Unconditional guilty plea waives defects in waiver of indictment
United States v. Travis, 735 F.2d 112 (9th Cir. 1984) was overruled by United States v. Cotton, 535 U.S. 625 (2002). Also, red flags in Westlaw are not the law.
United States v. Medina-Luna, No. 23-705, decided April 12, 2024.
Panel: Graber (authored), Forrest, and Selna (C.D. Cal.)
Holding: Defects in the indictment are not jurisdictional, and any prior holdings to the contrary are overruled in light of United States v. Cotton, 535 U.S. 625 (2002). Notwithstanding an erroneous decision by Westlaw to place a red flag on the case, Miller v. Gammie, 335 F.3d 889 (9th Cir. 2003) (en banc) (holding a three-judge panel may recognize a decision as overruled if it is clearly irreconcilable with later precedent from the Supreme Court) remains good law.
Genaro Medina-Luna waived his right to a grand jury indictment and entered an unconditional plea of guilty to an information alleging reentry of a removed noncitizen, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326. He was sentenced to 41 months in prison. On appeal, he argued (1) that his waiver of the right to a grand jury indictment was not knowing and involuntary and (2) that the sentence imposed was substantively unreasonable.
The panel dismissed Mr. Medina’s claim that his waiver of grand jury indictment was not knowing and voluntary, finding that in entering an unconditional plea of guilty to the information, Mr. Medina had waived the issue. The panel explained that in United States v. Chavez-Diaz, 949 F.3d 1202 (9th Cir. 2020), the Ninth Circuit held that “an unconditional guilty plea constitutes a waiver of the right to appeal all nonjurisdictional antecedent rules and cures all antecedent constitutional defects.”
To the extent that this Circuit’s prior case law in United States v. Travis, 735 F.2d 1129 (9th Cir. 1984) held that defects in a waiver of indictment are jurisdictional, that holding was overruled by the Supreme Court in United States v. Cotton, 535 U.S. 625 (2002), which held that defects in an indictment do not deprive a court of jurisdiction.
In holding Travis to be overruled, the panel reaffirmed Miller v. Gammie, 335 F.3d 889 (9th Cir. 2003) (en banc), which held that a three-judge panel may recognize that a prior decision of the Circuit has been overruled if it is clearly irreconcilable with later precedent from the Supreme Court. The panel noted that “confusion” resulting from an erroneous “red flag placed on Miller by Westlaw, due to Westlaw’s misreading of [a 2022 decision of this Circuit]” had led to an erroneous notation in a few recent cases that Miller had been “overruled.” The panel reaffirmed that Miller remains good law and that any suggestion to the contrary is mistaken.
Finally, the panel held that the 41-month sentence was not substantively unreasonable.
The opinion is here.