not “breaching” the plea agreement.
4. The district court’s fashioning of an alternative remedy, giving Barron a choice whether to renege on this entire proceeding, is beyond what the statute authorizes the district court to do.
After that, however, the majority and I part company. As explained below, the district court properly held that Barron’s plea was entered unconstitutionally. The district court then was obliged to vacate and set aside the judgment and to grant Barron a new trial. In the context of a plea, the scope of such a new trial (or, of course, a new plea agreement) encompasses any charges that were dismissed and any uncharged crimes that the government agreed not to prosecute (as to which the statute of limitations has not run), subject only to the well-established limitation of due process that the government may not act vindictively to punish a defendant for having exercised the right to challenge the first proceeding.
UNDER 28 U.S.C. § 2255, THE DISTRICT COURT WAS OBLIGED TO GRANT A NEW TRIAL
Section 2255 provides in part:
A prisoner in custody under sentence of a court established by Act of Congress claiming the right to be released upon the ground that the sentence was imposed in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States, or that the court was without jurisdiction to impose such sentence, or that the sentence was in excess of the maximum authorized by law, or is otherwise subject to collateral attack, may move the court which im*1162posed the sentence to vacate, set aside or correct the sentence.

... If the court finds that the judgment was rendered ivithout jurisdiction, or that the sentence imposed was not authorized by late or otherwise open to collateral attack, or that there has been such a denial or infringement of the constitutional rights of the prisoner as to render the judgment vulnerable to collateral attack, the court shall vacate and set the judgment aside and shall discharge the prisoner or resentence him or grant a new trial or correct the sentence as may appear appropriate.

(Emphasis added.)
The emphasized text, on its face, provides a three-step procedure for granting relief:
• First, the district court must determine whether “the judgment was rendered without jurisdiction, or [whether] the sentence imposed was not authorized by law or otherwise open to collateral attack, or [whether] there has been such a denial or infringement of the constitutional rights of the prisoner as to render the judgment vulnerable to collateral attack.”
• Second, if the district court finds one of those conditions, it “shall vacate and set the judgment aside.”
• Third, after vacating and setting aside the judgment, the court “shall” do one of four things, as may appear appropriate — (1) discharge the prisoner, (2) re-sentence the prisoner, (3) grant a new trial, or (4) correct the sentence.
A. Barron’s constitutional rights were infringed so as to render the judgment vulnerable to collateral attack.
The majority’s first mistake, from which others flow, is the assertion (slip op. at 1157) that Barron did — or can in these circumstances — claim that “the sentence was imposed in violation of the laws of the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 2255. A sentencing error presupposes the validity of a conviction, and the corresponding remedy aims only to bring the sentence into line with the proper conviction. That kind of error occurs when, for example, a district court misapplies the Sentencing Guidelines to the crime of conviction, and it is necessary to correct the sentence. Here, the sentence imposed was authorized by law; the sentence matched the crime of conviction, a crime that is stated by a constitutional statute. See United States v. Vences, 169 F.3d 611, 613 (9th Cir.1999) (stating that the defendant’s “sentence was not illegal because the sentence was authorized by the judgment of conviction and did not impose on [the defendant] a sentence in excess of the statutory penalty”).
In the face of that lawful sentence, Barron did not attack his sentence qua sentence. Rather, he claimed that his conviction for violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1) should be vacated, because it was procured in violation of his constitutional rights. Specifically, he alleged that recent Supreme Court precedent, Bailey v. United States, 516 U.S. 137, 116 S.Ct. 501, 133 L.Ed.2d 472 (1995), made his “conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) invalid.” (Emphasis added.)
At the first step of the analysis, the district court correctly understood that the only way to vacate a conviction after a judgment has been entered on a guilty plea and associated sentence is to hold that the plea was defective.1 I shall develop *1163this point more fully in the next section of this opinion, in particular in the discussion of United States v. Marchese, 341 F.2d 782 (9th Cir.1965).
