United States v. Valenzuela-Arisqueta, No. 12-10596 (9th Cir. 2013)
Annotate this CaseDefendant was arrested and charged with illegal reentry after deportation in violation of 8 U.S.C. 1326. On appeal, defendant challenged the district court's rejection of his guilty plea to illegal reentry into the country, asserting that the rejection violated his constitutional right against double jeopardy. The court court concluded that its prior opinions have rejected defendant's assertions that the indictment must set forth an enhancement under section 1326(b) and mention defendant's underlying conviction; the district court properly rejected defendant's guilty plea under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11 and offered him the choice of again pleading guilty or proceeding to trial; because jeopardy attached when defendant pled guilty before the magistrate judge, this jeopardy never terminated and defendant had not been placed in double jeopardy; and defendant's claim was nonetheless colorable so the court had jurisdiction over the interlocutory appeal. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.
Court Description: Criminal Law. The panel affirmed the district court’s rejection of a defendant’s guilty plea to illegal reentry in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326. The panel determined that the underlying premise for the defendant’s insistence that the district court accept his plea – that the maximum sentence under the indictment was two years’ incarceration – is wrong. The panel observed that this court’s prior opinions have rejected the defendant’s assertions that in order to subject him to a possible 20-year maximum sentence under 8 U.S.C. § 1326(b)(2), the indictment must set forth the enhancement and mention the defendant’s underlying conviction. The panel held that the district court properly rejected the defendant’s guilty plea under Fed. R. Crim. P. 11, where he had not been informed that he faced a possible sentence of 20 years, and properly offered him the choice of again pleading guilty or proceeding to trial. The panel explained that if jeopardy attached when the magistrate judge accepted the defendant’s guilty plea, it did not terminate with the rejection of his plea, as he retained all rights, and his constitutional right not to be subjected to double jeopardy has not been violated. The panel concluded that the defendant’s double jeopardy claim barely met the threshold of “colorable” to support jurisdiction over this interlocutory appeal, where this court had not clearly reconciled its opinions in Garcia-Aguilar v. United States District Court, 535 F.3d 1021 (9th Cir. 2008), United States v. Covian-Sandoval, 462 F.3d 1090 (9th Cir. 2006), and United States v. Mendoza-Zaragoza, 567 F.3d 431 (9th Cir. 2009); and where the procedures set forth in Ellis v. District Court, 356 F.3d 1198 (9th Cir. 2004) (en banc), merit reiteration. The panel clarified that this opinion drains the color from any future attempt to seek an interlocutory appeal from a similar rejection of a guilty plea.
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