We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
LET’S MAKE A DEAL
Tyrone Walker made a plea deal with the government. He pled guilty (without cooperation) to one count of conspiracy to distribute crack in a deal in which the government estimated his sentence exposure to be 108 to 135 months, but noted that the estimate could change if new information became known.
The government postponed Tyrone’s sentence until after his co-defendant’s trial. When Tyrone was finally sentenced four long years later, the government gave the district court a new estimate, this one being 360 months to life. Tyrone protested, but the government said the new estimate was necessary, based in part on information that arose during the co-defendant’s trial, and that new information excused the government from doing as originally estimated in the plea agreement.
Last week, the 2nd Circuit held the government breached the plea deal. The Circuit ruled that Tyrone’s “reasonable expectations” were violated. The agreement said the estimate could change only if the government discovered new information, and it lacked any language that reserved to the government the right to argue for an upward variance or departure. What’s more, Tyrone’s sentencing hearing was unexpectedly delayed for four years while the Government put his co-defendant on trial, and then, the government attempted to increase his sentence on the basis of information that, although also established at the co-defendant’s trial, “had been well known to the government at the time it negotiated Walker’s plea.”
Finally, the government urged a sentence increase that changed Tyrone’s “exposure so dramatically that we may well question whether he could reasonably be seen to have understood the risks of the agreement.” Tyrone “may well have been on notice that his estimate was subject to change, but he could not have been on notice about this particular degree and kind of change.”
United States v. Walker, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 9910 (2nd Cir., Apr. 4, 2019)
– Thomas L. Root