Donald E. Howard v. Commonwealth of Kentucky ( 2023 )

RENDERED: FEBRUARY 24, 2023; 10:00 A.M.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
Commonwealth of Kentucky
Court of Appeals
NO. 2022-CA-0215-MR
DONALD E. HOWARD APPELLANT
APPEAL FROM CARROLL CIRCUIT COURT
v. HONORABLE REBECCA LESLIE KNIGHT, JUDGE
ACTION NO. 15-CR-00005
COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY APPELLEE
OPINION
AFFIRMING
** ** ** ** **
BEFORE: CETRULO, DIXON, AND EASTON, JUDGES.
CETRULO, JUDGE: Appellant Donald Howard (“Howard”) appeals from the
order of the Carroll Circuit Court denying his Kentucky Rule of Criminal
Procedure (“RCr”) 11.42 motion to vacate his sentence. We AFFIRM.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
In May 2015, Howard entered a guilty plea to first-degree trafficking
in a controlled substance, second offense, with no negotiated recommended
sentence. The trial court sentenced him to 20 years of incarceration – the
maximum allowed. On direct appeal the next year, Howard alleged the trial
court’s imposition of the statutory maximum was unconstitutional, but the
Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed the conviction, in relevant part. Howard v.
Commonwealth, 496 S.W.3d 471 (Ky. 2016).
Then, Howard, pro se, filed an RCr 11.42 motion to vacate the
judgment in the trial court, claiming his trial counsel was ineffective. Specifically,
Howard claimed his trial counsel (1) represented him despite a conflict of interest
(the grand jury had indicted Howard with three co-defendants, and trial counsel
represented all of them); (2) failed to inform him of two prior plea deals the
Commonwealth had allegedly offered; and (3) provided “affirmative misadvice”
regarding his plea deal. The trial court denied the motion without an evidentiary
hearing, and Howard appealed the order denying relief to this Court in 2019.
Howard v. Commonwealth, No. 2018-CA-000340-MR, 2019 WL 5295113 (Ky.
App. Oct. 18, 2019).
There, a panel of this Court affirmed the trial court on issues 1 and 3,
but remanded on issue 2 for an evidentiary hearing to determine whether trial
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counsel had informed Howard of the prior settlement offers. This Court held that
“[Howard’s] allegations [we]re not conclusively refuted by the record”; therefore,
the circuit court needed to hold an evidentiary hearing on that issue. In September
2021, the trial court held the evidentiary hearing, and trial counsel, two of
Howard’s co-defendants, and Howard testified.
At the hearing, trial counsel testified that he had been a public
defender for 16 years and had served as directing attorney of the Department of
Public Advocacy office in that area since at least 2015. As such, he had years of
experience with plea offers. Further, he testified that there had been only one plea
offer in Howard’s case – the 15-year offer – which he had told Howard about and
Howard had rejected. Further, trial counsel recalled that, in terms of a plea,
Howard authorized only five years to serve, and that “that was the most that
[Howard] was ever going to take in the case.” Additionally, he testified that in his
conversations with the Commonwealth’s Attorney, it did not appear it was going to
be “a typical case in terms of plea negotiations” because it was not Howard’s first
offense. Trial counsel had believed that the lowest the Commonwealth would go
was 15 years to serve, citing an email chain from April 2015:
Trial Counsel: For what it is worth I can get him to 5 to
serve based on a meeting I had with him after court. I
realize that is pretty far from what you had proposed and I
am sure that ship has probably sailed with [the
Commonwealth’s Attorney].
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Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney: Yes the
minimum offer will be 15 to serve.
[nine minutes later]
Trial Counsel: The max is 20 so I guess we’re going to
trial.
Trial counsel confirmed that he had not spoken with Howard in the
nine minutes that passed between the last two messages, but that he had not
considered it a rejection of the 15-year offer. He claimed that he intended his last
email to inform the Commonwealth that the maximum sentence was 20 years and
try to get a better offer. He further testified that after his many years working in
that area, he “knew that the offer would remain on the table until [the
Commonwealth] specifically rejected it.” Therefore, he claimed Howard still
could have accepted the 15-year offer at the next hearing, scheduled three days
after the phone call on May 1, 2015.
Howard’s appellate counsel asked trial counsel to what proposal his
first email in that chain referred, but he could not remember an exact number or
whether there had even been an explicit offer. He stated that after reviewing his
file, the only definitive offer he thought he would get for Howard was the 15-year
offer. Further, in his experience, the Commonwealth usually made written offers
following plea discussions, and in this case, there was only a 15-year written offer.
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Later in April 2015, there was a second email the Commonwealth sent
to trial counsel that stated “[i]f we do not have a plea per the open to argue
sentencing discussion we had earlier today we will want to proceed on all counts.”
