How much time am I looking at?': plea bargains, harsh punishments, and low trial rates in southwest border districts

• Author: Walter I. Goncalves, Jr.
• Pages: 293-347

“HOW MUCH TIME AM I LOOKING AT?”: PLEA BARGAINS,

HARSH PUNISHMENTS, AND LOW TRIAL RATES IN

SOUTHWEST BORDER DISTRICTS

Walter I. Gonc¸alves, Jr.*

ABSTRACT

Scholarship on the American trial penalty, vast and diverse, analyzes it in con-

nection with plea bargaining’s dominance, its growth starting in the last third of

the nineteenth century, and present-day racial disparities at sentencing. The

overcriminalization and quick processing of people of color in southwest border

districts cannot be understood without an analysis of how trial sanctions impact

illegal entry and drug trafficking in these busy jurisdictions. Professor Ronald

Wright wrote about the role of prosecutorial power and plea bargaining in the

federal system, but he passed over how and why immigration crimes became

widespread. Any discussion of prosecutors and plea bargaining requires an

understanding of how they manage illegal entrants and drug couriers—the most

prevalent defendants in federal court.

This Article analyzes the reasons for increasing plea rates and trial penalties

in the southwest and how they helped enable the proliferation of fast-track pro-

grams. The plea-bargaining machine used racial stereotypes and stigmatizations

of Latinx and African American populations to justify few trials and process as

many migrants and drug couriers as possible. This paper provides practical

advice for criminal defense lawyers when representing clients at the plea and

sentencing stage of a case. It also unites a discussion of implicit bias to explain

why judges disfavor racial minorities.

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

I. SCHOLARSHIP ON TRIAL PENALTIES: SEVERITY, PROSECUTORIAL POWER,

AND POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298

A. Severity of Trial Penalties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299

B. Increase in Prosecutorial Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301

C. Policy Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302

1. Changes to U.S. Sentencing Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302

2. Fixed Discount Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303

3. Evidentiary Presumptions for Prosecutors . . . . . . . . . . . . 304

* Third Level Supervisory Assistant Federal Public Defender, District of Arizona. For the continued support

thank you Jon M. Sands (Federal Public Defender, Arizona) and level II supervisory assistant federal public

defenders in the Tucson office: Leticia Marquez, Vicki Brambl, and Eric Rau. Thank you to Sephora Grey,

Lauren Lang, Ezra Louvis, and the awesome editors at the American Criminal Law Review. Any errors in this

Article are all my own. © 2022, Walter I. Gonc¸alves, Jr.

293

II. HOW TRIAL PENALTIES POPULARIZED PLEA BARGAINING AND HELPED

CREATE FAST-TRACK PROGRAMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305

A. The Rise, Rate, and Rationale for Plea Bargaining . . . . . . . . . 306

1. Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries . . . . . . . . . . . . 306

2. A Shift in Plea Bargaining in the Mid-Twentieth Century . 307

3. Plea Bargaining Rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308

4. Reasons for the Rise in Plea Bargaining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309

5. Power of Prosecutors in Plea Bargaining . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310

B. Increase in Southwest Border Prosecutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

1. Reasons for Higher Rates of Criminal Immigration

Prosecutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312

2. Fast-Track Programs for Immigration and Drug

Prosecutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313

III. TRIAL PENALTIES AND SOUTHWEST BORDER CRIMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315

A. Trial Penalties for Drug Couriers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315

1. Mandatory Minimums and Trial Penalties for Drug Couriers 317

2. Prosecutorial Power and Mandatory Minimums . . . . . . . . 318

3. Sentencing Differences in Arizona and the Southern District

of Texas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319

4. Examples of Drug Couriers and Trial Penalties . . . . . . . . 320

5. Recommendations to Curtail Trial Penalties in Federal Drug

Prosecutions .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322

B. Illegal Entry and Trial Penalties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322

IV. TRIAL PENALTIES AND RACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327

A. African Americans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327

B. Latinx People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329

C. Judges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332

1. Factors that Impact Judicial Decision-Making for Black and

Latinx Defendants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332

2. Federal Judges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334

V. PRACTICAL ADVICE FOR TRIAL LAWYERS AT PLEA AGREEMENTS AND

SENTENCING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336

A. Preparation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337

B. Advice to Clients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337

C. Guiding the Recalcitrant Client to Accept a Plea Agreement . . 338

D. Attacking the Voluntariness of the Crime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339

E. Narrative Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340

F. Individuation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342

G. Problems with Factual Basis and Immigration Consequences . 343

H. Persuading Trial Judges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344

I. Educating Judges About the Harshness of American

Imprisonment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345

294 AMERICAN CRIMINAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 59:293

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347

INTRODUCTION

The federal criminal justice system is one of plea-bargains, not trials.

