U.S. v. Downs

• Decision Date: 19 August 1997
• Docket Number: No. 96-2581,96-2581
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Thomas B. DOWNS, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 637

123 F.3d 637

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Thomas B. DOWNS, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 96-2581.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued April 10, 1997.

Decided Aug. 19, 1997.

Rodger A. Heaton (argued), Office of the United States Attorney, Springfield, IL, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Edna Selan Epstein (argued), Chicago, IL, for Defendant-Appellant.

Before RIPPLE, MANION, and KANNE, Circuit Judges.

KANNE, Circuit Judge.

Thomas Downs began trading commodities for himself in 1986. Over the next few years, however, the trading went very poorly. To finance the trading, Downs had to take out a series of loans, using cattle and 250 acres of farmland from his father's estate as collateral. When Downs missed a loan repayment date in 1989, he asked for an extension. The credit association granted the extension but only after Downs falsely reported that his father's estate owned 164 head of cattle worth $105,000. In fact, the estate had no cattle, and on March 27, 1995, Downs pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements regarding a loan, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1014. After numerous court proceedings and time extensions relating to Downs' mental competency to plead guilty and his representation by counsel, the District Court ultimately sentenced Downs in June 1996 to 23 months of imprisonment. On appeal, Downs argues 1) that the District Court abused its discretion by not holding a hearing regarding his mental competence to plead guilty, 2) that he received ineffective assistance of counsel, and 3) that the District Court erred during sentencing when calculating the loss resulting from Downs' fraud. We reject each of these arguments in turn and therefore affirm the judgment of the District Court.

ANALYSIS

Hearing Regarding Mental Competence

Downs first argues that the District Court should have held an evidentiary hearing to decide whether he was mentally competent to plead guilty. Neither Downs nor his counsel ever requested a competency hearing, but Downs argues on appeal that the peculiar events following his guilty plea should have led the District Court to hold such a hearing.

After being charged in September 1994 with numerous counts of wrongdoing related to his loans, Downs pleaded guilty in March 1995 to a single count of making false statements. After pleading guilty, however, Downs began behaving somewhat erratically. In July 1995, Downs asked his attorney to withdraw from his appointment as counsel. Downs stated in a letter sent to the District Court that his attorney had failed to prepare an adequate defense, had exerted extreme pressure on Downs to plead guilty, and had shown Downs the plea agreement only one hour before the guilty plea hearing. In August 1995, Downs sent another letter to the District Court asking for "federal protection from people that are trying to seriously harm and probably kill me" through "various illegal drugs and poisons." Downs also stated in the letter that he found it "unbelievable what people have done to me over the years simply because God gave me high intelligence and athletic ability." After sentencing was delayed to give Downs time to find new counsel, Downs elected in November 1995 to proceed pro se but with the Deputy Federal Public Defender as standby counsel. In December 1995, Downs filed a motion to withdraw his guilty plea pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32(e). In January 1996, however, Downs did not appear for a hearing on the motion. Because Downs had known about the hearing but had gone to work instead, the District Court had Downs arrested.

Once in court, Downs requested that his standby counsel be made his permanent counsel. Downs also asked that his earlier motion to withdraw his guilty plea itself be withdrawn, prompting the District Court to deny the earlier motion on mootness grounds. The District Court then sua sponte ordered a psychiatric evaluation of Downs. After meeting with Downs and his sisters and after reviewing records from a prior psychiatric evaluation of Downs, a court-appointed psychiatrist concluded in a thorough report that Downs probably suffered from schizoaffective disorder. Regarding Downs' competence to plead guilty, the psychiatrist was somewhat equivocal:

[H]is illness is not severe enough that he is completely incompetent in making decisions. Also, he is very intelligent and very knowledgeable about the legal system. In other words, while I do not believe that Mr. Downs is entirely incompetent, I believe that his judgement is impaired and that this should be taken into consideration when making decisions about the disposition of his case.

Specifically, I do not find that he was incompetent in accepting a plea bargain, but that his decision-making was partially impaired by his mental illness. Further, I do not find that he is incompetent to continue with further legal proceedings, but his illness will make it more difficult for him to fully cooperate with his attorney.