The district court properly held that Barron’s plea was defective, because it was not made knowingly and intelligently. United States v. Barron, 940 F.Supp. 1489, 1490-91 (D.Alaska 1996). Barron’s act of pleading guilty was not knowing and intelligent, because he misunderstood what facts the government had to prove if it went to trial. The rubric that § 2255 provides for such a problem is “that there has been such a denial or infringement of the constitutional rights of the prisoner as to render the judgment vulnerable to collateral attack.”
B. The district court’s next step is to vacate and set aside the judgment.
After concluding that a prisoner’s plea was not knowing and intelligent, the district court’s next step is to vacate and set aside the judgment. Ordinarily (as is true here), there is but oné “judgment” in a criminal case. The judgment is the “final decision” that “resolve[s] the ultimate question of the guilt or innocence of the accused” of the crimes charged in the indictment and determines a sentence if there has been a finding of guilt. United States v. Dior, 671 F.2d 351, 354 (9th Cir.1982). “In general, a ‘judgment’ ... is final for the purpose of appeal only ‘when it terminates the litigation between the parties on the merits of the case, and leaves nothing to be done but to enforce by execution what has been determined.’ ” Id. (quoting Parr v. United States, 351 U.S. 513, 518, 76 S.Ct. 912, 100 L.Ed. 1377 (1956)).
The text of § 2255 embodies those principles. It contemplates that “the judgment” encompasses all counts on which the prisoner was convicted and all sentences imposed with respect to those counts. For example, “discharging] the prisoner,” the first remedial option, would make no sense if only some but not all counts were involved. Moreover, Congress’ use of the definite article “the,” when referring to “the judgment,” carries the message that there is one identifiable document.
Vacating the judgment is simply the mechanism that permits the district court to act again with respect to a case that otherwise has been completed. In fact, there is no other way for the district court to act on the underlying case after entry of a final judgment. See Marchese, 341 F.2d at 788 (stating that a judge cannot change or modify a lawful sentence after Rule 35’s 60-day period has expired, unless the district court vacates the judgment of conviction). That is why § 2255 makes the act of vacating and setting aside the judgment mandatory, by the use of the term “shall.” See United States v. Contreras, 895 F.2d 1241, 1243 (9th Cir.1990) (noting that the term “ ‘shall’ is used to issue a mandatory directive”). Only after vacating and setting aside the judgment may the court fashion one of the listed remedies, after which the court enters a new judgment.
C. The appropriate remedy when a guilty plea was entered unknowingly and unintelligently is to grant the prisoner a new trial.
Section 2255 lists the options that the district court has after vacating and setting aside the judgment. To recapitulate, there are four options: (1) discharge the prisoner, (2) resentence the prisoner, (3) grant the prisoner a new trial, or (4) correct the prisoner’s sentence. The district court is to choose the “appropriate” alternative. Ordinarily, a given problem will give rise to only one form of remedy.
The choice of remedy is at the heart of this case, and it is at the heart of my disagreement with the majority’s approach. The majority holds that the district court simply should have resentenced Barron without taking into account the *1164§ 924(c) conviction. That solution misconstrues what occurs structurally when a prisoner challenges the validity of a judgment of conviction and sidesteps well-established principles for fashioning post-conviction remedies for a defective guilty plea.
Structurally, when the error permitting § 2255 relief lies in the entry of particular convictions, the permissible remedies are the discharge of the prisoner or the granting of a new trial as to the unconstitutional convictions. More than 30 years ago, this court recognized the precepts embodied in the foregoing sentence.
