Tenth Upholds District Court's Denial of Defendant's Effort to Withdraw Plea

U.S. v. Graham, 2006 WL 3118297 (11/3/06) - All seven of the relevant factors (e.g. assertion of innocence, delay, prejudice and inconvenience to the government and court, voluntariness of plea etc.), warranted the d.ct.'s denial of the defendant's motion to withdraw his mid-trial plea where the defendant asserted he was unhappy with the 25-year sentence he agreed to, he only had a short time to agree to the plea when his co-defendants started pleading in the middle of trial and a non-testifying informant recanted his prior statements. The plea was voluntary, although it was entered pursuant to an oral plea agreement.

The d.ct. erred when it adopted the PSR's misdescription of the plea agreement as stipulating the defendant was responsible for certain additional amounts of cocaine base. The 10th would have reversed the sentence due to that error except that it made no difference to the sentence, which was imposed pursuant to an 11(c)(1)(C) agreement. The d.ct. accepted the plea agreement based on a number of good reasons that were not influenced by the incorrect plea agreement description, including the trial evidence that resulted in the conviction of a co-defendant for possessing a greater amount of cocaine base and, "most importantly," the d.ct. said it would have imposed the same sentence even if the advisory guideline range had been miscalculated.