United States v. Santiago-Rivera ( 2014 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 13-1228
IN RE JOANNIE PLAZA-MARTÍNEZ,
Appellant.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Francisco A. Besosa, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Torruella, Selya and Thompson,
Circuit Judges.
Héctor E. Guzmán, Jr., Federal Public Defender, Héctor L.
Ramos-Vega, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Supervisor, Appeals
Division, and Patricia A. Garrity, Assistant Federal Public
Defender, on brief for appellant.
March 26, 2014
SELYA, Circuit Judge. The appellant, Assistant Federal
Public Defender Joannie Plaza-Martínez, challenges a monetary
sanction imposed for what the court below termed a lack of candor.
Her appeal requires us to jump a jurisdictional hurdle and, once
that hurdle has been cleared, to evaluate the propriety of the
sanction. After careful consideration, we find the sanction
insupportable.
The stage can easily be set. In the district court, the
appellant acted as counsel for Juan Felix Santiago-Rivera, a
criminal defendant who pleaded guilty to a number of charges
arising out of a violent carjacking. The relevant facts anent
Santiago-Rivera's offense can be gleaned from our opinion rejecting
his appeal from the sentence imposed. See United States v.
Santiago-Rivera, ___ F.3d ___, ___ (1st Cir. 2014) [No. 13-1228,
slip op. at 2-3].
After Santiago-Rivera entered a guilty plea, the court,
on August 31, 2012, notified both sides that a disposition hearing
would take place on December 14, 2012. On the day before the
scheduled hearing, the appellant moved for a continuance and
requested that the hearing be reset for a date subsequent to
January 11, 2013. As the ground for her motion, the appellant
represented that she could not attend the scheduled sentencing
because it conflicted with the commencement of a trial in another
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criminal case before a different judge.1 As matters turned out,
she had not yet entered an appearance in the second case (although
she did so shortly after filing the continuance motion).
The district court denied the motion, indicating that the
appellant could attend jury selection in the second case after
Santiago-Rivera's sentencing. The appellant responded by renewing
her motion for a continuance and reiterating the conflict between
the scheduled proceedings in the two cases. The court denied the
renewed motion and, without any prior notice, fined the appellant
$100 as a monetary sanction.
To explain this sanction, the court stated in a minute
order that the appellant had "not [been] candid with the Court."
The court made two related observations. First, it remarked that
the appellant had entered her appearance in the second case
subsequent to requesting a continuance of Santiago-Rivera's
sentencing. Second, it remarked that a different assistant federal
public defender previously had engaged in similar conduct.2 The
1
As an additional ground, the appellant noted that the
probation department had filed an amended presentence report on
December 6, 2012. This filing was so close in time to the
scheduled sentencing date that, in her view, it violated the
temporal parameters established by Federal Rule of Criminal
Procedure 32(e)(2) (which provides that the presentence report must
be given to the defendant and defense counsel at least 35 days
before sentencing). This issue is of no relevance here.
2
This earlier incident does not seem to be the basis for the
court's sanction order — and if it were, the imposition of
sanctions on that basis could not withstand scrutiny. The record
does not show that the appellant had any knowledge of this
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court warned that if such a conflict arose again, more severe
sanctions would ensue.
Later that day, the appellant filed an ex parte motion
for reconsideration, seeking not only the previously requested
continuance but also vacation of the monetary sanction. The
appellant offered to provide the court with a case history report
regarding the second case, noting that the report would explain in
detail her significant level of involvement with that case in her
capacity as supervisor of the Federal Public Defender's litigation
section. This filing made pellucid that the appellant had been
involved for months in the second case.
The next day, the district court convened Santiago-
Rivera's sentencing hearing. Before turning to sentencing, the
court resolved the appellant's motion for reconsideration. It
stated that if the appellant "had put all of this . . . in [her]
original motion, [it] may have done something else" and that
"another situation would have occurred." Nevertheless, the court
refused to vacate the sanction. It did, however, continue
Santiago-Rivera's sentencing to January 17, 2013.
The day before that hearing, Assistant Federal Public
Defender Héctor L. Ramos-Vega filed a further ex parte motion for
incident, nor does it furnish any plausible ground for visiting
upon the appellant the sins of some other public defender. See
Martin v. Brown, 63 F.3d 1252, 1265 (3d Cir. 1995) (holding that
attorney sanctions must be "imposed solely because of [the
attorney's] own improper conduct").
