Robert Hudson v. Kim Butler
Filing
Filed opinion of the court by Judge Manion. AFFIRMED. Richard A. Posner, Circuit Judge; Daniel A. Manion, Circuit Judge and Michael S. Kanne, Circuit Judge. [6853862-1] [6853862] [16-3152]
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In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 16‐3152
ROBERT HUDSON,
Petitioner‐Appellant,
v.
JACQUELINE LASHBROOK,
Respondent‐Appellee.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 1:13‐C‐00678 — Edmond E. Chang, Judge.
____________________
ARGUED APRIL 13, 2017 — DECIDED JULY 12, 2017
____________________
Before POSNER, MANION and KANNE, Circuit Judges.
MANION, Circuit Judge. Appellant Robert Hudson was
granted habeas relief by a federal district judge, who ordered
the state of Illinois to reoffer a plea deal. State prosecutors
complied with that writ, but a state judge refused to accept
the deal. Since Hudson received all the relief he sought in his
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first habeas action, we affirm the dismissal by the district
court.
I.
Background
In 2005, awaiting trial on state charges for armed robbery
and two counts of unlawful restraint, Robert Hudson was ad‐
vised by his court‐appointed public defender that he faced a
possible sentence of six to sixty years. Accordingly, he rejected
a plea deal by the prosecutor offering him twenty years. The
case went to trial, and when the case was submitted and the
jury was deliberating, the prosecutor again approached Hud‐
son with an offer: sixteen years. Hudson again rejected this
deal, believing that he could be acquitted, or if convicted, re‐
ceive as little as six years in prison.
Hudson was convicted, and at sentencing, it was discov‐
ered that his criminal history was far more extensive than his
trial counsel had thought, including prior convictions for
murder, armed robbery, burglary, felony theft, and felony
drug possession. Due to these various violent crimes, Hudson
has been incarcerated almost continuously from 1979 until the
present day. Given this criminal history, Hudson received a
mandatory natural life sentence without the possibility of pa‐
role. In 2013, after exhausting his state appeals process, Hud‐
son filed a habeas action in federal district court, alleging that
he was denied effective assistance of counsel during plea ne‐
gotiations. The district court on August 27, 2014, issued the
writ, finding that but for his counsel’s deficiencies, Hudson
would have accepted the plea offer. Hudson v. Harrington, No.
13 C 00678 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 27, 2014). Following Lafler v. Cooper,
566 U.S. 156 (2012), the district court determined that the
proper remedy was not immediate release, but rather ordered
the state of Illinois to reoffer Hudson the original plea deal of
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twenty years’ imprisonment, noting that “the state trial court
can then exercise its discretion in determining whether to va‐
cate the convictions and resentence [Hudson] pursuant to the
plea agreement, to vacate only some of the convictions and
resentence [Hudson] accordingly, or to leave the convictions
and sentence from trial undisturbed.”
The state of Illinois offered Hudson a plea deal on March
3, 2015, based upon one charge of attempted armed robbery.
This new offer was specifically tailored to avoid a mandatory
life sentence, and the range of imprisonment was fifteen to
thirty years. Hudson accepted the plea deal, and he and the
State filed an agreed motion under 735 ILCS 5/2‐1401 to vacate
the conviction and resentence. On March 20, 2015, the parties
met in Illinois state court before the same judge who presided
over Hudson’s original trial, and attempted to file an appear‐
ance. However, the state judge declined to rule on the plea
deal on the grounds that she had no jurisdiction over the mat‐
ter, noting that all she had before her were “orders from the
Appellate Court … that suggested all issues addressed by this
Court were correct, and … nothing from the Federal Court
that suggests otherwise. So you can file your appearance to
do what? I mean, there is nothing here. I don’t have jurisdic‐
tion. I don’t have anything here.”
On April 6, 2015, the parties appeared again before the
same judge, this time with additional documentation, includ‐
ing the habeas opinion of the federal district court. Again, the
procedural irregularity of the writ was noted by the state
judge. She noted again that the original sentence had not been
vacated, so that she had no jurisdiction over Hudson. She fur‐
ther noted that the new plea deal was contrary to Illinois state
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law, asking: “[H]ow does the State’s Attorney or Miss Madi‐
gan give an offer that’s illegal … [Hudson] wishes to plead
guilty to some other offense that he was not convicted of?”
Finally, on February 23, 2016, Hudson and four attorneys
again appeared in Illinois state court and finally obtained a
merits ruling. Again the state judge asked what jurisdiction
she had over his case. When federal habeas jurisdiction was
recited to her, she asked: “Do you have a copy of the federal
district court order that is ordering me to do something?” Af‐
ter reading lengthy portions of Hudson’s violent criminal his‐
tory into the record and noting that she had reviewed “every
single affidavit, every pleading … all the information that was
provided by the State’s Attorney’s Office[,] the Will County
Adult Probation Department[,] and the Will County Clerk’s
Office,” the state judge finally rejected the plea deal outright.
She further noted that she would have rejected the plea deal
even if she were considering the deal for the first time, after
factoring in Hudson’s criminal history. Hudson has appealed
this denial of his plea agreement in state court, and that action
remains pending.
