Ronald Dingle v. Robert Stevenson

Filing

PUBLISHED AUTHORED OPINION filed. Originating case number: 4:13-cv-02487-BHH. [999954499]. [15-6832]

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PUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 15-6832

RONALD DONALD DINGLE,
Petitioner - Appellant,
v.
WARDEN ROBERT M. STEVENSON,
Respondent - Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of
South Carolina, at Florence.
Bruce H. Hendricks, District
Judge. (4:13-cv-02487-BHH)

Argued:

September 20, 2016

Decided:

October 25, 2016

Before WILKINSON, MOTZ, and HARRIS, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by published opinion.
Judge Wilkinson
opinion, in which Judge Motz and Judge Harris joined.

wrote

the

ARGUED: Stephen J. van Stempvoort, MILLER JOHNSON, Grand Rapids,
Michigan, for Appellant.
Alphonso Simon, Jr., OFFICE OF THE
ATTORNEY GENERAL OF SOUTH CAROLINA, Columbia, South Carolina,
for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Alan Wilson, Attorney General, John W.
McIntosh, Chief Deputy Attorney General, Donald J. Zelenka,
Assistant Deputy Attorney General, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY
GENERAL OF SOUTH CAROLINA, Columbia, South Carolina, for
Appellee.

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WILKINSON, Circuit Judge:
More

than

twenty

years

ago,

Ronald

Donald

Dingle

was

indicted for murder and a host of other crimes committed while
he was a minor. The state of South Carolina intended to seek the
death penalty against him, and Dingle pled guilty in exchange
for a life sentence with the opportunity for parole.
Dingle now seeks to challenge the validity of his guilty
plea and appeals the district court’s denial of relief on his 28
U.S.C.

§ 2254

petition.

We

granted

a

certificate

of

appealability on the limited issue of whether Roper v. Simmons,
543 U.S. 551 (2005), which invalidated the death penalty for
juvenile offenders, may be applied retroactively to invalidate
Dingle’s guilty plea. We hold that Roper does not provide an
avenue for relief and affirm the district court’s dismissal of
his federal habeas petition.
I.
While the procedural posture of this case is something of a
tangle, the facts relevant to the issue on which we granted the
certificate are relatively straightforward.
On March 15, 1993, Dingle, a seventeen-year-old juvenile at
the time of the offense, was charged by the state of South
Carolina with murder, assault and battery with intent to kill,
first-degree

burglary,

kidnapping,

pointing

a

firearm,

two

counts of possession of a weapon during a violent crime, and two
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counts of possession of a sawed-off shotgun. The state filed a
notice of intent to seek the death penalty, and on April 17,
1995, Dingle pled guilty to all the charges in exchange for life
imprisonment with the possibility of parole. Although the trial
judge

sentenced

following

the

Dingle

initial

to
life

consecutive
sentence

terms

for

of

murder,

imprisonment
all

parties

agreed that Dingle should be eligible for parole after thirty
years.
As

it

turned

out,

however,

the

consecutive

nature

of

Dingle’s sentences precluded any possibility of parole. Dingle
filed

an

asserting

application
that

the

for

prospect

post-conviction
of

parole

relief

eligibility

(“PCR”),
was

an

integral element of the plea bargain. On December 5, 1997, the
PCR court vacated the sentences and remanded “for sentencing
consistent with the intent of the plea agreement or for a new
trial.” J.A. 338.
After several years went by without a hearing, Dingle filed
a motion for speedy trial in the Sumter County Court of General
Sessions. In the meantime, the Supreme Court decided Roper v.
Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005), which held that imposing capital
punishment on juvenile offenders was a violation of the Eighth
Amendment. At the hearing on July 28, 2005, Dingle argued that
he should be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea because, in

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light of Roper, he no longer received the benefit of a bargain
premised on avoiding the death penalty.
The Court of General Sessions rejected Dingle’s request for
a new trial. Rather, the court determined that the plea should
be evaluated based on the law as it existed in 1995 – the court
could give him the benefit of his bargain by restructuring the
sentence such that he would be eligible for parole after thirty
years.

