Court Opinion

ID: 9492049
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:30:58.242843+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:04.933775
License: Public Domain

TROTT, Circuit Judge,
with whom O’SCANNLAIN and SILVERMAN,p Circuit Judges, join, Dissenting and Concurring in Part in the Dissent of GRABER, Circuit Judge:
Not only is the proof of the pudding always in the eating, but so sometimes is the poison. The net result of the majority’s faulty approach to resolving Barron’s interlocutory problem yields acute systemic distress when applied to other common sets of facts and circumstances. This is what they have accomplished.
Abel is charged with two felony counts. Count I charges X. Count II charges Y. Abel freely and voluntarily pleads guilty to Count II pursuant to a plea bargain. In consideration of the plea, Count I is dismissed. Abel is sentenced to prison for Y.
One week after the time to appeal expires, the Supreme Court decides that the Ninth Circuit’s published view of the evidence needed to prove Y is wrong, an occurrence not unheard of. Abel files a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 (1994) attacking his “sentence,” or whatever. Abel, of course, is correct — about the validity of his conviction.
Here’s the poison: the majority’s approach in this case immediately sets Abel free and bars any further action on Count I — even though 1) Abel made no appropriate objection, 2) Abel did not appeal, 3) Abel procedurally defaulted, and 4) the consideration for the agreement has failed — leaving the government and society holding an empty bag.1
The district court clearly apprehended this problem, unmasking it with a more graphic example:
Assume that the authorities arrest Jack the Ripper, charge him with the torturous murder of 175 women, and a *1168Grand Jury subsequently issues an indictment. Facing 175 convictions and consequent death penalties, Ripper, on advice of counsel, pleads to one count-the murder of Sally Jones-in return for a guaranteed life sentence and a promise by the prosecutor to dismiss all other charges. Ripper killed so many women he cannot be sure if he really killed Sally; his victims kind of blend together in his mind. However, she died under circumstances virtually identical to his other victims, and he was in the neighborhood at the time of her murder. Therefore, he cheerfully concedes guilt, the prosecutor dismisses the other charges, and Ripper receives the bargained for sentence. Years later, it transpires that a copy-cat actually killed Sally and that Ripper is unquestionably innocent for Sally’s murder. Ripper moves for post-conviction relief. In the words of the Supreme Court, he is factu- . ally innocent and no one can contest his innocence. The gravamen of Ripper’s claim is that there was a mutual mistake of fact. The proper result would be to set aside the plea and reinstate the original charges so that a new agreement can be reached on the basis of the murder of a victim that Ripper actually did kill.
United States v. Barron, 940 F.Supp. 1489, 1493 n. 6 (D.Alaska 1996) (citations omitted). This result is incongruous to say the least. The Ripper was never placed in jeopardy on the dismissed counts, and a statute of limitation does not shelter him because the crime is murder, yet he is permanently free because the government remains bound by the unraveled plea agreement even though he is relieved from performing a material part of the agreement as a consequence of his deliberate election to attack it.
The majority seems frozen by certain words Barron uses in attacking his predicament, focusing myopically on his calculated failure to ask for a new trial, a focus that interferes with any reasoned attempt to properly characterize and process his motion. Barron called it an attack on his “conviction,” pure and simple. This is not a Kabuki dance or a game. Barron cannot fend off the truth by using the statute as a shield when it carries no such restriction in this context. He should not get what he asks for, but what § 2255 permits as “appropriate.” The district court was correct when it said, “By attacking a key component in the sentencing plan envisioned in the plea agreement, Barron is, in effect, attacking the plea agreement itself.” 940 F.Supp. at 1493. The Supreme Court has told us that a “trial judge’s characterization of his own action cannot control the classification of the action,” United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82, 96, 98 S.Ct. 2187, 57 L.Ed.2d 65 (1978), yet here we permit a defendant to get away with what a trial judge cannot do — prevail behind the mask of inappropriate nomenclature and labels.