Hudson returned to the federal district judge who had is‐
sued the habeas writ, filing a “motion to enforce” that sought
his immediate release from the Illinois Department of Correc‐
tions. Again following the Supreme Court’s decision in Lafler,
the district judge this time denied the motion on the grounds
that Hudson’s state appeal remains pending, and that “the Il‐
linois Appellate Court should have the first opportunity to
both define Lafler’s discretionary factors and in deciding how
to resentence or treat a reoffered plea, and to determine
whether the state trial court operated within the bounds of
fair discretion in this case.” This ruling terminated the case in
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the district court. Today, we dismiss this case for lack of juris‐
diction.
II.
Analysis
The Supreme Court’s decision in Lafler v. Cooper applied
the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of effective assistance of
counsel to a trial’s plea‐bargaining stage. This case does pre‐
sent a difficulty for trial courts: distinguishing genuine un‐
constitutionally ineffective assistance of counsel from “sand‐
bagging.” Unlike cases where defense counsel is ineffective at
trial, ineffective counsel in the Lafler context might be per‐
fectly adequate at trial—even excellent. In this case, the pro‐
gressively reduced plea offers by the state of Illinois to Robert
Hudson, starting with twenty years and reducing to sixteen
years, suggests as much. In other words, an Illinois jury heard
Hudson’s best case and still convicted him. While not ad‐
dressed in Lafler, a defendant facing a mandatory natural life
sentence in a case with strong evidence against him would
have no reason to reject an unlawfully offered lower plea deal,
and as a matter of law, there might be no prejudice in a situa‐
tion where a defendant declines a plea deal that is contrary to
state law. In this case, however, the state of Illinois failed to
appeal the issuance of the writ.
Yet while it is difficult to determine when to issue a writ
of habeas corpus at the sentencing stage, this pales in compar‐
ison to the difficulty of the remedial question. In the Lafler case
itself, the Court determined that the “correct remedy [was] to
order the State to reoffer the [rejected] plea agreement. Pre‐
suming [the defendant] accepts the offer, the state trial court
can then exercise its discretion in determining whether to va‐
cate the convictions and resentence [the defendant] pursuant
to the plea agreement, to vacate only some of the convictions
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and resentence [the defendant] accordingly, or to leave the
convictions and sentence from trial undisturbed … Today’s
decision leaves open to the trial court how best to exercise that
discretion in all the circumstances of the case.” Id. at 174–75.
Indeed, the Court in Lafler is quite clear that a state court could
not be compelled to accept a plea deal. The Court did provide
some broad instructions that while a trial court must “weigh
various factors[,] the boundaries of proper discretion need not
be defined here. Principles elaborated over time in decisions
of state and federal courts, and in statutes and rules, will serve
to give more complete guidance as to the factors that should
bear upon the exercise of the judge’s discretion.” Lafler, 566
U.S. at 171.
But whatever this means, it cannot mean that a federal dis‐
trict court is not only entitled, but compelled by the Sixth
Amendment to vacate Hudson’s state sentence, order a state
prosecutor to offer a plea deal in apparent violation of state
law, then order the state judge to accept this unlawful plea
deal. State authorities applying their own criminal laws are
not marionettes controlled by the federal courts, and the writ
of habeas corpus, while a “great writ,” is not without limit.
The writ is directed to the person detaining another: it is not
directed at the state government in toto.
Cognizant of this, the district judge in this case properly
followed Lafler to the letter, and directed the state prosecutors
(again, apparently in contravention of state law) to reoffer a
lower plea deal.1 Once the state reoffered the plea deal, the
1 One might ask why the state was not ordered to reoffer the sixteen‐
year plea deal rejected while the jury was out.
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habeas writ was complied with, and the district court lost ju‐
risdiction over the case. The state judge, faced with what she
thought was also not a case or controversy, declined to opine
until, finally, she considered and rejected it. Whether she had
jurisdiction, and whether her merits ruling was proper or im‐
proper are matters of state law, pending on appeal. And it
bears mentioning that at no point was the state judge herself
a party before the federal district judge in this case.
The state of Illinois properly characterizes Hudson’s re‐
turn to federal court not as a continuation of his prior habeas
case (he had received all the relief requested) but as a new ha‐
beas case, analogizing this case to Coulter v. McCann, 484 F.3d
459, 466 (7th Cir. 2007). In that case, a plaintiff successfully
obtained habeas relief on a Batson claim, and in compliance
with the writ the state court concluded that the prosecution’s
reasons for its use of peremptory strikes was race‐neutral. The
plaintiff in that case sought to “reinstate” his habeas petition,
and this court held that “[w]hat he filed was in substance a
new petition for a writ of habeas corpus from the new hold‐
ing.” Id.2
If there were any question of compliance with the writ, the
district judge in this case had contempt authority. Instead, the
district judge properly noted that “the next procedural step
should be the Illinois Appellate Court. If, at the end of the
state appellate process, Hudson does not receive his re‐
quested relief, then he may file another habeas petition ....”
2 This court further noted that the petition in Coulter was not succes‐
sive, challenging a new ruling of the state court. The same principle ap‐
plies in this case. Upon exhaustion of his state remedies, Mr. Hudson un‐
doubtedly has a new habeas claim he can file.
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This was not a statement, however, that the instant action was
ongoing, but that the habeas action the district court contem‐
plated Hudson filing in the future did require exhaustion of
state remedies. In this habeas action under Lafler, Hudson has
received all the relief he requested, and the decision of the dis‐
trict court dismissing the action is
AFFIRMED.
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