At a status hearing in April 1996, the District Court concluded--based on its experience with Downs and on this psychiatric report--that Downs had been competent to plead guilty. The court specifically noted that "[n]either party disputes the Court's finding." In June 1996, the District Court finally sentenced Downs to prison.

As mentioned above, Downs now argues that the District Court should have held an evidentiary hearing before concluding that Downs was competent to plead guilty. Downs, however, never asked for such a hearing. Indeed, even when represented by new counsel, Downs made no objection to the District Court's competency finding and never even hinted that he wanted to renew his motion to withdraw his guilty plea. By all appearances, Downs and his attorney were content in April 1996 to have the District Court find Downs competent and proceed to sentencing.

If an error is not brought to the attention of the trial court, Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 52(b) allows us to review the error only if it is plain and only if it affects substantial rights. See United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 737, 113 S.Ct. 1770, 1779, 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (1993). The Government argues that Downs waived any objection to the District Court's finding of competency and that plain-error review is therefore appropriate. Downs, however, argues that he did not need to request a competency hearing because the District Court rather than Downs raised the issue of mental competence. Downs cites 18 U.S.C. § 4241, which states that a defendant is mentally incompetent if he is "unable to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him or to assist properly in his defense," 18 U.S.C. § 4241(d), and which requires a court to order a mental competency hearing (on either a party's motion or the court's own motion) "if there is reasonable cause to believe" that the defendant meets this standard, 18 U.S.C. § 4241(a). ¹

We are doubtful about Downs' contention that he may raise this issue anew on appeal even after he sat idly by while the District Court found him mentally competent. Although Downs was not obligated under 18 U.S.C. § 4241 to demand a competency hearing, Downs and his counsel clearly had the opportunity to object when the District Court found him competent. Downs, moreover, cites no authority for his position, which flies in the face of Rule 52(b)'s purpose of giving trial courts maximum opportunity to address and rectify alleged errors. See United States v. Davis, 15 F.3d 1393, 1406-07 (7th Cir.1994). Whether Downs is correct, however, is irrelevant because we find that the District Court's actions are supportable even under normal standards of review.

Downs' primary argument is that once the District Court ordered a psychiatric examination of Downs, it had to complete the process by holding a competency hearing. Whether to hold such a hearing, however, is a discretionary decision of the trial court, and findings regarding competence are reviewed only for clear error. See Chichakly v. United States, 926 F.2d 624, 633 (7th Cir.1991). The trial court had to exercise its discretion in the shadow of 18 U.S.C. § 4241, but that statute required a hearing only if there was "reasonable cause" to believe that Downs' guilty plea was hindered by a mental disease or defect that made Downs "unable to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him or to assist properly in his defense." Section 4241(b) authorizes courts to order a psychiatric examination "[p]rior to the date of the hearing," but we do not read that section to require a hearing whenever a psychiatric examination has been ordered. Rather, a district court's duty is the same even after a psychiatric examination, namely, to determine whether the evidence before the court mandates a hearing under the standard of § 4241(a).

In this case, the District Court's decision not to hold a hearing was not an abuse of the court's discretion. A trial court "is always in the best position" to determine the need for a competency hearing, Chichakly, 926 F.2d at 632 (quoting Quadrini v. Clusen, 864 F.2d 577, 583 (7th Cir.1989)), and the District Court here had ample evidence on which to base its competency finding. During the original guilty plea hearing, the court inquired regarding Downs' physical health and his competence to make a knowing plea. Neither Downs nor his counsel indicated or even suggested that Downs was incompetent to plead guilty. Indeed, Downs stated that a University of Chicago psychiatrist had recently found him to be "in perfectly good health."

When Downs' behavior became erratic, the District Court began to question Downs' mental competence. The court therefore ordered the psychiatric evaluation, thus adding expert evidence to the District Court's own repeated observations of Downs' conduct. Admittedly, the psychiatrist's report hedged somewhat on Downs' mental condition, but it explicitly did ...