Plea Withdrawal

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: United States of America v. Darral C. Morris

Case No.: 15-3154

Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, FLAUM, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Plea Withdrawal

Precedent consistently shows that a discrepancy between sentencing range stated in a plea agreement and the sentence range found by the court is insufficient basis for withdrawing a guilty plea.

“Additionally, our precedent provides that a discrepancy between the sentencing range stated in the plea agreement and the sentencing range found by the court is an insufficient basis for withdrawing a guilty plea. United States v. Patterson, 576 F.3d 431, 438–39 (7th Cir. 2009). In Patterson, the defendant signed a plea agreement anticipating a sentence that ended up being lower than the sentence ultimately imposed by the district court. Id. at 438. Patterson argued that the district court should have vacated his guilty plea because of this discrepancy. Id. We upheld the validity of the plea agreement, explaining that the plea agreement stated that it did not control the sentence imposed by the district court. Id. at 438–39. The same reasoning applies here. Thus, the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Morris’s motion to withdraw his plea. See United States v. Barnes, 83 F.3d 934, 938 (7th Cir. 1996) (noting that although there must be a “meeting of minds” on all essential elements of a valid guilty plea, the defendant’s sentence is not an essential term of the agreement, and the parties leave the determination of the sentence to the discretion of the district court).”

Affirmed

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.