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reconsideration of the sanctions order. The motion papers included
a timekeeping report, which substantiated the appellant's claim
that she had been working on the second criminal matter well before
she filed her notice of appearance. The court summarily denied
this motion. It sentenced Santiago-Rivera on the following day.
A single notice of appeal was filed. By means of this
one notice, Santiago-Rivera sought to appeal his sentence and the
appellant sought to appeal the sanctions order and the denial of
her motions for reconsideration. The notice of appeal was
unarguably proper as to Santiago-Rivera's claims of error, and we
resolved those claims in an earlier opinion. When we affirmed
Santiago-Rivera's sentence, we held in abeyance the appellant's
separate claim of error. See Santiago-Rivera, ___ F.3d at ___ [No.
13-1228, slip op. at 12].
There is an unresolved jurisdictional question concerning
the appellant's separate claim of error: can a lawyer obtain
appellate review of a sanctions order by piggy-backing on her
client's notice of appeal? Although neither side has voiced any
concern about this conundrum, "[a] court is duty-bound to notice,
and act upon, defects in its subject matter jurisdiction sua
sponte." Spooner v. EEN, Inc., 644 F.3d 62, 67 (1st Cir. 2011).
Accordingly, we must undertake to determine whether we have
jurisdiction over the appellant's piggy-backed claim.
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There is no doubt but that the better practice is for an
attorney who wishes to challenge a sanctions order directed at him
or her to file a separate notice of appeal. See 16A Charles A.
Wright & Arthur R. Miller et al., Federal Practice and Procedure
§ 3949.4 (4th ed. 2013). This is not to say, however, that the
better practice is the only acceptable practice.
Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 3 generally governs
the procedural formalities incident to the taking of appeal. Under
the 1993 amendments to the rule, an appeal should not be dismissed
if it is "clear from the notice that the party intended to appeal."
Fed. R. App. P. 3, 1993 advisory committee's note to subdivision
(c). With this admonition in mind, we hold that we have
jurisdiction over a claim of error made by a lawyer who, rather
than filing a separate notice of appeal to challenge a sanction
imposed in the course of a case, piggy-backs on the client's notice
of appeal; provided, however, that the notice of appeal
unambiguously manifests the lawyer's intention to appeal the
sanction.
This holding is consistent with our decision in Lamboy-
Ortiz v. Ortiz-Vélez, 630 F.3d 228, 243-44 (1st Cir. 2010), in
which we concluded, in analogous circumstances, that the lawyer's
intent to appeal the sanction was evident from the face of the
notice of appeal and should be honored. See id. Moreover, the
assertion of jurisdiction here is consistent with our oft-stated
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policy of affording liberal construction to Rule 3. See, e.g., id.
at 243; In re Spookyworld, Inc., 346 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir. 2003).
Asserting jurisdiction is also consistent with the views of other
courts. See, e.g., Laurino v. Tate, 220 F.3d 1213, 1218 (10th Cir.
2000).
In the case at hand, the notice of appeal named the
appellant along with Santiago-Rivera in the caption. In addition,
the body of the notice of appeal made manifest the appellant's
intention to challenge the sanctions order. It memorialized in no
uncertain terms the appellant's intent to "appeal[] from the order
of the District Court imposing sanctions." Under these
circumstances, we have jurisdiction to hear and determine the
appellant's claim of error.
We turn next to the merits. The court below did not
describe the basis of its authority for imposing the challenged
sanction, but the circumstances make plain that the sanction was
imposed under its inherent power. See United States v. Romero-
López, 661 F.3d 106, 108 (1st Cir. 2011). In general, a court may
levy such a sanction "upon finding that a party has 'acted in bad
faith, vexatiously, wantonly, or for oppressive reasons.'" F.A.C.,
Inc. v. Cooperativa de Seguros de Vida de P.R., 563 F.3d 1, 6 (1st
Cir. 2009) (quoting Chambers v. NASCO, Inc., 501 U.S. 32, 45-46
(1991)). When such a sanction is challenged, we review its
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imposition for abuse of discretion. See Chambers, 501 U.S. at 55;
Romero-López, 661 F.3d at 108.