I was under the impression — mistaken, I suppose — that complete frustration of purpose, or impossibility of performance, or failure of consideration — call it what you may — brought on by subsequent or superseding events, such as a change in the law rendering performance illegal, discharges both parties to a contract from the duty to perform. We seemed to understand this principle twenty-five years ago in United States v. Gerard, 491 F.2d 1300, 1305-06 (9th Cir.1974), when we said that the government should not always be locked into its side of a plea bargain when a defendant succeeds in withdrawing from his, but today the principle escapes us. See also Santobello v. New York, 404 U.S. 257, 263 n. 2, 92 S.Ct. 495, 30 L.Ed.2d 427 (1971) (“If the state court decides to allow withdrawal of the plea, the petitioner will, of course, plead anew to the original charge on two felony counts.”); United States v. Hillary, 106 F.3d 1170, 1172 (4th Cir.1997) (“[O]n correcting the error complained of in a § 2255 petition, the defendant may be ‘placed in exactly the same position in which he would have been had there been no error in the first instance.’ ” (quoting United States v. Silvers, 90 F.3d 95, 99 (4th Cir.1996))). I note that the government relinquished the opportunity *1169to pursue Barron as a career offender in return for this plea, and in so doing gave up the possibility of a life sentence.
The district court correctly understood and rejected the windfall Barron was seeking:
The confusion in the cases cited by Barron may be traceable to the fact that where two parties rescind a contract, each is entitled to restitution of any benefit he bestowed on the other party. In this situation, the benefit Barron bestowed is the time he served and will serve. He is entitled to restitution for that amount. He will receive it in the form of credit for time served against any sentence he should ultimately receive. The benefit the government bestowed was the promise not to seek further prosecution arising from facts underlying the indictment and not to seek the enhanced, higher sentence, i.e., 18 U.S.C. § 924(e), which provides a fifteen-year minimum. Because Barron is entitled to be relieved of a major part of the burden of his plea, common sense and justice suggests that he lose the benefits as well.
United States v. Barron, 940 F.Supp. at 1493-94.
The Seventh Circuit put it quite well in a Bailey2 setting similar to our present case:
If a multicount sentence is a package- and we think it is-then severing part of the total sentence usually will unbundle it. And we do not think it matters what means are used to bring resentencing proceedings before the district court. Under the sentencing package concept, when a defendant raises a sentencing issue he attacks the bottom line. That Smith’s case came before the district court pursuant to a § 2255 petition, rather than a remand from us or by some other means, does not change that fact.
United States v. Smith, 103 F.3d 531, 534 (7th Cir.1996). Based on this analysis, that court affirmed the resentencing of a defendant on two counts not disturbed by Bailey, increasing the sentences for those offenses.
The majority’s approach seems driven by a questionable sense of rough justice based on an aversion to the possibility that Barron might face a harsher sentence as a reward for his successful challenge. In a similar context, we recently recognized that such a result would not necessarily be inequitable, see United States v. Handa, 122 F.3d 690, 692 (9th Cir.1997), when Judge Noonan wrote for the court:
Handa argues earnestly that resen-tencing under the Guidelines after he has prevailed in setting aside the firearms count of conviction is unfair. That view of the matter goes too far in treating sentencing as a kind of game.... There is, therefore, no constitutional barrier to the district court imposing a sentence, and no unfairness in imposing a sentence that the Guidelines make appropriate for Handa’s conduct.
The truth is that because this appeal is interlocutory, we have no idea what appropriate sentence the district court might have determined. Surely Barron would get credit for time served, as the district court indicated; and, as Judge Graber explains, plenty of rules exist to ensure that any new sentence he receives will comport with due process and the law, and that is what matters. See Alabama v. Smith, 490 U.S. 794, 799, 109 S.Ct. 2201, 104 L.Ed.2d 865 (1989) (“[The] presumption of vindictiveness ‘do[es] not apply in every case where a convicted defendant receives a higher sentence on retrial.’ ” (quoting Texas v. McCullough, 475 U.S. 134, 138, 106 S.Ct. 976, 89 L.Ed.2d 104 (1986))) (overruling in part North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 23 L.Ed.2d 656 (1969)); Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U.S. 357, 364-65, 98 S.Ct. 663, 54 L.Ed.2d 604 (1978) (holding that the Fourteenth Amendment is not implicated when a state prosecutor carries out a threat during plea negotiations to reindict the accused on *1170more serious charges if he does not plead guilty to the offense with which he was originally charged); Blackledge v. Perry, 417 U.S. 21, 27-28, 94 S.Ct. 2098, 40 L.Ed.2d 628 (1974) (protecting against vindictive conduct by a prosecutor against a defendant who attacks his conviction on appeal); Pearce, 395 U.S. at 723-24, 89 S.Ct. 2072 (imposing constitutional limitations on but not barring the imposition of a harsher sentence after conviction on retrial after a successful post-conviction proceeding), overruled on other gnds., Smith, 490 U.S. at 799, 109 S.Ct. 2201.
