Fox v. Johnson, No. 13-56704 (9th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CasePetitioner pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 15 years to life. Petitioner successfully petitioned to withdraw her guilty plea about five years later when she established that the sentencing court failed to inform her that she would receive a mandatory term of lifetime parole as a direct consequence of her plea. At her subsequent trial, petitioner was convicted of first-degree murder, first-degree burglary, and the special circumstance that the murder was committed in the course of a burglary. She was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The district court then denied petitioner's 28 U.S.C. 2254 habeas petition and issued a certificate of appealability (COA) on the question of specific performance of her plea agreement. The court assumed without deciding that the State promised petitioner release after seven and a half years and that the State breached that promise. Nevertheless, the court concluded that petitioner is not entitled to specific performance of her plea agreement because she voluntarily chose to withdraw her guilty plea, thereby voiding her plea agreement. There is thus no plea agreement to enforce. Under these circumstances, there is no precedent suggesting that petitioner was denied due process by denying her specific performance. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.
Court Description: Habeas Corpus. The panel affirmed the district court’s denial of a California state prisoner’s habeas corpus petition challenging her conviction for first-degree murder and first-degree burglary. The petitioner pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and, pursuant to a plea agreement, was sentenced to fifteen years to life imprisonment. She later successfully petitioned to withdraw her guilty plea after establishing that the sentencing court failed to inform her that she would receive a mandatory term of lifetime parole as a direct consequence of her plea. At her subsequent trial, she was convicted of first-degree murder and first-degree burglary and was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. In her federal habeas petition, the petitioner sought specific performance of an alleged plea agreement in which the state promised her a term of imprisonment no greater than seven and one-half years in exchange of her plea. The panel held that because the petitioner chose in the state habeas proceedings to seek vacation of her conviction, rather than specific performance of the purported plea agreement, she had no due process right to specific performance of the rescinded agreement. FOX V. JOHNSON 3 Concurring, Judge Hurwitz wrote that the case was troubling and that, having had a hand in producing an outcome that disfavored the one defendant who cooperated with the prosecution, the state could remedy the situation either through clemency or by once again offering the petitioner the chance to plead guilty to second-degree murder. Dissenting, Judge Reinhardt wrote that the proceeding was fundamentally unfair, and due process required specific performance of the plea agreement and vacation of the petitioner’s unconstitutional sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
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