United States v. Scott , 877 F.3d 42 ( 2017 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
Nos. 16-1434, 16-1561
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellee,
v.
MICHAEL DAVID SCOTT,
Defendant, Appellant.
APPEALS FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Nathaniel M. Gorton, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Howard, Chief Judge,
Thompson and Kayatta, Circuit Judges.
Lisa Aidlin for appellant.
David B. Goodhand, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice,
Criminal Division, Appellate Section, with whom William D.
Weinreb, Acting U.S. Attorney, Victor A. Wild, Assistant U.S.
Attorney, Ryan M. DiSantis, Assistant U.S. Attorney, Kenneth A.
Blanco, Acting Assistant Attorney General, U.S. Department of
Justice, and Trevor N. McFadden, Acting Principal Deputy Assistant
Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, were on brief, for
appellee.
December 8, 2017
KAYATTA, Circuit Judge. Michael David Scott claims,
among other things, that the district court acted improperly in
rejecting a plea agreement he had negotiated with the government,
in not allowing him to negotiate and submit a new agreement, and
in sentencing him before he read the presentence report ("PSR").
Finding no combination of error and prejudice sufficient to set
aside Scott's sentence, we affirm.
I. Background
In August 2010, the government charged Scott with wire
and bank fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C §§ 1343–44 and unlawful
monetary transactions in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1957, all as
described in our opinion issued today affirming Scott's conviction
on those charges. See United States v. Scott, No. 15-2405. While
those charges were pending, the government secured Scott's
indictment on additional wire fraud charges arising out of acts
committed after his first indictment. Scott was arrested and
detained pending trial.
In May 2015, Scott pled guilty in the first case, without
a plea agreement. In November 2015, the district court sentenced
him to 135 months' imprisonment in that case. Two months later,
Scott and the government entered into a plea agreement in this
second case pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal
Procedure 11(c)(1)(C). If accepted by the court, the agreement
would have bound the court to sentence Scott to six months'
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imprisonment on the new wire fraud charges, to be served
concurrently with the term of imprisonment from the prior case,
plus six additional months to be served consecutively to Scott's
other sentences in accord with 18 U.S.C. § 3147, which mandates
that an individual convicted of a crime committed while on release
pending trial serve an additional sentence. The agreement also
called for $49,000 in restitution, an amount that did not include
attorneys' fees and interest for the victims, and likewise did not
include losses related to certain uncharged conduct. The district
court conducted a change-of-plea hearing and conditionally
accepted the plea agreement, but noted that it would reserve final
acceptance or rejection until it had considered the PSR.
Sentencing was set for March 25, 2016.
On March 23, a group of victims filed a sentencing
memorandum, urging the district court to reject the proposed plea
agreement and impose, at a minimum, a consecutive prison term of
at least twelve months and a restitution award that included
attorneys' fees and interest. The next day, the district court
docketed a notice stating: "Having considered the presentence
report and the Victim's sentencing memorandum . . . the Court
hereby notifies the parties . . . of its intention to reject the
. . . plea . . . . The Court concludes that any consecutive
sentence of incarceration of less than 12 months . . . is
insufficient." The next day, counsel for Scott told the district
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court at the sentencing hearing that he had conferred with the
government and prepared "a revised agreement to submit to you with
what we interpreted as the considerations within your order."
Neither counsel disclosed the terms of the proposed submission,
and the district court rejected the effort, saying:
[A]s I understand [Rule 11], . . . the
defendant has a choice when the judicial
officer rejects a (C) plea: He can withdraw
his plea and go to trial. . . . Or he can
choose not to withdraw his plea and go forward
with the sentencing as of that moment. There
is no new plea to be negotiated.
The record reflects that Scott and his attorney then had a private
conversation, following which Scott's attorney, in Scott's
presence, told the court that Scott intended to maintain his guilty
plea and move forward with sentencing. The district court then
proceeded with the sentencing, ultimately imposing a sentence of
forty-one months' imprisonment, with twenty-nine months attributed
to the wire fraud charge to be served concurrently with Scott's
135-month sentence and twelve months attributed to section 3147 to
be served consecutively to both of Scott's other sentences. In
short, as a practical matter, this sentence meant that Scott would
likely serve six additional months of prison time beyond the amount
to which he and the government had conditionally agreed. The court
also ordered Scott to pay a total of $265,535 in restitution to
various victims identified by their initials in the PSR.
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At the conclusion of the sentencing hearing, the
following exchange occurred:
MR. GLEASON [counsel for Scott]: Judge,
[Scott] wants to wish to express to the Court
that he did not see the Presentence Report and
that he was not aware of initials and people
being owed money on initials as being an issue
for purposes of the restitution.