The majority opinion appears to overlook the implications in this context of longstanding principle that permits a district court to accept a plea of guilty from a defendant who says he is innocent so long as there exists a factual basis for the plea. North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25, 37-38, 91 S.Ct. 160, 27 L.Ed.2d 162 (1970). And, as we said in United States v. Neel, 547 F.2d 95, 96 (9th Cir.1976) (per curiam), “The court need not be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that [the] accused is guilty. It need only be convinced that there is sufficient evidence to justify the reaching of such a conclusion.” It is also appropriate for the same district court to refuse to permit such a defendant to withdraw his guilty plea even though he pleads legal confusion, repeats his claim of innocence, and asks for fairness and justice. United States v. Alber, 56 F.3d 1106, 1111 (9th Cir.1995). The rationale behind the Alford rule as expressed by Justice White is plain and simple: “As one state court observed nearly a century ago, ‘[rjeasons other than the fact that he is guilty may induce a defendant to ... plead [guilty] [and][he] must be permitted to judge for himself in this respect.’ ” Id. at 33, 91 S.Ct. 160. The court also embraced the concept that the Constitution is not offended by the acceptance of a plea “even though the evidence before the judge indicated that there was a valid defense.” Id. at 35, 91 S.Ct. 160.
From this line of cases, I conclude that no constitutional or statutory infirmity exists in the choice the district court gave Barron: either perform your part of the deal, or start over again. I note that the district court’s charitable reasoning in this regard, which echos what Justice White said in Alford, was that Barron should not be compelled to withdraw his plea if he did not want to. In fact, the court very well could have refrained from the option of sticking with the deal and simply said, “This is what happens when we grant your motion.” The choice may not be easy, but it was necessarily occasioned by Barron’s criminal conduct and the change in the law. In fact, the option the majority does not like — serve out your sentence — is a boon to Barron in the light of (1) the Probation Officer’s conclusion that Barron was an armed career offender facing 360 months to life, and (2) the stipulated factual basis for the convictions:
In its case-in-chief the United States would show that on April 18, 1986, [appellant] was convicted in the Superior Court for the State of Alaska at Fairbanks of Misconduct Involving a Controlled Substance in violation of A.S. 11.71.030(a)(1). Plaintiff would obtain judicial notice of the fact that this offense is punishable by imprisonment for a term in excess of one year; the evidence would show that [appellant] was actually sentenced to four years imprisonment, this being a presumptive sentence under state law.
The evidence would further show that on December 11, 1991, a state search warrant was executed at [appellant’s] residence in North Pole, Alaska. Found in a safe in his bedroom was approximately twenty-one (21) ounces of cocaine, one .380 caliber Bernardelli semiautomatic handgun, and approximately $34,000.00 in cash. A search of [appellant] himself incident to arrest also disclosed cocaine, $1977 in cash in his vest pocket, and $900 in “buy” money used by undercover law enforcement in the pocket of his jeans. Finally, the evidence would also show that the search of [appellant’s] residence additionally disclosed packaging materials, cutting *1171agents and drug paraphernalia as further proof of [appellant’s] intent to engage in drug trafficking.
Finally, and with all respect to my colleagues, I must reluctantly point out that the majority opinion treats the government’s arguments with what comes across as scorn, using wholly inappropriate language such as:
Stripped of the contract analogy, the government’s position is untenable. As a initial matter the government could not have said, “you are innocent of using a gun, but if you plead to it, we’ll give up charging you for your career offenses.” Unless the government can do the same thing now by invoking contract principles, its case is no better.
What? The government’s case is no better than using threats to force “innocent” people to plead guilty? The government has never even remotely suggested such a thing. What the government did say was that Barron might “plead anew to a section 924(c)(1) offense on the basis of facts known to him that would support a conviction under Bailey.” The majority’s passage unfairly forces words into the government’s mouth the government has never uttered. It then twists the government’s arguments into a strawman and batters it to pieces. The government has only argued that Barron’s plea agreement was predicated on a mutual mistake of law and should be vacated because Barron, who has escaped 60 months of imprisonment he bargained for in lieu of additional felony charges and a heavier sentence, cannot be allowed to have his cake and eat it, too. The government seeks only to make Barron pay for what he did. To support their respectable argument, the government cites United States v. Smith, 103 F.3d 531, 533-35 (7th Cir.1996) (district court has authority to restructure defendant’s entire sentencing package where Bailey has voided one of three counts of conviction); United States v. Friend, 101 F.3d 557, 558-59 (8th Cir.1996) (remanding for possible sentence enhancement under Guidelines § 2D1.1(b)(1) after Section 924(c)(1) conviction invalidated by Bailey); United States v. Valle, 72 F.3d 210, 217-18 (1st Cir.1995) (same); United States v. Pollard, 72 F.3d 66, 68-69 (7th Cir.1995) (same).