Dingle

appealed

and

the

South

Carolina

Supreme

Court

rejected the claim that Roper deprived him of the benefit of his
plea deal. State v. Dingle, 659 S.E.2d 101, 106 (S.C. 2008).
On January 8, 2009, Dingle filed a second application for
PCR. This time, he argued that Roper applied retroactively to
his case and that his guilty plea was involuntary because it was
made

for

the

sole

purpose

of

avoiding

cruel

and

unusual

punishment. The PCR court found that the essence of Dingle’s
Roper

claim

Carolina

was

Supreme

already
Court.

raised

and

Accordingly,

ruled
it

upon
was

by

the

barred

by

South
res

judicata. Dingle unsuccessfully appealed the PCR court’s order,
and filed a third application for PCR that was later dismissed.
Dingle also filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 for a
writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for
the District of South Carolina. In his petition, Dingle raised
four claims of error. On November 10, 2009, the district court
dismissed the claims without prejudice.
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On

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September

13,

2013,

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Dingle

filed

the

instant

§ 2254

petition. He contested his conviction on six grounds, including
various

assertions

prosecutorial
denying

the

of

ineffective

misconduct.
petition

in

The
its

assistance

magistrate

entirety,

of

counsel

judge

rejecting

and

recommended
some

of

the

claims on the merits and finding that others were procedurally
defaulted.

The

district

court

adopted

the

magistrate

judge’s

report and recommendation and denied relief on Dingle’s § 2254
petition. This court granted a certificate of appealability on a
single issue: “whether Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005),
may be applied retroactively to invalidate Dingle’s guilty plea
where, pre-Roper, he allegedly pled guilty to avoid the death
penalty.” We denied a certificate as to all other claims.
II.
Dingle’s primary contention is that his guilty plea should
be abrogated in light of Roper’s holding that the death penalty
may not be imposed on juvenile offenders. He asserts, first,
that

Roper

articulated

a

substantive

rule

that

applies

retroactively to his case, see Montgomery v. Louisiana, 136 S.
Ct. 718, 734 (2016) (“Miller is no less substantive than are
Roper and Graham.”), and, second, that if the state cannot seek
the death penalty against him now, it was improper for the state
to do so in 1995. Accordingly, because the plea agreement was

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motivated by a desire to avoid cruel and unusual punishment,
Dingle argues that his plea was involuntary and invalid.
In resolving this question, we reiterate that this appeal
does not raise such issues as ineffective assistance of counsel
or prosecutorial misconduct in the plea negotiations. The court
was careful to limit the certificate of appealability to the
Roper claim and to deny a certificate to all remaining claims,
many of which are better suited for and have been addressed in
other

proceedings.

question

of

law:

The

case

whether

that

comes

Roper,

of

before
its

own

us

is

a

force

pure
as

a

substantive rule, applies retroactively to undo a guilty plea.
There are several difficulties with this argument, which we
address in turn. *
A.
The

Supreme

constitutional

rule

Court

in

Roper

prohibiting

the

announced
imposition

a
of

distinct
the

death

penalty on juvenile offenders. Roper, 543 U.S. at 568. In so
doing, however, the Court was careful to limit the scope of this

*

The state argues that AEDPA’s deferential standard of
review governs this action. AEDPA, however, applies only to
claims that have been “adjudicated on the merits in State court
proceedings,” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) (2012), and there is some
dispute as to whether South Carolina courts actually decided
Dingle’s Roper claim on the merits. Because we would affirm the
district judge in all events, we will apply de novo review to
this case.

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constitutional bar to the “most severe punishment” of a capital
sentence,

where

force.” Id.

the

The

Eighth

Court

Amendment

therefore

made

applies
clear

with

that

“special

its

holding

should be construed to apply only to the sentence actually at
issue in that case, which was capital punishment.
Dingle nonetheless argues that Roper is a substantive rule
and should apply retroactively to invalidate his guilty plea.
This

contention,

however,

compares

apples

and

oranges.

We

readily grant that Roper announced a substantive rule, but that
does not decide the outcome of the case at hand. The inescapable
fact is that Dingle did not receive the death penalty. Nor did
he

receive

a

life

sentence

without

parole.

See

Miller

v.