DEFENDANT: Yes.
THE COURT: Does Probation wish to respond to
that?
MS. ROFFO [representative from the probation
office]: Your Honor, the Presentence Report
was disclosed to counsel, and counsel is to
share it with his client.
THE COURT: Mr. Gleason, you got the
Presentence Report, correct?
MR. GLEASON: Yes, we did, your Honor.
THE COURT: All right. Anything further, Mr.
Wild?
MR. WILD [Assistant U.S. Attorney]: Only on
the question that's usually asked, your Honor,
by the Court, is whether counsel and the
defendant have discussed it, and I'm assuming
they have.
THE COURT: You discussed the Presentence
Report with your client?
MR. GLEASON: I have, your Honor, I discussed
it. I discussed it with the original and that
it was the additional facts which were
presented relative to this charge.
THE COURT: Thank you. We're adjourned.
II. Discussion
Scott contends that the district court committed six
specific errors: it improperly rejected his plea agreement based
on an erroneous understanding of the relevant law; it impermissibly
prevented him from securing and submitting a new plea agreement
after his first was rejected; it impermissibly participated in
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plea discussions; it wrongly denied him a continuance; it imposed
a sentence even though he had not read the PSR; and it failed to
provide adequate notice of certain information upon which it
relied. Additionally, Scott argues that the cumulative effect of
these errors was sufficient to deny him a full and fair sentencing
hearing, in violation of his due process rights. We address each
argument separately.
A.
We consider first Scott's contention that the district
court's rejection of the plea agreement was substantively improper
because, in his view, the district court relied on an incorrect
interpretation of relevant law. Specifically, he submits that the
victims' sentencing memorandum erroneously claimed that the
portion of the sentence to run as a consecutive add-on under 18
U.S.C. § 3147 had to last a minimum of twelve months, and that the
district court relied on this incorrect interpretation of
section 3147 in rejecting the plea agreement.1
1 In the section of his opening brief dealing with this issue,
Scott also makes a three-sentence argument that the district court
and U.S. Probation Office erred in adopting the amount of
restitution from the victims themselves without a sufficient
evidentiary basis. The perfunctory nature of this argument waives
it. See Puerto Rico Tel. Co., Inc. v. San Juan Cable LLC, 874
F.3d 767, 770 (1st Cir. 2017). And in any event, this argument
would likely fail, as Scott makes no claim even now that the
amounts in question were inaccurate.
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Scott did not present this argument to the district
court, so we review his claim for plain error. See United States
v. Uribe-Londoño, 409 F.3d 1, 3 (1st Cir. 2005). In order to
succeed on plain error review, Scott must show: "(1) that an error
occurred (2) which was clear or obvious and which not only
(3) affected the defendant's substantial rights, but also
(4) seriously impaired the fairness, integrity, or public
reputation of judicial proceedings." Id. at 4 (quoting United
States v. Negrón-Narváez, 403 F.3d 33, 37 (1st Cir. 2005)).
Mere speculation that a court may have erroneously
viewed its hands as tied by section 3147 serves poorly as a claim
that error even occurred, much less that such error is plain. The
district court said nothing to suggest that it felt bound by law
to extend the agreed-upon six-month consecutive sentence to twelve
months. As we have noted, we "presume that federal judges know
the law." United States v. Vega-Salgado, 769 F.3d 100, 104 (1st
Cir. 2014). The fact that section 3147, correctly applied, allows
the sentence imposed buttresses this conclusion. We take the
district court at its word that in rejecting the plea agreement,
it had simply concluded, well within its discretion, that only a
twelve-month consecutive sentence would be sufficient. In this,
there was no error, plain or otherwise.
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B.
We turn next to Scott's argument that the district court
erred by not withholding sentencing until he had a chance to
finalize a new plea agreement. Following the rejection of the
plea agreement, Scott's counsel represented to the court that he
and the government had reached a revised agreement. The district
court, however, stated that it could not accept such an agreement,
because in its view, once a district court rejects a plea
agreement, the defendant has only two choices: maintain a guilty
plea unconditionally and proceed to sentencing, or withdraw the
plea and proceed to trial. The district court stated on the record
that under its view of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(c),
"[t]here is no new plea to be negotiated." Scott argues on appeal
that the district court was incorrect and that he should have been
permitted to negotiate a new plea agreement.
