Court Opinion

ID: 9488850
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:57:21.203162+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:08.504699
License: Public Domain

BAUER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur. Only one reason exists for my joining the majority: there is no way this court can give the appellant the relief he seeks. The last thing he wants is an opportunity to withdraw his plea of guilty. What he wants is his pilot’s license returned by the FAA. This we have no power to require— the FAA is not a party to these proceedings — nor would I rush forward to sign such an order if the agency were a party.
Having said that, I doubt the premise that it is widely known that “the government” means the U.S. Attorney or the Department of Justice. It is true that the U.S. Attorney’s Office couldn’t prevent the FAA from revoking the appellant’s license, but that fact is not common knowledge; the Department of Justice represents just about every branch and cranny of the Federal government and frequently speaks in the name of the agencies or branches it represents.
Plea agreements should be precise. If the prosecutor undertakes to use his best offices to keep the FAA from revoking a license, the plea agreement should say just that. When the plea agreement says that “the government will do” or “not do” this or that, I do not believe that the bargainer must engage in research to ascertain whether or not the *812prosecutor can legally deliver on such a promise.
If the fact that the U.S. Attorney couldn’t live up to the commitment that the government would take no action with respect to Mr. Rourke’s pilot’s license was known to the prosecutor, then the statement was both misleading and too clever by half; if the inability to deliver was unknown to the prosecutor, why should we assume or believe that Rourke or his lawyer should have been aware of that fact?
So I concur with a small regret that Rourke has suffered a wrong without a remedy that this court can repair.