Court Opinion

ID: 9477620
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:27:25.351214+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:57.968308
License: Public Domain

JOHNSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I join the majority’s affirmance of the district court’s judgment regarding three of the four claims on appeal: the drug-induced plea, the promise of early parole, and the plea colloquy issues. I dissent as to the majority’s treatment of the fourth claim, the first/second degree murder issue.
*674What is “confusing and incomplete needs more careful analysis, not less.1 The majority delves less deeply into the procedural quagmire than this case allows and requires. Based on the procedural history of this case, I do not join the majority’s subsumption of the plea discrepancy issue into the district court's holding on the plea colloquy issue.
The remand by this Court was limited, but it was in fact not as limited as the State has insisted, the district court has assumed, and the majority has accepted. The majority correctly concludes that the plea colloquy issue was outside the scope of this Court’s remand. The plea discrepancy issue was, however, not outside the scope of the remand. The district court was clearly erroneous in confining the vol-untariness issue on limited remand only to laches and early parole.
The motion that this Court granted in November 1984 was to remand with regard to “the laches issue and the merits of the claim.” Because this Court’s remand responded to a district court order that adopted a magistrate’s report and recommendation which found laches with regard to the full habeas petition, the “merits of the claim” referred to all claims raised in the habeas petition. The plea discrepancy issue was well within the scope of Ground One ( conviction [was] obtained by plea of guilt which was unlawfully induced by coercion”) and Ground Five (“can an internally contradictory record of the plea of guilt show full understanding of plea and proceedings by defendant?”) of the pro se habeas petition.
The magistrate made no recommendation with regard to the first/second degree issue and only briefly mentioned the issue in the recitation of facts. By adopting the magistrate’s report and recommendation in full, the district court neither held on the merits of the plea discrepancy claim, nor found the claim exhausted, nor found the claim barred by laches. Thus, the majority not only incorrectly states that the issue was outside the scope of the remand, but also proceeds to hold for the district court that the claim is flawed by nonexhaustion.
This Court can neither affirm nor reverse the district court on the plea discrepancy claim because there is no holding below to judge. This Court also cannot consider clear or plain error because there is no factual finding below to assess. I would remand this case for the district court’s treatment of the plea discrepancy issue.2

. Although Thomas entered a formal plea to first degree murder with a life sentence on March 26, 1973, Thomas argues that he agreed to plead guilty only to second, not first, degree murder. Nowhere in the record does Thomas or anyone else state that Thomas knowingly agreed to plead to first degree murder. At the evidentiary hearing held on remand, Thomas' appointed trial counsel could attest only to explicit agreement to a second degree murder plea. Counsel could find notes documenting only that on March 22, 1973, Thomas agreed to second degree murder with a life sentence. Counsel could find no record and had no recollection of any communication with Thomas about the change from second to first degree murder in the hiatus from March 22 to March 26. Counsel also had no record or recollection that the State rejected a plea of second degree murder. Thomas testified that he could not recall any of the details of his final plea agreement. Thomas maintains that he did not discover that he had pleaded to first degree murder until after the plea proceedings, when he was back in prison.
Whether Thomas pleaded to first or second degree murder is not a trivial matter. In his own words: "Everything dealing with the first degree murder, second degree murder is totally different. Everyone looks at first degree murder as being a premeditated or a felony murder." The disadvantages of a life sentence for first degree murder include: 1) delayed parole eligibility at 120 months instead of 58 months for second degree murder life sentences; 2) lesser chances for work release; and 3) more rigorous custody. Although the parole eligibility issue has been mooted by time, the other incarceration effects remain current.

. The first aspect to consider is exhaustion. It is not clear from the record whether Thomas' third 3.850 motion raised the plea discrepancy issue. Thomas has the burden of proving exhaustion, but nonexhaustion is an affirmative defense. If a party fails to raise exhaustion and instead argues on the merits, this Court may address the merits of the unexhausted claim. Westbrook v. Zant, 704 F.2d 1487 (11th Cir.1983). In this appeal, the State did not argue *675nonexhaustion as to the plea discrepancy issue and instead argued that any issue other than laches and the promise of early parole was outside the scope of the remand.
If nonexhaustion does not bar the claim, the second aspect to consider is laches, which the State generally raised against the voluntariness issue. The district court’s discussion of laches as to the drug-induced plea did not cover laches as to the plea discrepancy issue. The plea discrepancy issue appeared as new evidence from the evidentiary hearing and was raised as soon as the discrepancy became evident from the notes and testimony of Thomas' trial counsel at the evidentiary hearing.