US v. Garrett: Investigators in North Carolina used a pair of CIs to purchase methamphetamine from a person they thought was McDuffie, but was actually Garrett. Throughout the investigation, investigators called the target of search warrants McDuffie, rather than Garret (even after they knew about the mistake) and consistently avoided disclosing that they used two different CIs (with different backgrounds and credibility issues) during the operation. Garrett and a co-defendant, Cole-Evans, were eventually indicted for gun and drug charges.
Garrett initially moved to suppress evidence discovered during the investigation, relying on the identify confusion between himself and McDuffie. In response, the Government relied on an argument that (as with investigators) collapsed the two CIs into one. Cole-Evans did the same. After briefing on the motions was complete, the Government disclosed 775 pages of information that detailed the flaws in the investigation. Garrett decided to withdraw his motion to suppress rather than risk losing acceptance of responsibility and pleaded guilty to three counts in the indictment. He was sentenced to 240 months in prison. Cole-Evans, however, requested reconsideration of his motion to suppress – after Garrett had been sentenced – based on the multiple-CI details contained in the post-briefing disclosure. The district court granted the motion to reconsider and set a hearing, but before it could take place the Government dismissed the case against Cole-Evans with prejudice.
On appeal, a divided Fourth Circuit agreed with Garrett that his guilty plea was not made knowingly and involuntarily because of the investigator and Government misconduct the preceded it. Applying plain error review, the court concluded that Garrett could show that some “egregiously impermissible” conduct that pre-dated his guilty plea influenced his decision to enter the plea. It recognized that “preventing defendants from challenging pleas based on subsequently discovered misconduct could encourage officers to engage in or conceal misconduct to elicit guilty pleas.” That misconduct resulted in “critical deficiencies which occurred during the initial investigation and pre-plea phase” in the “bedrock of the prosecution’s case.” Nonetheless, the court made clear that “here, it is the newly discovered information that acts as the basis of the involuntary plea.” This was “a rare and extraordinary situation where the prosecution’s actions during the pre-plea process evidence a lack of candor that deprived Garrett of due process.”
Judge Quattlebaum dissented, arguing that because Garrett had the relevant information (from the 775-page data dump) for weeks prior to his guilty plea he could not meet the standard needed to vacate a guilty plea.
No comments:
Post a Comment