We recognize that trial judges have appreciable leeway in
managing their crowded dockets and in determining the
appropriateness of sanctions. Even so, "a judge's power to
sanction an attorney is not unbridled." United States v. Figueroa-
Arenas, 292 F.3d 276, 279 (1st Cir. 2002). The need for restraint
is uppermost when a judge is considering the imposition of
sanctions on defense counsel in a criminal case: in such a
situation, the judge must "bear in mind such counsel's important
constitutional function." United States v. Agosto-Vega, 731 F.3d
62, 64 (1st Cir. 2013). It is, therefore, a bedrock proposition
that sanctions, though an available weapon in a trial judge's
armamentarium, should not be deployed so as "to chill vigorous but
legitimate advocacy" in a criminal case. Figueroa-Arenas, 292 F.3d
at 279.
Here, the district court's stated basis for its sanctions
order was the appellant's ostensible lack of candor. The record
does not support such a finding.
To begin, the term "not candid" implies a
misrepresentation (or, at least, a withholding) of pertinent
information. See, e.g., Random House Dictionary of the English
Language 304 (2d ed. 1987) (defining candid as "frank; outspoken;
open and sincere"). But in her motion for a continuance, the
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appellant neither misrepresented material facts nor withheld
important information; she accurately described an actual conflict
and straightforwardly asked the court for relief. While the court
surely had discretion to deny the motion, we are unable to discern
any appropriate basis for a finding that the appellant had not been
candid.
To be sure, there is some intimation that the court may
have thought that the appellant had been indulging in gamesmanship
because she was seeking to have the court resolve a conflict that
she herself had created. However, the record makes clear that the
conflict cited by the appellant was not of her own making.
Although the appellant did not enter a formal notice of appearance
in the second case until after Santiago-Rivera's sentencing was
scheduled, she had been a key participant in that case for several
months. Thus, the conflict was actual — not artificially created.
There is one last point. In denying the first motion for
reconsideration, the district court suggested that the appellant
might have avoided sanctions had she made a fuller disclosure in
her original motion to continue. But this puts the shoe on the
wrong foot. The district court acted here without giving the
appellant any notice that it was considering sanctions or any
opportunity to tell her side of the story. The appellant scarcely
can be faulted for not anticipating the judge's concerns.
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In this day and age, sanctions are a badge of reprobation
that can haunt an attorney throughout his or her career. They can
have ramifications that go far beyond the particular case. See 5A
Charles A. Wright & Arthur A. Miller et al., Federal Practice and
Procedure § 1336.1 (3d ed. 2013) (suggesting that courts "may wish
to consider the extrajudicial impact of sanctions and sanction
proceedings on the reputation of attorneys and firms"). It follows
inexorably that "when a court is considering invoking its inherent
power to sanction, the much better practice is for the court to
hear from the offending attorney before imposing any sanctions."
Romero-López, 661 F.3d at 108 (emphasis in original). Had that
practice been followed, it seems apparent from the record that no
sanctions would have been imposed.
We need go no further. We do not minimize the fact that
lawyers are "fully chargeable with knowledge of what the docket
disclose[s]." Rosario-Diaz v. Gonzalez, 140 F.3d 312, 314 (1st
Cir. 1998). Nor are we unsympathetic to the desire of a busy
district judge to move sentencing proceedings along, particularly
in light of "the district court's obligation to impose sentence
without unnecessary delay." United States v. Rosario-Otero, 731
F.3d 14, 18 (1st Cir. 2013) (internal quotation marks omitted). At
the same time, however, we are mindful that "[b]ecause inherent
powers are shielded from direct democratic controls, they must be
exercised with restraint." Roadway Express, Inc. v. Piper, 447
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U.S. 752, 764 (1980); see In re Atl. Pipe Corp., 304 F.3d 135, 143
(1st Cir. 2002). Courts must take care in balancing these
competing concerns; and here, although the district court was
plainly well-intentioned, we think that it struck the balance in a
way that the record does not support. Accordingly, the sanctions
order is vacated and the sanction is expunged. See F.A.C., Inc.,
563 F.3d at 8 (vacating sanctions order when stated grounds for
sanctions were not supported by record).
So Ordered.
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