Márchese involved the fate of two prisoners. In a § 2255 proceeding, the two prisoners claimed, among other things, that their convictions were procured unconstitutionally, because the government had failed to disclose certain information to the defense and because evidence used at trial had been obtained in violation of the prisoners’ Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. The district court agreed with the prisoners’ constitutional arguments and reduced the sentences of both prisoners. The government appealed. This court held that the district court exceeded its “authority and jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 2255.” 341 F.2d at 787. After noting the four options available to a district court under § 2255 when it finds a constitutional violation, this court wrote:
It could be maintained that the district court acted under the fourth alternative by correcting appellees’ several sentences. But there was no showing that the original sentence was faulty; therefore, no “correction” of the sentence was authorized, absent an illegal conviction. The sentence was “modified” or “reduced” — and this was done because of alleged trial errors uncovered by the district court. If the court’s position is sound that error in fact occurred, of a kind that would justify granting of a § 2255 motion, appellees’ sentences should have been entirely vacated and set aside, and the prisoners discharged from the service of any time based on the illegal conviction.
If the couH vacates and sets aside the judgment of conviction, then,' of course, the prisoner must he discharged, or granted a neiv trial. If the sentence, as distinguished from the conviction, is illegal, then it may be corrected. But a judge cannot, ivithout vacating the conviction because of a legal defect found therein, change or modify, after Rule 35’s sixty day period has expired, a sentence that is itself proper, legal and laivful as a sentence.
Id. at 788 (first paragraph emphasis in original, second paragraph emphasis added; citations omitted).
In this case, too, the original sentence was a proper, legal, and lawful one for a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). In this case, too, there was a legal defect in the procurement of the conviction. In this case, too, the district court had no option to resentence or correct the sentence; “the prisoner must be discharged, or granted a new trial.” Id.
What the district court did, erroneously, in Márchese is what the majority requires the district court to do here. However, we made clear in Márchese that the district court lacked authority to resentence the petitioners under § 2255 when their convictions were procured unconstitutionally.2
The law of this circuit is equally settled with respect to a post-conviction challenge *1165when the unconstitutionally procured conviction results from a plea of guilty, as distinct from a trial. Generally, the appropriate remedy in the situation in which a prisoner entered a defective plea pursuant to a plea agreement is to set aside the plea and grant a new trial.3 Only by setting aside the plea does the district court have jurisdiction to vacate the conviction.
This court has recognized that, when a prisoner successfully attacks a plea as not knowing and intelligent, the proper remedy is to vacate or set aside the plea and grant a new trial. For example, in United States v. Barker, 681 F.2d 589, 592-93 (9th Cir.1982), this court held that the district court could reinstate the prisoner’s indictment after she successfully attacked her plea under § 2255 on the ground that her plea was made in the absence of adequate information. When the district court set aside the conviction that had resulted from a plea, there remained but one mechanism for proceeding, that is, going to trial on the original indictment. Id. See also United States v. Gerard, 491 F.2d 1300, 1306 (9th Cir.1974) (“If, for example, a defendant pleaded guilty to one count and the prosecutor dismissed the others, it should be reasonably apparent that the dismissal was in consideration of the plea; if the defendant succeeded in withdrawing the plea, he should not be able to object to the prosecutor’s reviving the other counts.”).
So far, I have demonstrated that (1) the usual remedy following a successful collateral attack on a conviction resulting from a trial is a new trial,4 and (2) the usual remedy following a successful collateral attack on a conviction resulting from a plea is, likewise, a new trial. It remains only to decide whether that usual remedy follows when the plea involves multiple charges.
A defendant’s entry of a plea of guilty is a single act that takes place at a single time and place with a single state of mind. A defendant’s plea cannot be half voluntary and half involuntary; half knowing and half not knowing; half constitutional and half unconstitutional. A constitutional error that makes the acceptance of the plea improper infects the whole plea. It is either valid or void but cannot be both. This court has recognized the obvious reality that pleas result from bargains and that a plea agreement should be treated as a package. See Gerard, 491 F.2d at 1305-06 (recognizing that “[t]he very fact ... that there was a plea suggests the possibility of a plea bargain, or perhaps a consciously lower sentence in consideration of the defendant’s not insisting upon trial” and that, in such situations, if the defendant succeeds in withdrawing from the agreement the prosecution is free to revive dismissed counts).5 If a prisoner success*1166fully attacks a guilty plea involving multiple charges by arguing that, as to one of the charges, the plea was unknowing and therefore unconstitutional, the remedy still must be retrial.
