Jamison v. Klem (CA3)

Jamison v. Klem, No. 07-1045 (CA3) — The court granted a conditional writ on a claim that a guilty plea was not knowingly and voluntarily entered because the petitioner was not informed of a mandatory sentence applicable to the drug crimes with which he was charged.

The petitioner was charged in Pennsylvania court with possession of cocaine and marijuana with intent to deliver, possession of marijuana, reckless endangerment, and driving without a license.  He decided to enter into an open plea agreement with the government, and the prosecutor recommended “4-8 years w/ mand.” as a sentence.  At the change-of-plea hearing, the prosecutor informed the court that he would be “filing mandatory” on the case; no other mention of the mandatory sentence on the drug charge was made.  After entering the plea, the prosecutor sent a letter to the petitioner informing him that the mandatory minimum sentence was 3 years (or 5 if it was a second offense), but trial counsel testified in postconviction proceedings that he never received this letter.  In light of the petitioner’s juvenile record, the minimum sentence was 5 years.  Ultimately the petitioner received a sentence of 5 to 10 years.

The petitioner testified in state postconviction proceedings that he did not understand what “filing mandatory” meant, and that he would not have pleaded guilty if he knew he would have to serve at least 5 years on the drug charge.  Trial counsel agreed that he never told the petitioner that his mandatory minimum sentence was 5 years.  The state courts held that the statement that the sentence recommendation was “4-8 years w/ mand” was sufficient to apprise the petitioner that he was facing a mandatory sentence.

In federal court, the magistrate judge ruled that the state courts’ ruling was an unreasonable application of Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 239 (1969), because the petitioner was not given adequate notice of the minimum sentence applicable to his crime.  The district judge rejected this ruling because no clearly established federal law required that a defendant be informed of any applicable mandatory minimum sentence.

Writing for a unanimous panel of the Third Circuit, Judge McKee called the district judge’s view “myopic and constrained.”  “If we were to uphold the District Court’s view of how precisely a Supreme Court decision must resolve a given issue under AEDPA, only Supreme Court holdings arising from the identical presentation of a given legal issue would constitute ‘clearly established law.’”  Boykin, Judge McKee observed, “demands the utmost solicitude of courts to ensure that the defendant has a full understanding of what the plea connotes and of its consequences.”  In the face of Pennsylvania’s indeterminate sentencing scheme, nothing in what the prosecutor told the petitioner “provided [him] with sufficient information about the mandatory minimum sentence his plea exposed him to.”  Telling the petitioner that the prosecutor was “filing mandatory” was “far too opaque a reference to inform [the petitioner] that he may have to serve at least five years in prison if he pled guilty.”  A mandatory minimum sentence is a direct consequence of a guilty plea, one that Boykin requires be disclosed to a defendant before trial.

Blog break.

Sorry for the light blogging lately.  It’s gonna continue for the rest of the week.  I’m moving to another state, and I’m the only one who puts this together.

Blogging will resume after the weekend.

Apologies.

Apologies for the absence of posts yesterday.  I took the MPRE yesterday, so my law work was all focused on that. The habeas blogging will resume momentarily.

CA9 — memorandum disposition

Sutton v. Farwell, No. 06-17346 (screening) — The Nevada courts did not unreasonably conclude that Sutton’s guilty plea was knowing and voluntary under Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238 (1969).

CA5 — memorandum decision

Baker v. Cain, No. 06-31177 — The Louisiana courts’ failure to notify the petitioner that his state post-conviction relief application had been denied was not grounds for equitable tolling.  He filed an application for state post-conviction relief in September 2002, and the trial court denied it in December 2002.  Twenty months later, Baker asked the trial court what the status of his application was, and the trial court told him it had been denied.  He sought relief from the Louisiana Court of Appeals and the Louisiana Supreme Court, both of which denied relief.  The federal district court later determined that his 2254 petition was untimely, and that equitable tolling did not apply.  The Fifth Circuit certified the equitable tolling issue for appeal.

The Fifth Circuit declined the State of Louisiana’s invitation to entirely foreclose equitable tolling as a basis for relief from untimely habeas applications.  Although it affirmed that equitable tolling should be available only in “rare and exceptional circumstances,” it reasoned that neither the full Fifth Circuit sitting en banc nor the U.S. Supreme Court had expressly held that the AEDPA limitations period was not subject to equitable tolling.

The length of time Baker waited to ask for a ruling from the trial court on his application for state post-conviction relief raised a question of diligence.  But the Fifth Circuit noted that other Louisiana trial courts had taken “approximately twenty months or longer” to rule on post-conviction relief applications.  Accordingly, the Fifth Circuit left it “for another day the issue of whether a prisoner in Baker’s position improperly waited.”  Instead, even assuming that the trial court’s October 2004 response to Baker’s letter constituted notice of the adverse decision, he waited too long under a Louisiana rule giving a losing party 30 days to file for a supervisory writ in the intermediate appellate court before seeking review of the trial court’s decision.  Because Baker did not file for relief in the Louisiana Court of Appeals until December 2004, he did not diligently pursue his rights, and thus was not entitled to equitable tolling.