Frank E. Bachner v. United States of America, (Two Cases). United States of America v. Frank E. Bachner

517 F.2d 589
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedAugust 12, 1975
Docket74-1210, 74-1651 and 74-1732
StatusPublished
Cited by70 cases

This text of 517 F.2d 589 (Frank E. Bachner v. United States of America, (Two Cases). United States of America v. Frank E. Bachner) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Frank E. Bachner v. United States of America, (Two Cases). United States of America v. Frank E. Bachner, 517 F.2d 589 (7th Cir. 1975).

Opinions

TONE, Circuit Judge.

These appeals challenging two guilty pleas and sentences thereon arise, like many others,1 from omissions by trial judges to advise a defendant at a hearing on a plea of guilty of special provi[591]*591sions of the federal narcotics laws relating to sentencing, the old law’s parole ineligibility provision in one case and the new law’s requirement of a mandatory parole term in the other. In each case the District Court held the plea valid under all the circumstances, notwithstanding the omission. We affirm these judgments.

Before May 1, 1971, federal narcotics offenders were subject to mandatory minimum sentences and were ineligible, under former 26 U.S.C. § 7237(d), for probation or parole. Effective that date, the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, 84 Stat. 1236, replaced the old law and repealed section 7237(d). Under the new act there was no mandatory minimum period of imprisonment and no prohibition against probation or parole. The new act did, however, require that a sentence provide for a minimum special parole term of at least three years. 21 U.S.C. § 841. One of the two convictions Bachner challenges on this appeal was for an offense under the old law, and the other was for an offense under the new law.

I.

The decisions on failure to advise of parole eligibility as a ground for relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 and the effect of Davis v. United States, 417 U.S. 333, 94 S.Ct. 2298, 41 L.Ed.2d 109 (1974) were reviewed by Judge Hastings in his opinion for this court in Gates v. United States, 515 F.2d 73 (7th Cir. 1975). As he pointed out, until the Supreme Court decided Davis the scope of review under section 2255 was uncertain. There was no doubt that relief could be granted for jurisdictional and constitutional errors, but, as the opinion of Mr. Justice Stewart for the majority and the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Rehnquist in Davis illustrate, there was disagreement about whether the remedy reached errors of law only and if so what kinds. Davis held that a nonconstitutional error of law could be raised under section 2255. but only if it is “a fundamental defect which inherently results in a complete miscarriage of justice”2 and “present[s] exceptional circumstances where the need for the remedy afforded by the writ of habeas corpus is apparent.”3 417 U.S. at 346, 94 S.Ct. at 2305.

Before Davis, a majority of the circuits, including ours (United States v. Smith, 440 F.2d 521 (7th Cir. 1971)), granted section 2255 relief to petitioners who were not informed of their ineligibility for parole when they pleaded guilty. Gates v. United States, supra, 515 F.2d at 79, n. 7. These cases, while viewing the error as affecting the defendant’s understanding of the consequences of the plea and hence voluntariness, generally relied on Rule 11, as pointed out in Gates, and did not reach [592]*592the constitutional question.4 This rule has been extended by two courts to failure to advise of a mandatory special parole term (United States v. Richardson, 483 F.2d 516 (8th Cir. 1973); Roberts v. United States, 491 F.2d 1236 (3rd Cir. 1974)), and by one to advice of a greater maximum sentence than the statute actually provides (Kelsey v. United States, 484 F.2d 1198 (3rd Cir. 1973)).5 The Fifth Circuit, however, held it unnecessary to advise of parole ineligibility (Trujillo v. United States, 377 F.2d 266 (5th Cir. 1967), cert. denied, 389 U.S. 899, 88 S.Ct. 224, 19 L.Ed.2d 221 (1967)), and in cases in which the defendant was misinformed as to the maximum penalty refused to apply an automatic rule and held that a case-by-case analysis should be made to determine whether the defendant would have entered a different plea if the actual penalty was known. United States v. Woodall, 438 F.2d 1317, 1329 (5th Cir. 1971) (in banc), cert. denied, 403 U.S. 933, 91 S.Ct. 2262, 29 L.Ed.2d 712 (1971); see United States v. Blair, 470 F.2d 331, 340 n. 20 (5th Cir. 1972), cert. denied, 411 U.S. 908, 93 S.Ct. 1536, 36 L.Ed.2d 197 (1973). The latter rule was followed by the District Court in this case.

