United States v. Knight
| Decision Date | 08 December 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 19-3016,C/w 19-3017,19-3016 |
| Citation | 981 F.3d 1095 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Appellee v. Melvin KNIGHT, Appellant |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit |
Howard B. Katzoff, Washington, appointed by the court, argued the cause for appellant. With him on the briefs was Mary E. Davis, Washington, appointed by the court.
Bryan H. Han, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the cause for appellee. With him on the brief were Jessie K. Liu, U.S. Attorney, and Elizabeth Trosman, John P. Mannarino, and Pamela S. Satterfield, Assistant U.S. Attorneys.
Before: Rogers, Wilkins, and Katsas, Circuit Judges.*
In 2013, Melvin Knight and Aaron Thorpe were arrested for armed robbery and kidnapping. They were charged by the U.S. Attorney's Office in the D.C. Superior Court and offered a generous plea deal by the Assistant U.S. Attorney: plead guilty to a single count of assault with a dangerous weapon and no further charges stemming from these crimes would be filed. Under the D.C. Superior Court Sentencing Guidelines, the likely sentences would be between two and six years for each defendant. The plea offer was wired, however, so both Knight and Thorpe had to accept it or it would be withdrawn. Thorpe wanted to accept the plea offer, but Knight, who was erroneously advised by his counsel that the offer came with ten years in prison and never advised by his counsel of the sentencing consequences of rejecting plea the offer, did not. Once they declined the plea offer, the government dismissed the Superior Court charges and prosecuted Knight and Thorpe on a ten-count indictment in federal court. A jury found Knight and Thorpe guilty on all counts, and the U.S. district court sentenced Knight to more than 22 years' imprisonment and Thorpe to 25 years' imprisonment.
On direct appeal, Knight and Thorpe both argued that they had been denied effective assistance of counsel in violation of the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This court, concluding that their claims were "colorable," United States v. Knight , 824 F.3d 1105, 1113 (D.C. Cir. 2016), remanded the case. Following an evidentiary hearing after remand, the district court denied relief. Although agreeing that Knight's counsel's performance was deficient, the court determined that Knight had suffered no prejudice. The court rejected Thorpe's claim that his counsel was deficient and did not address prejudice. Knight and Thorpe appeal.
For the following reasons, we reverse in part. Knight satisfied his burden under both prongs of the standard for an ineffective assistance of counsel claim. See Strickland v. Washington , 466 U.S. 668, 687, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984). First, as the government acknowledges, the performance by Knight's counsel did not meet minimal professional standards. Second, the district court's determination that Knight suffered no prejudice rested on subsidiary factual findings that ignored the direct effect of his counsel's deficient performance on Knight's ability to intelligently assess his options and therefore were clearly erroneous. Viewed properly, the contemporaneous evidence and Knight's testimony at the evidentiary hearing sufficed to establish a reasonable probability Knight would have accepted the plea offer but for his counsel's ineffective assistance. In contrast, we agree that Thorpe's counsel was not ineffective and there was no violation of his Sixth Amendment rights. Accordingly, we affirm as to Thorpe and reverse the denial of Knight's Sixth Amendment challenge, remanding his case to the district court to provide a remedy consistent with this opinion.
In January 2013, Knight and Thorpe were involved in an armed robbery and kidnapping of Edmund Peters. They were arrested and each was charged with one count of armed kidnapping in the D.C. Superior Court and appointed separate counsel. Shortly after their arrest, the Assistant U.S. Attorney assigned to their cases sent an email to their counsel: If Knight and Thorpe would plead guilty to one count of assault with a dangerous weapon ("ADW"), then the government would agree not to bring additional and more serious charges, including two counts of armed kidnapping; two counts of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence; two counts of obstruction of justice; a second count of assault with a dangerous weapon, namely assault with a firearm; and one count of felon in possession of a firearm. The plea offer was wired, however, allowing the government to dispose of the charges against both defendants without a trial while preserving its right to prosecution by trial if both did not accept the plea offer, which would be withdrawn. In addition, the plea offer was contingent on Knight and Thorpe also agreeing "[n]ot to seek to modify the conditions of their release pending the plea," meaning that they could not be released from custody before entering the plea. Id.