When asked to explain that email, trial counsel stated that he believed it related to
potential “other counts” that the Commonwealth was using as a “bargaining chip”
to “make it seem like the open plea was . . . a bad idea.”
Trial counsel, recalling “notes in [his] file,”1 testified that he spoke
with Howard on the phone on May 1, 2015, and they discussed the 15-year offer.
Trial counsel testified that Howard rejected it over the phone, so the only other
options were an open plea or to go to trial. Trial counsel testified that the
Commonwealth had never “pulled the [fifteen-year offer] off the table” so it would
have been a possibility until Howard took the open plea or went to trial.
Additionally, trial counsel noted that it would not have been ideal to go to trial
because there were videos of Howard selling illegal drugs to a confidential
informant.
Contrary to trial counsel’s testimony, two of Howard’s co-defendants
testified that there was a 10-year plea offer for Howard. The co-defendants
claimed that if Howard had accepted the 10-year offer, they would have received
1
Although trial counsel stated that he had the notes in his car and could retrieve them, no one
requested to see the files.
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lesser sentences. They explained that by the time trial counsel had told them – and
Howard – about the offer, he had already rejected it because “it was not a good
deal.”
Co-defendant 1, Howard’s son, testified that he would have received
pre-trial diversion, no jail time, and five years probated if Howard had taken the 10
years. He testified that he had hoped Howard would take that offer because then
he would not have gotten jail time. At the evidentiary hearing, the Commonwealth
asked that co-defendant whether he could have been mistaken about what trial
counsel had told them, and he stated that he was not sure.
Co-defendant 2 testified that if Howard had taken the 10-year offer, he
would have received “six five for five.”2 Co-defendant 2 also testified that he
heard trial counsel say that he had rejected the offer because it “was no deal at all”
and that trial counsel had not told Howard about it before rejecting it.
Howard testified that he had met with trial counsel only twice, both of
which were at the courthouse, in the presence of his co-defendants. He testified
that in those meetings, trial counsel had not informed him of the 10-year offer until
after trial counsel had rejected it. Further, he testified that he “might have” had
phone conversations with trial counsel, but he did not specifically remember a
May 1, 2015 call, and trial counsel had never informed him of a 15-year offer.
2
Six months of incarceration, plus five years of probation for five years.
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As for the interaction to which his co-defendants had testified,
Howard stated trial counsel had relayed the Commonwealth’s offer of “six five for
five” for all three co-defendants3 if he took the 10-year offer. However, trial
counsel had told him that he had turned down the 10-year offer because he did not
think it was a fair deal. Howard claimed that he did not comment on trial counsel’s
decision because he did not know that he could do so, and he was not familiar with
the plea bargaining process. Howard testified that he would have taken the 10 or
15-year offer if he had known about them and if trial counsel had advised him to
do so.
Additionally, as part of Howard’s initial RCr 11.42 motion, he had
submitted purported letters from 2017: some from his co-defendants to him and
one from him to trial counsel. In his letter to trial counsel, Howard stated that the
Commonwealth had offered all his co-defendants “six five for five” and that they
were not contingent on his acceptance of the 10-year offer. Further, the
co-defendants’ letters to him contained a contingent 10-year offer and inconsistent
sentences (discussed in more detail below).
Following the hearing, the circuit court denied Howard’s RCr 11.42
motion as to the two plea offers. It noted that to be successful on an RCr 11.42
motion for ineffective assistance of counsel, Howard was required to
3
Howard did not note a distinction between co-defendants’ offers, as the co-defendants had.
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“convincingly establish” that his counsel had failed to communicate valid plea
offers to him “while [they were] still on the table.” The circuit court found that
Howard had failed to meet that burden.
First, the circuit court did not believe that the Commonwealth ever
offered a 10-year plea deal because the only witnesses who testified to its existence
were Howard and his co-defendants, and the trial court did not find them to be
credible. Part of Howard’s “proof” that there was a 10-year offer were the
purported letters that each of his co-defendants had written to him within a two day
span in 2017. The circuit court noted that the letters were inconsistent with the
testimony at the September 2021 evidentiary hearing.
The purported letters contained inconsistent sentence options: for
example, the letter from co-defendant 1 read, “if [Howard] would take the ten
years, [the Commonwealth] would give [us] a split sentence of six months in jail
and five years[’] probation with remaining five years on the shelf.” However, at
trial, co-defendant 1 testified that if Howard pled to 10 years, he would have gotten
pre-trial diversion, no jail time, and five years probated.