In Gates the court noted that the decisions of the various Courts of Appeals granting relief under section 2255 for failure to advise of parole ineligibility were decided before Davis and, after explaining the Davis test, applied that test to the case before it. Thus the court did not merely hold, on the authority of Smith (supra, 440 F.2d 521), that failure to advise of parole ineligibility without more automatically entitled the petitioners to relief. Instead it examined the circumstances surrounding the plea and sentence, noting that the petitioners not only had been insufficiently advised before pleading but had been told at the time they were sentenced that they would be eligible for parole, and concluded as follows:

“We hold that a § 2255 petitioner is entitled to relief where a court not only fails to inform him prior to his plea of his ineligibility for parole, but also incorrectly informs him at the time of sentencing that he will be eligible. These compound errors present ‘exceptional circumstances where the need for the remedy afforded by the writ of habeas corpus is apparent.’ Davis v. United States, supra, 417 U.S. at 436, 94 S.Ct. at 2305.” Gates, supra, 515 F.2d at 80

The Gates opinion also maintained the principle, enunciated in Smith (supra, 440 F.2d at 526-527), that the quality and magnitude of the error are to be assessed as of the time of the plea and sentence, and not in the light of later events, thus rejecting the government’s argument that the petitioners were not harmed by the inaccurate advice because they were sentenced to lesser penalties than the maximum of which the judge advised them. Gates, supra, 515 F.2d at 80.

Gates accordingly demonstrates that the correct application of the Davis standard to complaints relating to the defendant’s understanding of the consequences of his plea requires an examination of the circumstances at the time of the plea and also at the sentencing hearing, when, as stated in United States v. Brown, 499 F.2d 829, 835 (7th Cir. 1974), cert. denied, 419 U.S. 1047, 95 S.Ct. 619, 42 L.Ed.2d 640 (1974), a motion to withdraw the plea could still have been made.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Collins v. United States
C.D. Illinois, 2023
People v. Whitfield
840 N.E.2d 658 (Illinois Supreme Court, 2005)
State v. Francis
104 Ohio St. 3d 490 (Ohio Supreme Court, 2004)
United States v. Gobert
Fifth Circuit, 1998
United States v. James Roger Gobert
139 F.3d 436 (Fifth Circuit, 1998)
Lester W. Gilbert v. United States
116 F.3d 1482 (Seventh Circuit, 1997)
People v. McCormick
881 P.2d 423 (Colorado Court of Appeals, 1994)
United States v. Barry Lee Davidson
1 F.3d 1234 (Fourth Circuit, 1993)
Stewart v. Peters
770 F. Supp. 416 (N.D. Illinois, 1991)
Wai Ho Tsang v. United States
749 F. Supp. 72 (S.D. New York, 1990)
United States v. James Van Buren
804 F.2d 888 (Sixth Circuit, 1986)
Greer v. Duckworth
555 F. Supp. 725 (N.D. Indiana, 1983)
United States v. Eldridge Lovelace
683 F.2d 248 (Seventh Circuit, 1982)
People v. Miller
438 N.E.2d 643 (Appellate Court of Illinois, 1982)
United States ex rel. Johnson v. DeRobertis
541 F. Supp. 547 (N.D. Illinois, 1982)
Nash v. Israel
533 F. Supp. 1378 (E.D. Wisconsin, 1982)
United States ex rel. Williams v. Morris
633 F.2d 71 (Seventh Circuit, 1980)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
517 F.2d 589, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/frank-e-bachner-v-united-states-of-america-two-cases-united-states-of-ca7-1975.