The question of whether the government and a defendant
may negotiate and submit a new plea agreement after one is rejected
by the court appears to be a matter of first impression in this
circuit. Rule 11(c)(5) specifies that in rejecting a plea
agreement made pursuant to Rule 11(c)(1)(A) or (C), a district
court must inform the parties of the rejection, advise the
defendant that the court is not required to follow the agreement,
give the defendant an opportunity to withdraw the plea, and advise
the defendant that "if the plea is not withdrawn, the court may
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dispose of the case less favorably toward the defendant than the
plea agreement contemplated." Nothing in Rule 11 requires (or
even suggests) that a defendant only gets one bite at the
negotiation apple. And as Scott points out, other circuits have
implied that renegotiation is permissible in the face of a rejected
plea. See United States v. Kraus, 137 F.3d 447, 449 (7th Cir.
1998); United States v. Mukai, 26 F.3d 953, 956–57 (9th Cir. 1994);
United States v. Olesen, 920 F.2d 538, 543 (8th Cir. 1990).
We are at a loss to see any good reason why a defendant
could not negotiate a new plea agreement with the government and
submit it to the district court in the wake of that court's
rejection of a Rule 11(c)(1)(C) agreement. Even on appeal, the
government makes no claim that such an option is foreclosed. It
may be true, as the government argues, that to renegotiate and
submit a new plea agreement, a defendant must necessarily withdraw
his or her existing plea, which Scott did not choose to do. But
Scott and his attorney could have easily interpreted the district
court as stating that it would consider no additional submissions
even if he withdrew his plea.
Whether the district court therefore erred in its
comments, we need not finally decide. Assuming such an error
occurred, it was harmless. As noted above, the district court
determined that only a twelve-month consecutive sentence would be
sufficient. This was, as the district court stated, the bare
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minimum it would accept. And as it turned out, it was exactly the
sentence that the district court imposed.
Scott argues that, had he been permitted to negotiate
and submit a new agreement, he might have done better. But even
though his counsel apparently discussed with the government a new
agreement to be offered to the court, he can give us no reason to
think that the government would have agreed to recommend a
consecutive sentence below twelve months after the district court
rejected six months. Nor does he give us any reason to believe
that the district court would have accepted such a recommendation
given that it had already rejected the government's agreement to
a six-month sentence. Thus, any error committed here placed Scott
in no worse a position than he would have been in had he been given
the opportunity to negotiate a new plea. In short, by any measure,
the assumed error on this point was harmless.
C.
Scott next claims that the district court improperly
inserted itself into plea negotiations when it notified the parties
that it believed anything less than a twelve-month sentence to be
insufficient. Scott did not raise this issue in the district
court, so we once again review for plain error.
A district court necessarily walks a fine line in
rejecting a plea agreement. On the one hand, it may perceive a
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need to explain why it is rejecting the agreement.2 On the other
hand, it may need to avoid suggesting the particular terms upon
which the parties need agree to secure approval. See Kraus, 137
F.3d at 453–55; see also United States v. Miles, 10 F.3d 1135,
1139–40 (5th Cir. 1993). To safely walk this line in this case,
the district court might have simply explained that it rejected
the agreement because the six-month duration of the consecutive
portion of the sentence was too lenient, and because the
restitution award did not cover attorneys' fees and interest.
Arguably, the district court crossed the line here when it further
explained that nothing less than twelve months' imprisonment,
served consecutively to Scott's other sentences, would be
sufficient.
As we have observed, though, Scott did not argue to the
district court that it had crossed such a line, nor did he lodge
2 We have not decided whether such an explanation is required,
while those circuits that have done so have given conflicting
directions. Compare Kraus, 137 F.3d at 453 (holding that a
district court must offer its reasons for rejecting a plea
agreement and collecting cases) and United States v. Moore, 916
F.2d 1131, 1136 (6th Cir. 1990) (same) with United States v. Lee,
265 F. App'x 763, 766 (11th Cir. 2008) (stating that a district
court need not offer reasons for its rejection of a plea) (citing
United States v. Bean, 564 F.2d 700, 702 n.3 (5th Cir. 1977)) and
United States v. Moore, 637 F.2d 1194, 1196 (8th Cir. 1981) (same).
See also United States v. Foy, 28 F.3d 464, 472 (5th Cir. 1994)
(holding that the district court need not state on the record its
reasons for rejecting a plea agreement provided that "the record
as a whole renders the basis of the decision reasonably apparent
to the reviewing court").
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any objection on that basis. So on plain error review, he must
show, among other things, that there was clear and obvious error,
and that it affected his substantial rights. He falls short on
both counts. The circuits have not clearly spoken as to how much
information a district court must offer a defendant when rejecting
a guilty plea (and how much information is too much), and the issue
is undecided in this circuit. This strongly suggests that, the
error, if any, was not clear and obvious. Nor did any error affect
Scott's substantial rights. While Scott could conceivably find
prejudice if he had a credible argument that, absent the court's
comments, he would have gone to trial and thus had the possibility
of an acquittal, see United States v. Bierd, 217 F.3d 15, 19 (1st
Cir. 2000), he does not now seek to avoid his plea and go to trial;
he merely requests resentencing.
