Court Opinion

ID: 9495931
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:13:43.675876+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:16.549718
License: Public Domain

POSNER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The defendant defrauded three individuals, Terry, Gibson, and Luna-Perez, but was permitted to plead guilty to only bankruptcy fraud and only against the last of these. The plea agreement states that the defendant admits to having defrauded the trio of a total of $8,687 and that he understands that his plea subjects him to “any restitution ordered by the Court” and that he agrees to cooperate with the U.S. Attorney’s office and the probation service “in. their determination of the appropriate amount of restitution to be ordered by the Court.” The district judge sentenced the defendant to 60 days in jail and — pursuant to the recommendation of the probation service and without objection by the defendant or his lawyer — ordered the defendant to pay restitution to his three victims in the total amount of $8,687 ($677 to Terry, $6,850 to Gibson, and $1,160 to Luna-Perez). However, the parties and the district judge overlooked 18 U.S.C. § 3663A(a)(3), which permits ordering a convicted defendant to make restitution to persons other than the victims of the offense for which he was convicted (here, *559bankruptcy fraud against Luna-Perez) if he agrees to do so in the plea agreement, but, by implication, not otherwise.
The defendant argues that the text of the plea agreement ties restitution to the offense of conviction by stating that the “defendant understands the count to which he will plead guilty carries [various penalties], as well as any restitution ordered by the Court” (emphasis added). Although “any restitution ordered by the Court” sounds expansive, the defendant argues that the most natural interpretation of the quoted clause in its entirety is that restitution is one part of the penalty for “the count,” and is limited to the maximum restitution for the count.
Extrinsic .evidence demonstrates with unusual clarity that the parties nevertheless meant to agree to restitution for all victims. This was the basis for their bargain and the only number used at the sentencing hearing. As in United States v. Schrimsher, 58 F.3d 608, 609-10 (11th Cir.1995) (per curiam), and United States v. Koeberlein, 161 F.3d 946, 951 (6th Cir. 1998), cases comparable to this, no one objected to or sought clarification of the district court’s identical understanding. It is no objection that the parties were probably laboring under a mistake of law, that they thought the statute required restitution to all victims for conviction on the single count, perhaps on a mistaken analogy to the operation of relevant conduct in sentencing. Their mistake strengthens my interpretation because it reconciles the parties’ intentions with the troublesome clause: they thought that the count and hence the clause entailed the broader restitution.
Even if my interpretation of the plea agreement is wrong, there was no objection at sentencing and therefore the question is whether the error was plain and if so whether we should exercise our discretion to notice (that is, reverse on the basis of) a plain error. (The error was not jurisdictional; section 3663A(a)(3) is just a statute of frauds for restitution orders.) Since it is a close interpretive question, the error was not plain in the sense either of being apparent to anyone knowledgeable about the relevant law (“obvious,” as the cases say), United States v. Frady, 456 U.S. 152, 163 and n. 13, 102 S.Ct. 1584, 71 L.Ed.2d 816 (1982), or (what amounts as a practical matter to the same thing) of being determinable with certainty to be an error, United States v. Caputo, 978 F.2d 972, 974-75 (7th Cir.1992), as opposed to being subtle or (what again is usually the same thing) debatable. And it was not plain in the further sense, essential to invoke the doctrine of plain error, that it was prejudicial, in the sense of likely to have made a difference in the outcome. Id.; United States v. Galbraith, 200 F.3d 1006, 1013 (7th Cir.2000). We must ask what would have happened had the judge at the sentencing hearing realized that the plea agreement did not contain a promise to pay restitution to the other victims. He would have rejected the agreement and told the parties to go back to the drawing board, and the parties would then have agreed expressly that the defendant would pay restitution to the other victims. For we know that that is the deal that the defendant agreed to, even if it wasn’t properly memorialized.
But if this is wrong too, still the question whether to notice a plain error is one addressed to the discretion of the reviewing court, as the majority opinion acknowledges. United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 735-37, 113 S.Ct. 1770, 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (1993); United States v. Trennell, 290 F.3d 881, 887 (7th Cir.2002); United States v. Ross, 77 F.3d 1525, 1538 (7th Cir.1996); United States v. Zillgitt, 286 F.3d 128, 140-41 (2d Cir.2002). At first glance this *560seems paradoxical, for how could an error be sufficiently “harmless” to be -excused when by definition it was prejudicial? The answer is that it may be prejudicial in the sense that it requires a different outcome, yet harmless in the sense that when the case is remanded and the error corrected the outcome will again be the same. This is such a case. The government will not allow Randle to plead guilty unless he agrees to make restitution to all three of his victims, and he will readily agree to that since (1) otherwise he will face a longer jail term, for remember that the district court sentenced him to only 60 days in jail and unless he is ordered to pay restitution to the other two victims the total restitution that he will be ordered to pay will be a derisory $1,100; and (2) as he is unlikely ever to come up with the money required to make restitution to his victims, the “cost” to him of agreeing is slight. Randle would not prefer more jail time to being ordered to pay additional restitution, which he probably cannot do anyway, and so it is hard to see why “justice” requires sending this case back. I do not even understand why he appealed, as I do not see how he is made better off by prevailing. Randle “appears to believe that he can have the benefits of the plea agreement (four counts dismissed, reduced time in prison) without the detriments. That’s not an option. The whole plea agreement stands, or the whole thing falls.” United States v. Peterson, 268 F.3d 533 (7th Cir. 2001). If it falls, Randle will probably be worse off, and is very unlikely to be better off. The reversal is therefore pointless, as well as erroneous.