United States v. Raudell Rodriguez-Gonzales

543 F. App'x 532
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedNovember 4, 2013
Docket12-3735
StatusUnpublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 543 F. App'x 532 (United States v. Raudell Rodriguez-Gonzales) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth 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. Raudell Rodriguez-Gonzales, 543 F. App'x 532 (6th Cir. 2013).

Opinion

RALPH B. GUY, JR., Circuit Judge.

Raudell Rodriguez-Gonzales (“Rodriguez”) appeals his conviction and sentence for conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute marijuana. Rodriguez is not a United States citizen. The sole issue on appeal is whether the rationale articulated in Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U.S. 356, 130 S.Ct. 1473, 176 L.Ed.2d 284 (2010), required the district court to inform Rodriguez of the deportation risks attendant to his guilty plea during its Rule 11 colloquy. We conclude that it did not.

I.

On May 5, 2009, Rodriguez pleaded guilty pursuant to a non-binding plea agreement to conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute a large amount of marijuana in violation of 21 U.S.C. § § 841 and 846. At his plea hearing, the court did not inform Rodriguez of the deportation risk attendant to his guilty plea. On June 5, 2012, Rodriguez was sentenced to 240 months of imprisonment to be followed by ten years of supervised release.

In this direct appeal, Rodriguez challenges his conviction and sentence, arguing that the court’s failure to inform him of the deportation risk attendant to his guilty plea was an error and that Rule 11(b) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, read in light of Padilla v. Kentucky, mandates that the court provide such information as a part of its Rule 11 colloquy. In Padilla, the Supreme Court held that the Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel requires that defense counsel “inform her client whether his plea carries a risk of deportation.” 559 U.S. at 374, 130 S.Ct. 1473. Rodriguez does not claim that his counsel was ineffective under Padilla.

Because Rodriguez failed to timely object to the alleged Rule 11 violation, we review for “plain error and the burden is on the defendant to show that but for the error, he would not have pleaded guilty.” United States v. Martin, 668 F.3d 787, 791 (6th Cir.2012) (citing United States v. Dominguez Benitez, 542 U.S. 74, 82-83, 124 S.Ct. 2333, 159 L.Ed.2d 157 (2004)).

II.

A. El-Nobani v. United States

The Fifth Amendment requires that the defendant enter his guilty plea “knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently.” United States v. Taylor, 627 F.3d 1012, 1017 (6th Cir .2010) (citing Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742, 748, 90 S.Ct. 1463, 25 L.Ed.2d 747 (1970)). To meet this standard, we have held that the district court need not inform the defendant of the potential deportation consequences of his plea. El-Nobani v. United States, 287 F.3d 417 (6th Cir.2002). In El-Nobani, we relied on the rule that the district court “need only [make the defendant] aware of the direct consequences of the plea” and held that “the trial court is under no constitutional obligation to inform the defendant of all the possible collateral consequences of the plea.” Id. at 421 (citing King v. Dutton, 17 F.3d 151, 153 (6th Cir.1994)) (emphasis added). “A collateral consequence is one that ‘remains beyond the control and responsibility of the district court in which that conviction was entered.’ ” Id. (citing United States v. Gonzalez, 202 F.3d 20, 27 (1st Cir.2000)). We reasoned that because “deportation is not within the control and responsibility of the *534 district court, ... deportation is collateral to a conviction.” Id.

Rodriguez argues that Padilla calls our holding in El-Nobani into question because the Padilla Court noted that deportation is “uniquely difficult to classify as either a direct or a collateral consequence.” 1 Padilla, 559 U.S. at 366, 130 S.Ct. 1473. But in Padilla, the Court specifically limited this observation to the context of the Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel, stating that “[t]he collateral versus direct distinction is thus ill suited to evaluating [an ineffective assistance of counsel] claim concerning the specific risk of deportation.” Id. The Court made no comment on the distinction as it relates to the defendant’s Fifth Amendment right that his plea be made “knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently.” See Brady, 397 U.S. at 748, 90 S.Ct. 1463. Given that the duties of defense counsel under the Sixth Amendment are greater than the court’s duties under the Fifth Amendment, see Libretti v. United States, 516 U.S. 29, 50-51, 116 S.Ct. 356, 133 L.Ed.2d 271 (1995), “the Padilla Court’s unwillingness to apply the direct/collateral distinction in the Sixth Amendment context does not demonstrate the Court’s intention to do away with that distinction entirely in the Fifth Amendment context.” United States v. Youngs, 687 F.3d 56, 62 (2d Cir.2012) (citing United States v. Delgado-Ramos, 635 F.3d 1237, 1240 (9th Cir. 2011)) (noting that in Padilla the Court “had no occasion to consider the scope of a district court’s obligation” under due process or Rule 11, or “the continued viability of the distinction between direct and collateral consequences in the due process context”).

Guided by our decision in El-Nobani, the district court was not required to notify Rodriguez of the potential deportation risks attendant to his guilty plea, and Padilla does not change that fact. We cannot overrule El-Nobani (a prior published opinion) “unless a decision of the United States Supreme Court mandates modification or this Court sitting en banc overrules the prior decision.” United States v. Moody, 206 F.3d 609, 615 (6th Cir.2000) (emphasis added). For the reasons discussed above, Padilla does not mandate that we modify our holding. 2

B. Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(b)

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Bluebook (online)
543 F. App'x 532, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-raudell-rodriguez-gonzales-ca6-2013.