The trial court noted the inconsistencies between the letters and the
testimony and suggested “the co-defendants coordinated the [] letters to be
consistent, and then failed to maintain that consistency when testifying four years
later.” Additionally, the circuit court took issue with Howard’s testimony that he
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did not understand the plea bargaining process and that he had never “entered a
plea to anything in this jurisdiction, in this courtroom before” because he had, in
fact, entered a guilty plea in that jurisdiction.4
For those reasons, the circuit court did not find Howard or the co-
defendants’ testimony to be credible. Therefore, based on trial counsel’s
testimony, there was never a 10-year offer, and the 15-year offer had been offered
to Howard and Howard had rejected it while it was still on the table. The circuit
court did not believe that trial counsel’s email stating “I guess we’re going to trial”
necessarily constituted a rejection of the Commonwealth’s offer. The circuit court
concluded that the response was too ambiguous to be considered a firm rejection,
based on trial counsel’s testimony that he intended the comment to serve as further
negotiation and that, based on his experience, the Commonwealth did not take a
plea off the table until it specifically revoked such offer.
Further, the circuit court noted that the Commonwealth’s general
practice was to give trial counsel a deadline before pulling offers, which had not
happened here. Finally, the circuit court found that trial counsel had relayed the
15-year offer to Howard on May 1, 2015, and that Howard rejected that offer.
4
Howard pled guilty to a drug paraphernalia charge in 2014. Carroll Circuit Court Case No.
13-CR-00171. In fact, the same trial counsel had represented Howard during that plea.
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Again, the trial court did not find Howard’s insistence that it had not happened to
be credible.
Howard appealed, arguing that the trial court erred when it did not
find trial counsel was ineffective. Specifically, Howard argues that trial counsel
“summarily rejected” the settlement offers – one for 10 years, and one for 15
years – before relaying them to Howard, and such deficiency was prejudicial.
STANDARD OF REVIEW
When reviewing an order denying an RCr 11.42 motion claiming
ineffective assistance of counsel, this Court grants deference to “the trial court’s
factual findings and determinations of witness credibility.” Commonwealth v.
McGorman, 489 S.W.3d 731, 736 (Ky. 2016) (citation omitted). We review the
trial court’s factual findings for clear error. Kentucky Rule of Civil Procedure
(“CR”) 52.01. We will not disturb trial court findings if they are supported by
substantial evidence. Moore v. Asente, 110 S.W.3d 336, 354 (Ky. 2003).
Substantial evidence is that which “a reasonable mind would accept as adequate to
support a conclusion” and that, when “taken alone or in the light of all the
evidence, . . . has sufficient probative value to induce conviction in the minds of
reasonable men.” Id. at 354.
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When reviewing trial counsel’s performance under Strickland v.
Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687, 104 S. Ct. 2052, 2064, 80 L. Ed. 2d 674 (1984),5
we apply the de novo standard. Id. (citation omitted). Under Strickland, a
defendant must first show counsel’s performance was deficient, and second, must
show that the deficiency resulted in prejudice. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 687, 104 S.
Ct. at 2064. This Strickland test applies to plea bargains as well. Osborne v.
Commonwealth, 992 S.W.2d 860, 863 (Ky. App. 1998).
ANALYSIS
The Kentucky Supreme Court, citing Strickland, detailed the standard
by which we measure ineffective assistance of counsel:
A claim of ineffective assistance of counsel requires a
showing that counsel’s performance fell below an
objective standard of reasonableness, and was so
prejudicial that the defendant has been deprived of a fair
trial and reasonable result. Counsel is constitutionally
ineffective only if performance below professional
standards caused the defendant to lose what he otherwise
would probably have won.
Commonwealth v. Bussell, 226 S.W.3d 96, 103 (Ky. 2007) (internal quotation
marks and citations omitted).
The standard poses two questions: (1) did counsel’s performance fall
below an objective standard of reasonableness; and (2) if it did, was the
5
The Kentucky Supreme Court adopted Strickland in Gall v. Commonwealth, 702 S.W.2d 37(Ky. 1985).
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unreasonableness so prejudicial that it deprived the defendant of a reasonable
result? We address question two only if the answer to question one is “yes.”
Commonwealth v. McGorman, 489 S.W.3d 731, 736 (Ky. 2016).
“When faced with an ineffective assistance of counsel claim in
an RCr 11.42 appeal, a reviewing court first presumes that counsel’s performance
was reasonable.” Id. (citing Bussell, 226 S.W.3d at 103). The burden is then on
the defendant “to establish convincingly” that counsel’s performance was not
reasonable and “that he was deprived of some substantial right which would justify
the extraordinary relief afforded by the post-conviction proceedings provided in
RCr 11.42.” Dorton v. Commonwealth, 433 S.W.2d 117, 118 (Ky. 1968). In
Missouri v. Frye, 566 U.S. 134, 145, 132 S. Ct. 1399, 1408, 182 L. Ed. 2d 379(2012), the United States Supreme Court explained that defendants have a
substantial right to counsel communicating “offers from the prosecution to accept a
plea on terms and conditions that may be favorable to the accused.”