Understandably, the majority seeks to protect Barron from the ironic consequence of a potentially harsher result after a successful challenge to his § 924(c) conviction. But the majority distorts precedent, as well as the terms of § 2255, to achieve its goal.
I note, initially, that it is routine for a defendant to run the risk that the outcome of a second proceeding will be worse than the outcome of the first. See, e.g., United States v. Goodwin, 457 U.S. 368, 102 S.Ct. 2485, 73 L.Ed.2d 74 (1982) (holding that a worse outcome after exercise of the right to go to trial did not create a presumption of prosecutorial vindictiveness). Moreover, and relatedly, it must be remembered that the prisoner, not the government, files a § 2255 motion. See Barker, 681 F.2d at 592-93 (so noting). The reinstatement of Barron’s plea of “not guilty” results not from any affirmative act of the government, but from Barron’s initiation of a proceeding to void one of the convictions that resulted from his plea of “guilty.”
Finally, and most importantly, principles of due process already protect a person in Barron’s situation from the fear of prosecutorial vindictiveness. On retrial, a prisoner is protected against receiving an increased punishment solely for having exercised the right to challengé the original conviction under § 2255. Merely returning a prisoner to the position that she occupied before she entered a guilty plea and then successfully challenged the plea (that is, returning her to a “not guilty” plea and a trial on the original indictment) does not enhance the prisoner’s risk of punishment, however, and does not imply retaliatory intent. Barker, 681 F.2d at 593.
Under the terms of § 2255 and under our precedents, the only option available to the district court is to grant Barron a new trial with respect to the charges that he still faces. Of course, the § 924(c) charge no longer is on the table, and Barron cannot be punished for an alleged violation of that law, no matter what else happens. Whether the case is actually tried on those remaining counts or on additional counts (provided that they are not time-barred and that their revival is not vindictive), or whether the parties enter into a new plea agreement, is not up to the district court to decide in the remedy phase of a § 2255 proceeding. Neither is it up to us, on appeal, to decide prospectively what will happen.
The district court’s error here, which the majority compounds, was in going beyond the plain new-trial remedy that § 2255 allows in the circumstances presented. That statute does not give the district court the option to give a prisoner the choice to reinstate an unconstitutional guilty plea. Neither does the statute give the district court authority to decide ahead of time whether the revival of additional charges, not contained in the indictment, would be permitted. Finally, as discussed above, the statute does not give the district court authority to “resentence” in this situation.
To summarize, the mechanism that the law provides for protecting a prisoner in this situation, having chosen to attack a conviction resulting from a plea and having succeeded, is a limited one; on retrial, the prosecutor may not act vindictively. And, in deciding this question of statutory authority, we may not presume that the prosecutor would do so.
COMMON SENSE COMPELS THE COURT TO RETURN THE PARTIES TO THE STATUS QUO ANTE
Last but not least, common sense dictates the result that I propose. Barron thought that he was guilty of violating 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). So did his lawyer, the prosecutor, and the district judge. On that premise, a plea agreement was struck that disposed of the entire case.
*1167When, years later, Bailey v. United States, 516 U.S. 137, 116 S.Ct. 501, 133 L.Ed.2d 472 (1995), established that Barron, the government, and the district court all were mistaken about § 924(c), the district court was faced with the problem of how best to implement § 2255 relief. The district court found that the plea agreement in this case, as in most others, was an integrated, comprehensive, cohesive “package.” The court sensibly determined that justice would best be served by rescinding the agreement and returning the parties to the place where they started (minus the § 924(c) charge).
It simply makes sense to let the parties begin again when they all started off on the wrong foot.6 In this context, that means that the guilty plea should be set aside and the pleas of not guilty reinstated.