What seems completely to escape the majority is that we, the judges of the Ninth Circuit, are the ones responsible for Barron’s plea in 1992 to the now-troublesome count, because we held in 1991 in United States v. Torres-Rodriguez, 930 F.2d 1375, 1385 (9th Cir.1991)—a year before the plea—that mere possession of a firearm was sufficient to satisfy § 924(c). Are we chargeable with herding “innocent” defendants to prison, or has the noble fiction of “Barron was never guilty” now run amok? If we are not so chargeable, then why is it necessary or useful at the end of the opinion to wrap the matter in “the fundamental principle that it is never just to punish a man or woman for an innocent act?” This concept has nothing to do with this case, and it is a shot the government does not deserve.
The majority says also that Bailey “was not a favorable intervening change in the law.” It wasn’t? Then how does the majority explain what the Supreme Court did in Bailey to Torres-Rodriguez? No matter how one chooses fictionally to label the process, Bailey changed the law in this circuit, law relied on in 1992 by the government, the district court, and Barron when this plea was entered. We told them what the law was, and they followed our lead. In passing, I would note that Torres-Rodriguez did not plow new ground. In fact, in it we said that the result was “supported by Stewart, our leading decision on section 924(c)(1).” Torres-Rodriguez, 930 F.2d at 1385 (citing United States v. Stewart, 779 F.2d 538, 540 (9th Cir.1985)). The author of Stewart was no lesser a judicial luminary than now-Justice Anthony Kennedy, and I doubt he thought he was causing “innocent” people to be sent to jail when he wrote it, no more than did the panel who published Torres-Rodriguez.
Moreover, the majority denies the government the opportunity to argue under *1172Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614, -, 118 S.Ct. 1604, 1613, 140 L.Ed.2d 828 (1998) that Barron procedurally defaulted on this claim by failing to make it the subject of a direct appeal. The majority’s rationale is that the government did not rely on this ground in the district court. What the majority opinion overlooks is (1) that the district court ruled that by not appealing, Barron had forfeited any defense based upon a favorable intervening change in the law, and (2) that Bousley is a new case that corrected our previous misunderstanding of the rules.
Bousley sends two messages the majority fails to acknowledge. First “ ‘the concern with finality served by the limitation on collateral attack has special force with respect to convictions' based on guilty pleas.’” Id. at -, 118 S.Ct. at 1610 (quoting United States v. Timmreck, 441 U.S. 780, 784, 99 S.Ct. 2085, 60 L.Ed.2d 634 (1979)). Second, “[i]n cases where the Government has forgone more serious charges in the course of plea bargaining, petitioner’s showing of actual innocence must also extend to those charges.” Id. at -, 118 S.Ct. at 1612. Accordingly, I would analyze this case through the lens of procedural default as outlined by Bousley. The district court recognized this problem, and so should we. Just as Bousley procedurally defaulted, so has Barron, period. Barron is not “actually innocent.” The majority faults the government for not arguing Bousley before Bousley, but they let Barron off the hook for not arguing Bailey before Bailey.
We have roared like hell when agencies like the INS refuse to follow our law, even when they point out that other circuits have different rules. Yet here, the majority seems to say that by following our lead the district court traffics in the conviction of the innocent.
Accordingly, I concur in most of Judge Graber’s well-reasoned dissent. I suppose all plea agreements will now contain a revivor clause as to dismissed counts, hanging a “threat” over a defendant’s head before any possible appeal; but to what purpose if an attack by a defendant crafted without a request for a new trial blocks any access by the court to the real issue. Barron may live in North Pole, but we are Santa Claus.

. This is not the first time we have made this mistake. See United States v. Sandoval-Lopez, 122 F.3d 797 (9th Cir.1997).

. Bailey v. U.S., 516 U.S. 137, 116 S.Ct. 501, 133 L.Ed.2d 472 (1995).