1

1. In 2018, 90% of federal criminal cases ended with a guilty plea, while prosecutors dismissed eight percent

of cases. Only 2% of federal criminal cases proceeded to trial. See John Gramlich, Only 2% of Federal Criminal

Defendants Go to Trial, and Most Who Do Are Found Guilty, PEW RES. CTR. (June 11, 2019), https://www.

pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/11/only-2-of-federal-criminal-defendants-go-to-trial-and-most-who-do-are-

found-guilty/. 67,610 federal offenders, or 97.4% of offenders, pled guilty to one or more offenses in 2018. This

is the highest rate of guilty pleas in federal cases since the United States Sentencing Commission began

reporting data in 1984. The lowest guilty rate was 85.4% in 1991. The percentage of guilty pleas in federal cases

has swelled steadily since then. See Ripley Rand & David M. Palko, Year One of Trump’s DOJ: The National

Criminal Sentencing Statistics, THE NAT’L L. REV. (June 4, 2019), https://perma.cc/D5PP-TA2M. Justice

Kennedy wrote, in Missouri v. Frye, that in today’s criminal justice system “the negotiation of a plea bargain,

rather than the unfolding of a trial, is almost always the critical point for a defendant.” Missouri v. Frye, 566

U.S. 134, 144 (2012) (holding that attorneys of criminal defendants have the duty to communicate plea bargains

offered to the accused).

When I

transitioned from the Pima County Public Defender to the Federal Defender’s

Office, in Tucson, Arizona, many experienced lawyers told me I would not be in

trial often, maybe once a year. They were right. In Pima County, I was in trial at

least three to four times a year.

2

The felony criminal trial rate is higher in Pima County Superior Court compared to U.S. District Court in

Tucson. The Pima County trial rate in fiscal year 2014, my last full year of practice there, was 5.78% (350 trials

out of 6,057 total felony criminal filings). See ARIZ. SUPERIOR CT., SUPERIOR COURT CASE ACTIVITY, FISCAL

YEAR 2014 (2014), https://www.azcourts.gov/Portals/39/2014DR/SuperiorCourt.pdf#page=41. In the District of

Arizona, which includes Phoenix and Tucson, for fiscal year 2018, the criminal trial rate was 1.25% (sixty-two

trials out of 4,957 filings). See ARIZ. DIST. CT., DISTRICT OF ARIZONA ANNUAL STATISTICAL REPORT FISCAL

YEAR 2018 (2018), https://www.azd.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/documents/FY18%20Annual%20Report.

pdf.

I have been in the federal system, as of the writing

of this article, for six and a half years. I have represented two clients at jury trial,

despite having a full load of felony cases.

3

As a county public defender, I took

thirty felony cases to trial over ten years. In my current office, I know lawyers who

have spent eight years or more without taking a case to trial.

The lack of jury trials in federal court is problematic and a result of harsh

4

trial

penalties.

5

These punishments lead criminal defendants to accept plea agreements

in lieu of exercising their constitutional right to trial—the hallmark of the

2.

3. As a mid-career supervisory lawyer in the office, I am frequently assigned more serious felony cases.

4. I use the term “harsh” because if trial penalties were low, or even modest, defendants would elect to reject

plea agreements more often.

5. The trial penalty is the difference between the charge and sentence prosecutors offer for a plea and those

sought at trial that arise irrespective of whether a prosecutor bargains by charging a higher crime first and

offering to drop, or by charging a lesser crime first and threatening to add later. See Doug Lieb, Note, Vindicating

Vindictiveness: Prosecutorial Discretion and Plea Bargaining, Past and Future, 123 YALE L.J. 1014, 1051

(2014). Trial tax means the same as trial penalty. This article uses the latter. J. Vincent Aprile has defined the

term trial tax as “a euphemism for a judge imposing a more severe sentence on a defendant . . . because the

accused, who elected to reject the prosecution’s plea agreement and go to trial, wasted judicial and prosecutorial

resources involved in a trial.” See J. Vincent Aprile II, Judicial Imposition of the Trial Tax, 29 CRIM. JUST. 30, 30

(2014). Lawyers expand the concept to unsuccessful appeals when judges treat defendants harsher because the

appeal used resources, just like the trial. Id.

2022] “HOW MUCH TIME AM I LOOKING AT?” 295