Contrary to Scott's contention, the district court's
comments do not create the appearance of impropriety, another
concern underlying the prohibition on judicial involvement in plea
negotiations. See id. ("[T]he interests of justice are best served
if the judge remains aloof from all discussions preliminary to the
determination of guilt or innocence so that his impartiality and
objectivity shall not be open to any question or suspicion when it
becomes his duty to impose sentence.") (quoting United States v.
Werker, 535 F.2d 198, 203 (2d Cir. 1976)). The district court's
suggestion that nothing less than a twelve-month sentence would be
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sufficient did not occur "preliminary to the determination of
guilt." Id. Rather, it came after a guilty plea had been tendered.
And it was not based on rank speculation, but upon information
gleaned from the PSR and victims' sentencing memorandum, exactly
the type of information that should inform a district court's
sentencing decisions.
Moreover, the six-month difference between the parties
agreed-upon six-month consecutive sentence and the twelve months
ultimately imposed is, in the context of the ten-year maximum
sentence permissible under section 3147, so fine as to render it
inconceivable that the judge's mention of the twelve-month figure
reduced Scott's ability to secure a non-binding plea that would
have caused the district court to impose a shorter sentence. To
conclude otherwise would require us to hypothesize that had the
district court not made the statement it did, but merely rejected
the sentence as too lenient, it would have accepted an agreement
providing for some consecutive sentence between six and twelve
months. Such hypothesizing carries too little weight for plain
error review, which by its nature places a "heavy burden" on the
party seeking reversal. See United States v. Latorre-Cacho, 874
F.3d 299, 303 (1st Cir. 2017) (quoting United States v. Prieto,
812 F.3d 6, 17 (1st Cir. 2016)).
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D.
Scott's attorney brought to the district court's
attention Scott's claim that he had not seen the PSR and was not
aware of the restitution information it contained. The government
also conceded at oral argument on appeal that the issue was
preserved. We review preserved claims of Rule 32 violations de
novo, and will remand if there is error that is not harmless. See
United States v. González-Vélez, 587 F.3d 494, 508–09 (1st Cir.
2009).
Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure 32(c) and (d)
require that the U.S. Probation Office conduct an investigation
and prepare a PSR. The PSR is to contain a variety of information
concerning the application of the sentencing guidelines given the
offense and the offender, including "information sufficient for a
restitution order" if the applicable "law provides for
restitution." Fed. R. Crim. P. 32(d)(2)(D). Rule 32(i)(1)(A)
requires the district court to verify at the sentencing hearing
"that the defendant and the defendant's attorney have read and
discussed the presentence report and any addendum to the report."
We have said in the past that the "better practice" in
complying with Rule 32 is for district courts "to address the
defendant directly in order to establish that he or she has had
the opportunity to read the PSR and to discuss it with his/her
counsel." United States v. DeLeon, 704 F.3d 189, 196 (1st Cir.
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2013) (brackets omitted) (quoting United States v. Manrique, 959
F.2d 1155, 1157–58 (1st Cir. 1992)). The district court did not
do so here. As a result, we cannot say that it is clear that Scott
was familiar with the substance of the final PSR. Cf. id. ("[I]f
it is abundantly clear from the sentencing hearing that both
defendant and his counsel are familiar with the report, a new
sentencing hearing will not be mandated, even if the court failed
to directly inquire whether the defendant had an opportunity to
review the report.") (quoting Manrique, 959 F.2d at 1157).
That being said, the record is clear that any error was
harmless. The only potential prejudice Scott identifies relates
to the restitution award. Scott argues that the PSR contained
three uncharged relevant matters that added an additional $142,500
to the restitution amount, and that because he had not reviewed
the PSR, he had no opportunity to challenge this portion of the
sentence. The problem for Scott is that, even now, he has not
identified any deficiency in these readily verifiable
calculations. Furthermore, he has made no legal argument that
this uncharged conduct could not serve as the basis for a
restitution award. Put simply, Scott has made no argument to this
court that the result would have been any different had he read
the PSR in full. So, if there was error in how the district court
treated Scott's statement regarding the PSR, it was harmless.
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E.
The day before the sentencing hearing, Scott moved for
a continuance on the ground that his counsel had a conflict due to
a trial in another court. The district court denied the request.