Knight's counsel visited Knight in jail but did not mention the plea offer. The next day, February 1, 2013, the Assistant U.S. Attorney placed the plea offer on the record and the Superior Court judge continued the preliminary hearing until February 19, 2013, to give Knight and Thorpe time to consider whether to accept the plea offer. In fact, Knight's counsel's lone interaction with Knight about the plea offer was limited to misinformation. While still in court, Knight asked how much time the government wanted him to serve for the ADW charge, and Knight's counsel told him "[t]en years." Hearing Tr. 19 (May 24, 2017). Ten years was the statutory maximum for ADW, but the offense had no mandatory minimum and the sentencing range under the Superior Court Sentencing Guidelines was 24–72 months (2 to 6 years). Although counsel told Knight he would visit him in jail to discuss the plea offer further, he never did. Consequently, the brief and misleading exchange in open court was the extent of the advice that Knight received from counsel about the plea offer. Among other things relevant to the plea offer, Knight was never advised of the worst-case scenario were he to reject the plea offer, namely being indicted on additional charges with a greatly increased sentencing exposure in federal court.
Thorpe's counsel, by contrast, advised his client of the plea offer immediately upon learning of it, prior to the appearance in the Superior Court for the scheduled preliminary hearing. Counsel also visited Thorpe in jail to discuss the terms of the plea offer. Their discussion covered the estimated sentencing range for the ADW charge; potential additional charges that Thorpe would face if he rejected the plea offer and the sentencing consequences; and the fact that the plea offer was wired. Thorpe's counsel also alerted his client to the fact that he had learned from Knight's counsel, as the result of a chance meeting in the Superior Court, that Knight was not expected to take the plea. He told Thorp that the trial prosecutor had refused to unwire the plea so Thorpe could plead separately.
At the February 19 preliminary hearing, Thorpe's counsel stated Knight and Thorpe did not intend to accept the plea offer. The U.S. Attorney's Office withdrew the plea offer and a trial date was set. Prior to trial, the Superior Court charges were dismissed and a federal grand jury returned a ten-count indictment charging both Knight and Thorpe with six D.C. Code felony offenses and the federal offense of being a felon in possession of a firearm. A jury found them guilty as charged, and the district court sentenced Knight to 268 months' imprisonment (22 years and 4 months) and Thorpe to 300 months' imprisonment (25 years).
On direct appeal from their convictions, Knight and Thorpe contended, in part, that each had received ineffective assistance of counsel in the Superior Court regarding the plea offer. See Knight , 824 F.3d at 1109. This court determined that "Knight's and Thorpe's claims of ineffective assistance are colorable" and remanded them to the district court. Id. at 1113. After a three-day evidentiary hearing, at which Knight and Thorpe and their counsel testified, the district court denied relief. Although determining that Knight's counsel had performed deficiently, the court concluded that Knight had not been prejudiced. The court noted the lack of contemporaneous evidence that Knight would have accepted the plea offer in view of evidence that Knight (1) was focused on obtaining pretrial release so that he could be with his wife for the birth of their child, which would not have been possible if he accepted the plea offer; (2) had told counsel he wanted to go to trial as he was hopeful that the victim of the crimes would not testify against him; and (3) had rejected a plea offer on the federal charges. The court also determined that Thorpe's counsel's performance was not deficient, rejecting the argument that a wired plea offer required his counsel to meet with Knight's counsel to discuss the plea offer. The court did not address the issue of prejudice to Thorpe.
Knight and Thorpe appeal, and the court's review of the district court's denial of their ineffective assistance of counsel claims is de novo . United States v. Abney , 812 F.3d 1079, 1086–87 (D.C. Cir. 2016). The district court's subsidiary factual findings are reviewed for clear error. See id. at 1087.
"The Sixth Amendment guarantees a defendant the effective assistance of counsel at ‘critical stages of a criminal proceeding,’ including when he enters a guilty plea." Lee v. United States , ––– U.S. ––––, 137 S. Ct. 1958, 1964, 198 L.Ed.2d 476 (2017) (quoting Lafler v. Cooper , 566 U.S. 156, 165, 132 S.Ct. 1376, 182 L.Ed.2d 398 (2012) ). To succeed on a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, a defendant must show that (1) his counsel's performance was deficient, as judged against prevailing professional norms under the circumstances, and (2) the...
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