Such a result will work to the prisoner’s advantage in many cases, particularly if a lot of time has passed and the government is no longer able to proceed, or if the prisoner’s bargaining position has improved in other ways. In all events, as discussed above, the rule against prosecu-torial vindictiveness protects the prisoner from governmental overreaching in the next round. This approach is entirely consistent with the logic of Handa and our other precedents, and it is fair and reasonable.
For the foregoing reasons, I must dissent. I would affirm the district court’s decision insofar as it held that Barron’s plea of “guilty” was not knowing and intelligent, vacated the judgment, reinstated Barron’s pleas of “not guilty,” and granted a new trial, and I would reverse the decision insofar as it is inconsistent with the principles stated in this dissenting opinion.

. The majority’s citation to James S. Liebman & Randy Hertz, Federal Habeas Corpus Practice and Procedure § 41.3b at 1192 (2d ed.1994), op. at 1158, does not advance the discussion. The case that the treatise cites, Bateman v. United States, 875 F.2d 1304, 1307 (7th Cir.1989), stands only for the undisputed proposition that § 2255 "relief will be afforded to a prisoner who is able to show ... that he was convicted of a federal crime and sentenced thereon based upon conduct which under no possible view amounts to a violation of federal law." In that case, however, the court had no occasion to consider what kind of relief would be appropriate, because it held that the prisoner was guilty of the crime *1163charged and thus could obtain no relief at all. Id. at 1309-10. Here, by contrast, Barron was not guilty of violating 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), and he is entitled to some form of relief.

. Marchese is consistent with United States v. Handa, 122 F.3d 690 (9th Cir.1997), cert. denied, - U.S. -, 118 S.Ct. 869, 139 L.Ed.2d 766 (1998). The analysis in Handa simply assumed an intermediate step that Márchese discussed expressly, and the procedural facts were materially different. In Han-da, the defendant had been convicted of two crimes after a trial. Unlike in MArchese, one conviction was valid. After the district court granted Handa’s § 2255 motion, it set aside the judgment, vacated the one improper conviction, and re-entered the proper conviction. Then, of course, the district court had to impose sentence again.
In other words, ''resentencing" must occur after a successful § 2255 motion that affects one of several counts of conviction after trial. See Keating v. United States, 413 F.2d 1028 (9th Cir.1969) (requiring resentencing when one of several counts is vacated in a § 2255 proceeding, and convictions resulted from a jury trial). By contrast, in Marchese, no valid *1165conviction remained, so the court had no occasion to re-enter a conviction or impose a new sentence based thereon.
The majority (op. at 1160) is incorrect that, under Márchese, a successful § 2255 motion always would lead to a new trial. As noted, when the challenged convictions result from a trial, a new trial would be required (if at all) only as to unconstitutional counts; the district court re-enters convictions on the constitutional counts and resentences the prisoner.
However, neither Marchese nor Handa considered the pivotal point in deciding the proper remedy in the present case: the unitary nature of the entry of a plea of guilty to multiple counts. I address that topic in the text below.

.Discharge of the prisoner may be an option in some circumstances. For instance, in this case, had the § 924(c) charge been the only one available to the government and the only one brought against Barron, he would be entitled to be discharged forthwith.

. See footnote 2, above, for a brief discussion of the remedy following a successful collateral attack on one count among many, when the multiple convictions resulted from a trial.

. This court also has recognized the "package'' concept with respect to sentencing. See United States v. Handa, 122 F.3d 690, 692 (9th Cir.1997) ("The metaphors of 'package' and 'unbundling' are attractive and appear to reflect the realities of sentencing."), cert. denied, - U.S. -, 118 S.Ct. 869, 139 L.Ed.2d 766 (1998).
By contrast, as explained in footnote 2, multiple counts of conviction after trial are not a "package.”

. Although my view of this case does not rest on contract law, it is interesting to observe that contract principles would lead to the same common-sense result that I suggest. See Restatement (Second) of Contracts, §§ 151-152 (describing the doctrine of mutual mistake; a contract is voidable if, at the time the contract was made, both parties had an erroneous, material misunderstanding on which the contract was based).