United States v. Quentin Ace Williams

590 F. App'x 845
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
DecidedOctober 23, 2014
Docket14-10994
StatusUnpublished

This text of 590 F. App'x 845 (United States v. Quentin Ace Williams) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Quentin Ace Williams, 590 F. App'x 845 (11th Cir. 2014).

Opinion

PER CURIAM:

Quentin Williams appeals his total 360-month sentence, imposed after pleading guilty to conspiracy to interfere with commerce by threat or violence, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1951(a), and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(l)(A)(iii). On appeal, Williams argues that the district court clearly erred by failing to enforce the parties’ purported agreement to use the guideline calculations from the first presentence investigation report (PSI) at sentencing, rather than the higher calculations in the subsequently revised PSI. He maintains that he relied to his detriment on the government’s “promise” to use the lower guideline calculations in entering his guilty plea. After a thorough review, we affirm, but we grant a limited remand for the purpose of correcting clerical errors in the judgment form.

I.

In June 2013, Williams pleaded guilty, pursuant to a written plea agreement, to conspiring to interfere with commerce by threat or violence (Count 1), and one count of possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence (Count 15). The plea agreement called for a total sentence of 360 months, consisting of 240 months on Count 1 and a mandatory 120-month consecutive sentence on Count 15. The district court deferred final acceptance of Williams’s guilty plea until after the preparation of the PSI. Williams then filed a pro se motion, seeking to replace his defense counsel and to withdraw his guilty plea.

The first PSI yielded a combined adjusted offense level of 34 and a criminal history category of III. After the application of a 3-level reduction for acceptance of responsibility, pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 3E1.1, Williams’s offense level became 31. Based on the mandatory 10-year consecutive sentence for Count 15, his total guideline range was 255 to 288 months’ imprisonment. Neither party filed objections to *847 the PSI because of the terms of the plea agreement. After the issuance of the first PSI, the district court denied Williams’ motion to replace counsel, but graflted his request to withdraw his guilty plea.

• At the second change-of-plea hearing in November 2018, Williams again entered a guilty plea to Counts 1 and 15. The government agreed to dismiss the remaining counts, but stressed that “there is no plea agreement” and “[n]one of the previous recommendations or stipulations contained in the previous plea agreement are binding. Both parties are free to argue what sentence they believe is reasonable. Neither side is bound by the guideline calculations contained in the [PSI].” Williams acknowledged that he was unaware of any agreement or bargain other than that already described in open court. He also stated that there were no other promises made, that he had not been threatened or coerced into pleading guilty, and that he was satisfied with his counsel. The district court found that Williams’s plea was given freely and voluntarily and accepted the plea.-

Two days after Williams’s second guilty plea, the government filed objections to the first PSI, arguing, in pertinent part, that Williams’s offense level should include calculations from each of the eight robberies associated with the conspiracy, pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 3D1.4, and the withdrawal of the third-level for acceptance of responsibility. A second PSI was prepared, in which the probation officer highlighted the lack of a written plea agreement and calculated Williams’s total guideline range to be 330 to 382 months.

At sentencing, Williams objected to the use of the second PSI and requested that the court rely on the calculations in the first PSI. He introduced e-mails concerning purported plea negotiations between his counsel and the government. In an email, Williams had informed the government that he would not agree to a sentence of more than 25 years. In response, the government explained:

[Williams] can plead straight to the same counts that he did at the original plea, except there won’t be a negotiated plea agreement. No one here will authorize another plea agreement after he backed out of the last negotiated plea agreement.
Presumably we could proceed with the same [PSI] that was previously prepared, but because there is no negotiated plea agreement the government makes no promise about a sentence recommendation.

The court overruled Williams’s objection to the use of the second PSI, stating that Williams:

re-entered a guilty plea with no agreement, no deal with the Government as to what his sentence would be. Everything started over. And that included the preparation of the [PSI], the right of both sides to make objections to the [PSI], my authority to enter whatever sentence I wanted to, including the maximum sentence of 20 years on Count 1 and the maximum sentence of life on Count 15. That’s the situation Mr. Williams was in when he entered his plea. That’s the situation he is in today. So there’s been no detrimental reliance by him on anything.

The court ultimately sentenced Williams to a total 360-month term of imprisonment, consisting of 240 months on Count 1 and a consecutive 120-month sentence on Count 15. This is Williams’s appeal.

II.

“[I]t is a cardinal rule of appellate review that a party may not challenge as error a ruling or other trial proceeding *848 invited by that party. The doctrine of invited error is implicated when a party induces or invites the district court into making an error. Where invited error exists, it precludes a court from invoking the plain error rule and reversing.” United States v. Love, 449 F.Sd 1154, 1157 (11th Cir.2006) (citations omitted).

Here, the invited-error doctrine precludes us from reviewing Williams’s claim that the district erred by concluding that no agreement existed between the parties concerning the use of the first PSI to calculate his sentence. When asked by the district court at his second change-of-plea hearing whether the government had made any promises — beyond agreeing to dismiss the remaining counts of the indictment — to induce his guilty plea, both Williams and his counsel responded no.. Moreover, Williams affirmatively represented in his written objections to the second PSI that no plea agreement existed between the parties. As such, Williams’s actions invited the district court to conclude that there was no plea agreement between the parties.

Even if Williams had not invited the alleged error, his appeal would still fail. When a defendant fails to assert a Fed. R.Civ.P. (Rule) 11 violation in the district court, we review for plain error. United States v. Monroe, 353 F.3d 1346, 1349 (11th Cir.2003). At sentencing, Williams objected to the use of the second PSI, arguing that he had detrimentally relied on the government’s “promise” that his first PSI would be used at sentencing. But he never asserted that the government breached the terms of a purported agreement to induce his guilty plea. See United States v. Straub,

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Related

United States v. David Wayne Monroe
353 F.3d 1346 (Eleventh Circuit, 2003)
United States v. Celerino Campos-Diaz
472 F.3d 1278 (Eleventh Circuit, 2006)
United States v. Straub
508 F.3d 1003 (Eleventh Circuit, 2007)
Puckett v. United States
556 U.S. 129 (Supreme Court, 2009)

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Bluebook (online)
590 F. App'x 845, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-quentin-ace-williams-ca11-2014.