By: Derek Hawkins//September 21, 2015//
Civil
7th Circuit Court of Appeals
Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and KANNE and TINDER, Circuit Judges
Writ of Habeas Corpus – Harmless Error
No. 13-3723 Percell Dansberry v. Randy Pfister
Trial court erroneous warning to appellant regarding mandatory minimum sentence faced was harmless error.
“Similarly, we think an erroneous admonishment of the kind we have here—an incorrect statement of a defendant’s mandatory minimum sentence—is nonstructural. It does not affect the entire proceedings in the way that, e.g., an outright denial of counsel would. Cf. Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. at 149 (giving examples of structural errors). And its effects are likely to be identifiable and measurable. Cf. id. at 150 (finding structural error where the effects are “necessarily unquantifiable and indeterminate”). In short, an erroneous admonishment about a mandatory minimum sentence does not defy analysis for harmless error.”
Affirmed.