Here, Howard argues that trial counsel acted unreasonably, depriving
him of a substantial right, by failing to communicate the 15-year offer and the 10-
year offer to him while they were still on the table. The Commonwealth argues,
however, that Howard failed to convincingly establish that trial counsel did either
of those things. We agree.
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To analyze the reasonableness of trial counsel’s actions, we must first
address the circuit court’s findings of fact regarding those actions: (1) that trial
counsel had communicated the 15-year offer to Howard while it was still on the
table and (2) that the Commonwealth never made a 10-year offer. Howard argues
that the circuit court abused its discretion when it made such findings. As
discussed, the Kentucky Supreme Court mandates that due regard be given to the
opportunity of the trial court to judge the credibility of the witnesses and “mere
doubt as to the correctness of a finding will not justify its reversal[.]” Moore, 110
S.W.3d at 354 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). Therefore, if the
trial court’s findings were supported by substantial evidence, we will not disturb
them.
Here the circuit court found trial counsel’s email stating “I guess
we’re going to trial” was not a rejection of the 15-year offer. The circuit court
explained that, based on trial counsel’s testimony, “we’re going to trial” was
ambiguous and did not necessarily serve to reject the offer. Specifically, the circuit
court based that understanding on trial counsel’s testimony that he intended the
statement to serve as an attempt to negotiate, not as a rejection.
Additionally, in the order denying Howard’s RCr 11.42 motion, the
circuit court acknowledged that trial counsel had been serving as a public defender
in that region for 16 years. For that duration, trial counsel had experience
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navigating the Commonwealth’s plea offers. Trial counsel had testified that in that
experience, the Commonwealth’s offers stayed on the table until it specifically
revoked them, which he had testified never happened in this case. Further, trial
counsel was confident that if Howard had accepted the 15-year offer at the May 4
hearing, the Commonwealth would have agreed to it.
Nevertheless, trial counsel testified that Howard had rejected the 15-
year offer over the phone on May 1, 2015. Howard, however, testified that he did
not remember such phone call – although he testified he “might have” had some
phone calls with trial counsel – and therefore, he claimed, trial counsel had not
shared that offer with him before rejecting it. For the reasons discussed,6 the
circuit court found trial counsel’s testimony to be more credible than that of
Howard.
As such, the circuit court based its finding on substantial evidence,
including trial counsel’s testimony and years of experience, the Commonwealth’s
typical procedures regarding plea offers, and the credibility of the witnesses.
Therefore, the circuit court did not abuse its discretion when it found the 15-year
offer was still on the table when Howard rejected it over the phone. Therefore, we
must not disturb the finding. Moore, 110 S.W.3d at 354. Accordingly, as to the
6
Namely, Howard’s insistence he had not pled guilty in that jurisdiction when he actually had.
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15-year offer, trial counsel did not act unreasonably, and therefore was not
ineffective.
Second, Howard argues the circuit court erred when it found there was
never a 10-year offer on the table. As discussed, the circuit court did not find the
co-defendants’ testimony to be credible, citing inconsistencies in the particulars
and the various contingencies (or lack thereof) of those offers. However, Howard
contends that despite the inconsistencies, he and the co-defendants had identified a
least common denominator: that the Commonwealth made an offer and trial
counsel rejected it before relaying it to Howard. The Commonwealth, however,
argues that those inconsistencies were not semantics, but another illustration of the
lack of credibility.
The circuit court considered the inconsistent testimonies and
purported corroborating evidence (the purported letters) and again found trial
counsel’s testimony to be more credible. Therefore, again, the circuit court’s
findings were based on substantial evidence, and we may not disturb them. Id.
Ultimately, we are left with a finding that trial counsel communicated
a 15-year offer to Howard while it was still on the table and that Howard rejected
it. Further, the Commonwealth had never offered a 10-year deal. Under those
facts, trial counsel acted reasonably when it communicated the only offer – the 15-
year offer – to Howard while it was still on the table. Therefore, trial counsel did
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not deprive Howard of a substantial right and was not ineffective. Because the
answer to our first question is “no,” we need not move to question two.
CONCLUSION
The denial by the circuit court of Howard’s RCr 11.42 motion was
supported by substantial evidence; therefore, it did not abuse its discretion and is
AFFIRMED.
ALL CONCUR.
BRIEF FOR APPELLANT: BRIEF FOR APPELLEE:
Kara Stinson Lewis Daniel Cameron
La Grange, Kentucky Attorney General of Kentucky
Thomas A. Van De Rostyne
Assistant Attorney General
Frankfort, Kentucky
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