Court Opinion

ID: 9493535
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:10:47.432169+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:53.468407
License: Public Domain

BOGGS, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in all of Judge Ryan’s opinion for the court, except its disposition of the prosecution of Randolph in Tennessee. The court is quite correct, supra at 248, when it states that “Randolph’s ‘ambiguity’ argument is as unfocused as it is unpersuasive.” The court then goes on to explain correctly how the plain language of Randolph’s plea agreement means that the government did not violate the plea agreement when the United States Attorney in the Western District of Tennessee prosecuted Randolph, as he was fully free to do under the plea agreement. However, I disagree with the court’s holding that “it is simply unfair” for such a prosecution to take place, when it is prompted by information furnished by the Texas authorities, or that such a determination of unfairness creates a binding rule of law, and I therefore dissent.
Rudyard Kipling captured the court’s attitude perfectly in his poem, Norman and Saxon:
The Saxon is not like us Normans. His manners are not so polite.
But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right.
When he stands like an ox in the furrow with his sullen set eyes on your own, And grumbles, “This isn’t fair dealing,” my son, leave the Saxon alone.
While this is generally an admirable sentiment, I think it is misapplied in this case.
To begin with, Randolph obviously did secure some benefit. He was not prosecuted further in Texas, when he certainly could have been. He had some hope that the prosecutors in Texas would consider the case concluded and go on to other business. In today’s world of congested courts and heavy prosecutor case loads, this was not an unreasonable or illusory hope. The Texas prosecutors could easily have failed to go to the trouble of providing material to their colleagues in Tennessee. The Tennessee prosecutors might have decided that the defendants had already “been punished enough,” and that they had bigger or other fish to fry in Tennessee. The whole case might have been lost in the shuffle in Texas before any other steps were taken. These were all possibilities that Randolph got the advantage of.
As events turned out, these advantages did not materialize, but when a defendant, in this case represented and fully advised by counsel, enters into a plea agreement, there is no requirement of either contract or constitutional law that a bargain based on contingent future events will turn out to his benefit. The court states, supra at 251, that Randolph had a “reasonable expectation that the plea agreement protected him from prosecution ... both within [the Northern District of Texas] and in addition without that jurisdiction, unless founded on an investigation independent of that performed by the Texan authorities.” But the record contains no support, other than Randolph’s post hoc assertions, that he had such an expectation, and no support whatsoever for the idea that it was reasonable.
Finally, to the extent that this court should rule based solely on our view of the equity of the situation, Randolph does not deserve such a softening of the law. He, in effect, entered into the plea agreement with unclean hands, namely, the guilty knowledge that he was, in fact, a bigger fish than the Texas authorities took him for. It was primarily their realization of this concealment, and outrage over the leniency Randolph obtained for himself, *254that prompted them to exercise their right under the plea agreement and to contact the Tennessee authorities. I therefore respectfully DISSENT.