Alabama, 132 S. Ct. 2455 (2012). Rather, Dingle received a life
sentence with the possibility of parole after thirty years. In
essence,

Dingle

constitutional

seeks

right

to

extrapolate

recognized

in

Roper

from
to

the
a

much

distinct
broader

substantive rule that extends to plea agreements negotiated in
the shadow of the death penalty.
The district court correctly found that Roper did not apply
to situations where a defendant pled guilty to a non-capital
sentence to avoid the possibility of a capital sentence. Dingle
v. Stevenson, 772 F. Supp. 2d 734, 740 (D.S.C. 2009). The death
penalty here operated only as part of the calculus in the plea
negotiations, and acknowledging that Roper might have altered
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the calculus is a far cry from finding that its substantive rule
applies. It happens in the ordinary give and take of a plea
bargain

that

outcome

of

suggested

a

the

that

proscribed

substantive

rule

negotiation.
a

Yet

substantive

sentence

to

may
the

rule

reopen

indirectly
Supreme

would

guilty

bear

the

has

not

beyond

the

Court

stretch

pleas

on

with

a

different

sentence. See Montgomery v. Louisiana, 136 S. Ct. 718 (2016).
Rather, when a defendant pleads guilty based on the strength of
the state’s case and an assessment of the range of penalties to
which he might otherwise be exposed, we have been especially
reluctant to rescind the bargain. See United States v. Fugit,
703

F.3d

248,

253

(4th

Cir.

2012)

(citing

United

States

v.

Dominguez Benitez, 542 U.S. 74, 82-83 (2004)). Pleading guilty
typically entails a deliberate choice to accept the risks and
rewards of a deal, and that decision may not be casually set
aside on the basis of buyer’s remorse.
B.
This precise principle was put in play in Brady v. United
States,

397

U.S.

742

(1970).

There,

as

here,

a

criminal

defendant was death eligible and entered into a plea agreement
to avoid capital punishment. Subsequent legal developments would
have made the defendant ineligible for the death penalty, and
the

defendant

urged

on

that

basis

that

he

be

permitted

to

withdraw his plea. Id. at 756 (citing United States v. Jackson,
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390 U.S. 570 (1968)). The Court rejected that contention, and
its language is worth quoting because it is highly pertinent
here:
Often the decision to plead guilty is heavily
influenced
by
the
defendant’s
appraisal
of
the
prosecution’s case against him and by the apparent
likelihood of securing leniency should a guilty plea
be offered and accepted. Considerations like these
frequently present imponderable questions for which
there are no certain answers; judgments may be made
that in the light of later events seem improvident,
although they were perfectly sensible at the time.
Id. at 756-57.
And again:
The rule that a plea must be intelligently made to be
valid does not require that a plea be vulnerable to
later attack if the defendant did not correctly assess
every relevant factor entering into his decision. . .
. More particularly, absent misrepresentation or other
impermissible conduct by state agents, a voluntary
plea of guilty intelligently made in the light of the
then applicable law does not become vulnerable because
later judicial decisions indicate that the plea rested
on a faulty premise.
Id. at 757 (citation omitted).
And again:
The fact that Brady did not anticipate United States
v. Jackson does not impugn the truth or reliability of
his plea. We find no requirement in the Constitution
that a defendant must be permitted to disown his
solemn admissions in open court that he committed the
act with which he is charged simply because it later
develops that the State would have had a weaker case
than the defendant had thought or that the maximum
penalty
then
assumed
applicable
has
been
held
inapplicable in subsequent judicial decisions.
Id. (citation omitted).
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Brady is remarkable not only for the fact that the Court
emphatically repeated its holding, but that it managed to drive
the point home in so many different ways. Dingle tries to assert
that the coercion involved in his plea negotiation was uniquely
debilitating because he “knuckl[ed] under threat” of what we now
understand to be cruel and unusual punishment. App. Br. at 24.
But

the

logic

in

Brady

applies

generally,

regardless

of

the

reason that a defendant is no longer death eligible. See Brady,
397 U.S. at 755 (“[A] plea of guilty is not invalid merely
because entered to avoid the possibility of a death penalty.”).
Contracts in general are a bet on the future. Plea bargains
are no different: a classic guilty plea permits a defendant to
gain a present benefit in return for the risk that he may have
to forego future favorable legal developments. Dingle received
that

present

without

benefit

parole

-

–

under

avoiding
the

law

the
as

death
it

penalty

existed

at

and
the

life
time.

Although Roper, in hindsight, altered the calculus underlying
Dingle’s
undermine

decision
the

to

accept

voluntariness

a
of

plea
his

agreement,
plea.

Some

it

does

element

not
of

pressure exists in every deal, as the tradeoff between present
certainty and future uncertainty is emblematic of the process of
plea bargaining. Brady makes all that exceptionally clear and in
following its teachings we find no infirmity in the plea that
Dingle entered.
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III.
The judgment of the district court is accordingly
AFFIRMED.

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