Court Opinion

ID: 9499460
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:48:49.196182+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:30.973970
License: Public Domain

BEAM, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Although Hiland may have been wrongly decided, it is precedent that must be considered. However, I do not get that far in the analysis, as Mink, waived his rights to this appeal in his plea agreement. In that agreement, the language is plain— Mink waived “any and all rights to appeal [his] conviction in this case, including a waiver of all motions, defenses, and objec*565tions which [he] could assert to the charges or to the Court’s entry of Judgment against [him], including review ... of any sentence imposed.” The court misses the mark, focusing on whether the imposition of jury costs is a part of Mink’s “sentence.” The proper inquiry, based upon the plain language of Mink’s plea agreement, is whether the imposition of jury costs is part of the court’s “entry of Judgment,” from which Mink waived all rights of appeal.
The “Judgment In A Criminal Case” entered by the district court on May 4, 2006, contains the offenses on which Mink was convicted, his term of imprisonment and subsequent terms of supervised release, along with the monetary penalties and court costs imposed, which includes the jury costs at issue on appeal. Jury costs, then, are contained in the “judgment,” not the “sentence.” This is reinforced by Rule 32(k)(l) wherein .it is acknowledged that “[i]n the judgment of conviction, the court must set forth the plea, the jury verdict or the court’s findings, the adjudication, and the sentence.” Fed.R.Crim.P. 32(k)(l). Mink waived his right to appeal from the court’s “entry of Judgment,” only part of which contains the “sentence,” however defined. See United States v. Covey, 232 F.3d 641, 646 (8th Cir.2000) (recognizing that a final order of forfeiture and the sentence are part of the ultimate judgment).
What we are essentially dealing with here is a district court’s ability to operate and govern its courtroom and the general expenses associated therewith. These amounts are not, by definition or otherwise, statutorily described and adversarily generated “costs” arising out of a discrete piece of litigation. They are, rather, institutional burdens that should be managed and controlled by the district court, including limitations on wasted time and money inevitable in situations where parties settle or reach a plea agreement in the eleventh hour after a jury has been impaneled and the wheels set in motion. Forcing defendants who manipulate the court’s time to take responsibility for their behavior by way of imposition of jury-use fees is sound public policy and should be left undisturbed.