By Andrew Beluk, Staff Writer
It is nothing new to say that the American criminal justice system has some faults. A common source of criticism stems from prosecutorial overuse of the plea-bargaining system, which accounts for roughly 97% of all federal criminal convictions in the United States.[1] But arguably the most controversial aspect of the plea-bargaining system is how it strips defendants of certain Constitutional rights. It has an especially negative impact on a defendant’s Fifth Amendment right to due process of law.[2]
In the landmark case of Brady v. Maryland, the Supreme Court held that a prosecutor’s suppression of evidence favorable to a defendant violates due process.[3] However, the Brady Court’s holding was limited to a defendant’s rights at trial. Since the Brady decision in 1963, courts have struggled to determine if the Brady rule extends to pretrial plea bargains. The Fifth Circuit recently addressed this issue in Alvarez v. City of Brownsville.[4]
In Alvarez, the defendant, George Alvarez, was involved in an altercation with a correctional officer in a detention facility and charged with assault on a public servant.[5] The altercation was captured on video, however, the videos were not passed to the criminal investigation division of the Brownsville Police Department or to Alvarez.[6] With no knowledge of the videos, Alverez plead guilty and received an eight-year suspended sentence with ten years of community supervision.[7] Alvarez subsequently violated the terms of his supervision and the state revoked the suspension of his sentence.[8]
Roughly four years into his prison sentence, the videos of the altercation surfaced during discovery in an unrelated § 1983 case.[9] After the videos were discovered, Alverez filed a writ of habeas corpus in Texas State Court and “the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals concluded that Alverez was ‘actually innocent’ of committing the assault.”[10] Alverez then sued the City of Brownsville, the officer involved in the altercation, and other individuals from the Brownsville Police Department.[11] Alverez asserted claims under § 1983, which included claims for nondisclosure of exculpatory evidence in violation of Brady.[12] The defendants filed motions for summary judgment seeking to dismiss Alverez’s claims.[13]
The district court denied the motion for summary judgment as to Alvarez’s Brady claim against the City of Brownsville for nondisclosure of exculpatory evidence and the other claims were later dismissed.[14] Alverez and the City of Brownsville then filed cross motions for summary judgment and the district court held that there was a Brady violation as a matter of law.[15] The City of Brownsville appealed. On appeal, a panel of the 5th Circuit held that Alvarez waived the right to assert a Brady claim by entering a guilty plea.[16] The 5th granted an en banc rehearing. The en banc court reached the same conclusion as the panel and declined to “disturb [the 5th Circuit’s] settled precedent and abstain[ed] from expanding the Brady right to the pretrial plea bargaining context for Alvarez.” [17]
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals was not the first court to reach this conclusion. The First[18], Second[19], and Fourth[20] Circuit Courts have also reached similar conclusions about the Brady rule’s applicability to pretrial plea bargaining. The Circuit Courts all relied on Supreme Court’s holding in United States v. Ruiz, 536 U.S. 622 (2002).
In Ruiz, the Supreme Court held that “the Constitution does not require the Government to disclose material impeachment evidence prior to entering a plea agreement with a criminal defendant.” [21] The court noted that impeachment evidence was not “critical information of which the defendant must always be aware prior to pleading guilty.” [22]
Sadly, this reasoning produces troubling results. In the plea bargain system, a defendant faces a choice between a lesser sentence by declaring themselves guilty or going to trial under the threat of a much larger sentence. When faced with such a choice, it is reasonable to conclude that people might plead guilty to crimes they did not commit. In fact, this does occur. The National Registry of Exonerations analyzed 1,428 exonerations since 1989 and found that roughly 10% of those exonerees plead guilty during the plea-bargaining stage.[23] It is not clear if people chose to plead guilty because they are afraid of going to trial and asserting an effective defense, fear that they will receive a longer sentence, or if they simply cave to the pressure of the system. But whatever the cause, it is clear that a defendant is not making an informed decision to accept a plea bargain when the prosecutor is withholding helpful or even exculpatory evidence from the defendant.
Sources:
[1] https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4913&context=flr
[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fifth_amendment
[3] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/373/83/; Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 87 (1963).
[4] Alvarez v. City of Brownsville, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 26469 (5th Cir. Sept., 18, 2018).
[5] Id. at *8-9.
[6] Id. at *8.
[7] Id.
[8] Id. at *9.
[9] Id.
[10] Id. at *10.
[11] Id.
[12] Id.
[13] Id.
[14] Id. at *10-11
[15] Id. at *11
[16] Id. at *12.
[17] Id. at *25.
[18] United States v. Mathur, 624 F.3d 498 (1st Cir. 2010)
[19] Friedman v. Rehal, 618 F.3d 142 (2nd Cir. 2010)
[20] United States v. Moussaoui, 591 F.3d 263 (4th Cir. 2010)
[21] United States v. Ruiz, 536 U.S. 622, 633 (2002)
[22] Id.at 630.
[23] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-people-plead-guilty/
