Court Opinion

ID: 9497446
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:51:30.448346+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:11.944286
License: Public Domain

CLAY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
It is well-established that “the law does not permit a criminal defendant to bargain away his constitutional rights without receiving in return ... the benefit of his bargain.... ” Bercheny v. Johnson, 633 F.2d 473, 476 (6th Cir.1980); accord United States v. Brummett, 786 F.2d 720, 722 (6th Cir.1986). See also United States v. Wesley, 13 Fed. Appx. 257, 259 (6th Cir.2001) (“Plea agreements are subject to an analysis of the rights and duties of the parties similar to the law of contracts. Each party should receive the benefit of his bargain.”) (citing United States v. McQueen, 108 F.3d 64 (4th Cir.1997)); accord United States v. Taylor, 68 Fed. Appx. 614, 615 (6th Cir.2003). Today’s majority opinion condones this prohibited practice.
Like any defendant who enters a plea bargain, Kenneth Smith expected to benefit from pleading guilty to second degree murder as opposed to facing re-trial and a possible conviction for first degree murder. Under Michigan law, a person guilty of first degree murder must be punished by “imprisonment for life,” Mich. Comp. Laws. § 750.316(1), which means a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole' See People v. Hall, 396 Mich. 650, 242 N.W.2d 377, 380 (1976) (interpreting a conviction for first degree murder under Mich. Comp. Laws. § 750.316 as requiring a “mandatory life sentence (without possibility of parole ... ”)). By contrast, a person guilty of second degree murder must be punished by “imprisonment in the state prison for life[] or any term of years,” Mich. Comp. Laws. § 750.317, and may be eligible for parole. E.g., People v. Bazzetta, No. 237756, 2003 WL 133060, at *3-*4 (Mich.Ct.App. Jan.3, 2003). Thus, Smith reasonably understood that the benefit of pleading guilty to a lesser charge would be (assuming the court followed the prosecutor’s recommendation) avoidance of prison for life without the possibility of parole. See United States v. Carr, 170 F.3d 572, 575 (6th Cir.1999) (“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.”) (citing United States v. Mandell, 905 F.2d 970, 972 (6th Cir.1990)). In return for the prosecutor’s assurance not to recommend that he spend the rest of his days in prison with no hope of release, Smith would relinquish his constitutional right to insist on a jury trial, as well as related constitutional rights, and the possibility of an acquittal.
The State also expected to benefit from Smith’s plea to second degree murder. It would avoid the prospect of spending considerable time and resources on a trial with no guarantee of a conviction. In return, the State would relinquish its right to seek a sentence of life imprisonment without parole, which would flow from a first degree murder conviction.
*1002In violation of the parties’ bargain,- the State recommended life imprisonment without parole when it recommended a 70 to 100 year sentence. As the majority notes, in Michigan, a defendant receiving a 70 year sentence generally is not eligible for parole until 70 years of the sentence have elapsed. Smith, who was 21 years old at the time of the offense, likely would be oyer 90 years old by the time he would be eligible for parole from a 70 to 100 year sentence. It is highly doubtful that he would survive to that age in prison, thereby revealing the true nature of the State’s recommendation — life imprisonment without parole. See People v. Carson, 220 Mich.App. 662, 560 N.W.2d 657, 657 (1996) (“[A] sentence of a lengthy term of years that may prevent the Parole Board from assuming jurisdiction, thus effectively constituting a life term without parole, is one of the most severe sentences a defendant may receive.”).