As it turned out, Scott's counsel appeared at the hearing, seemed
prepared, and made no claim otherwise. We reverse a district
court's denial of a motion to continue only for "'manifest abuse
of discretion' where the district court 'indulged a serious error
of law or suffered a meaningful lapse of judgment, resulting in
substantial prejudice to the movant.'" West v. United States, 631
F.3d 563, 568 (1st Cir. 2011) (emphasis added) (quoting United
States v. Saccoccia, 58 F.3d 754, 770 (1st Cir. 1995)). Given the
very strong presumption against reversal on this basis, we will
not reverse here, where there was no manifest error of law and no
obvious prejudice in denying the continuance.
In an attempt to argue otherwise, Scott notes that
shortly after denying the request to continue based on counsel's
scheduling conflict, the district court also announced that it
would reject the plea agreement. Scott's argument seems to be
that his counsel needed more time to consider and take steps in
response to that news. Scott, though, never moved for a
continuance for that reason. Nor did his counsel claim that more
time was needed. To the contrary, he said he would "like to go
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forward." No rule or precedent requires a court in such a
situation to continue a hearing sua sponte.
F.
Scott also argues that he had insufficient notice of the
victims' sentencing memorandum, and of the fact that the district
court would rely upon it in sentencing him.3 Though "[a] district
court has broad discretion in the information it may receive and
consider" in determining a sentence, "a defendant has a due process
right to be sentenced upon information which is not false or
materially incorrect." United States v. Curran, 926 F.2d 59, 61
(1st Cir. 1991). To protect this right, "a defendant must be
provided with a meaningful opportunity to comment on the factual
information on which his or her sentence is based." United States
v. Rivera-Rodríguez, 489 F.3d 48, 53–54 (1st Cir. 2007) (quoting
United States v. Berzon, 941 F.2d 8, 10 (1st Cir. 1991)). If a
court considers information outside the PSR, such as the victims'
3 At various points throughout his brief, Scott suggests that
the district court also erred in failing to provide him notice
that it would rely upon the victims' sentencing memorandum in
rejecting the plea agreement. He does not develop this argument,
however, and thus waives it. See United States v. Corbett, 870
F.3d 21, 33–34 (1st Cir. 2017) (deeming an argument waived where
a party failed "to meaningfully develop [it] or support it with
any authority"). In any event, the argument would likely fail;
Scott cites no authority, and we are aware of none, supporting the
proposition that Rule 11 or due process more generally require
that a district court notify a defendant, prior to the rejection
of a plea agreement, that it may consider certain information in
reaching that decision.
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sentencing memorandum at issue here, it "should disclose to the
defendant as much as was relied upon, in a timely manner, so as to
afford the defendant a fair opportunity to examine and challenge
it." Curran, 926 F.2d at 63.
The victims' sentencing memorandum was filed two days
before the hearing, with the court's notice that it was planning
to reject the plea agreement appearing on the docket just the day
before. Certainly that may have allowed too little time within
which to "examine and challenge" any asserted facts. Scott,
though, made no request for any such additional time on that basis,
nor claimed that he saw any such need. Nor was this surprising;
the memorandum contained no facts that Scott disputes even now.
Rather, the only facts tendered consisted of a general description
of Scott's criminal activity as it related to the victims, of their
losses, including attorneys' fees, and of details relating to
settlement discussions.
In any event, Scott's acquiescence below leaves him to
argue, again, that it was plain error for the district court not
to have sua sponte continued the sentencing because the victims
filed their memorandum. And again, Scott cites no authority that
mandates such a sua sponte continuance. With no authority
suggesting such a continuance was required, there was no "clear or
obvious" error, and thus Scott cannot succeed on plain error
review.
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G.
Scott's final claim is that the preceding errors or
assumed errors, even if insignificant individually, nonetheless
had a strong enough cumulative effect as to render his sentencing
hearing violative of due process. We disagree.
It is true that "[i]ndividual errors, insufficient in
themselves to necessitate [reversal], may in the aggregate have a
more debilitating effect." United States v. Sepulveda, 15 F.3d
1161, 1195–96 (1st Cir. 1993). As the preceding discussion makes
clear, however, many of the errors asserted by Scott were not, in
fact, errors. Furthermore, the harmlessness of any potential
errors all stemmed from the same fact; namely, that the record is
clear that the district court imposed the lowest sentence it
believed sufficient for the offense, and that sentence was well
below what the court in its discretion could have imposed. At
bottom, Scott has simply made no showing that the district court
committed any errors that either individually or cumulatively
could have adversely affected the sentence that he received.
III. Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the judgment of the
district court.
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