The majority correctly notes that a sentence of 70 to 100 years in prison could result in a longer term of imprisonment than a parolable life sentence. I am puzzled, however, as to how this “quirk in Michigan sentencing law” undermines Smith’s argument. If indeed Smith would have been better off with a parolable life sentence than a lengthy term of years, the prosecutor’s promise not to recommend life imprisonment in exchange for his guilty plea was utterly worthless. Certainly, Smith did not reasonably expect that he had relinquished his constitutional rights in exchange for no benefit whatsoever. Moreover, the relevant comparison is not between the potential sentences Smith faced for second degree murder, but between (a) the 70 to 100 year sentence for second degree murder that the prosecution recommended and (b) the nonparolable life sentence for first degree murder that Smith reasonably expected to avoid by pleading guilty, i.e. a sentence that would require him to spend the rest of his life behind bars. The fact that a sentence of parolable life actually- could result in less prison time than a 70-year term shows that Smith was not concerned about a sentence of parolable life per se, but any mandatory prison sentence that would extend to the end of his natural life. The most straightforward way to address this concern was to have the prosecution agree not to recommend imprisonment for life, which is precisely the promise the prosecutor failed to fulfill.
I disagree that Smith’s failure to object to the prosecutor’s sentencing recommendation at the time of sentencing suggests that the recommendation was not contrary to Smith’s subjective expectations of the plea agreement. A more plausible interpretation of Smith’s silence — or, rather, that of his trial counsel- — is that his attorney was constitutionally ineffective. Because Smith requested, but was denied, a certificate of appealability on this issue, I do not believe it is appropriate to hold his attorney’s failures against him on this appeal.
To conclude, the majority ignores the parties’ reasonable expectations behind the plea agreement in favor of a formalistic interpretation that ignores context and common sense. True, as a purely literal matter, the State complied with the agreement “not recommend life imprisonment as the sentence” because the prosecutor did not use the word “life” in her sentencing recommendation. This literal compliance with the agreement, however, did not translate into substantive compliance. Smith relinquished his constitutional rights attendant to a trial by jury in reliance on the promise that the State would not recommend that he spend the rest of his natural life behind bars. As shown above, the State did not honor this promise, denying Smith the benefit of his bargain. I, therefore, would grant Smith’s habeas cor*1003pus petition because the Michigan courts’ denial of Smith’s application for post-conviction relief involved an objectively unreasonable application of Santobello v. New York, 404 U.S. 257, 92 S.Ct. 495, 30 L.Ed.2d 427 (1971), which held that a prosecutor must fulfill promises that induce a guilty plea. Id. at 262, 92 S.Ct. 495.
I also have grave doubts about whether the prosecutor breached the plea agreement when she disclosed the victim’s family’s wishes that Smith receive a life sentence. At Smith’s sentencing, the court asked the prosecutor, “To your knowledge, is anyone else here to talk about sentencing?” The prosecutor appropriately responded, “No, Your Honor.” But then she gratuitously added:
For the record, I spoke to the victim’s family, his mother, Cora Bennett; and his brother, Fred Brown; and, sister, Dolores Brown. They’ve informed me that they wish the Defendant to receive life imprisonment. They did not want to be here today. It was too painful for them to have to go through this a second time 8 years after their brother was, and son was murdered. They did not want to see the Defendant again, so they are not here.
Because the court had asked only whether anyone else was present to talk about the sentencing, the prosecutor did not “simply respond[ ] to a question by the trial court,” as the majority states. If that were so, the prosecutor would have gone silent after uttering the words “No, Your Honor.”
The fact that family members had the right to make their views known to the sentencing court did not give the prosecutor license to voice their desire for a life sentence. It was incumbent on the family to appear at Smith’s sentencing, which they elected not to do, or to appoint another person to speak on their behalf. Mich. Comp. Laws § 780.765. Even assuming that the prosecutor could have been the family’s appointed spokesperson, the prosecutor should have explicitly advised the court that, pursuant to the plea agreement, the State was not recommending a life sentence.
The danger of today’s ruling is that it will encourage creative prosecutors, contractually bound to recommending lower sentences, to advocate higher sentences by proxy. By attributing the impermissible recommendation to a third party, such as a victim’s family member, the prosecutor can achieve surreptitiously what it cannot do so directly. When a plea agreement constrains a prosecutor’s sentencing recommendation, clearly the better practice is for the prosecutor to affirmatively disassociate herself or himself from the recommendations of other parties who are not similarly constrained.