ROBERT C. GODFREY v. COMMISSIONER OF CORRECTION
AC 42890
Appellate Court of Connecticut
February 23, 2021
Bright, C. J., and Prescott and Suarez, Js
Argued October 8, 2020
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Syllabus
The petitioner, who had pleaded guilty to murder, appealed to this court from the judgment of the habeas court, which denied his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The petitioner alleged, inter alia, that his guilty plea should be vacated pursuant to the doctrine of frustration of purpose because the subsequent abolishment of the death penalty in Connecticut frustrated his principal purpose in accepting the plea agreement, namely, to avoid the death penalty. The relief he sought was a judgment vacating the original plea agreement and the remand of his case for resentencing in accordance with a plea that would have been negotiated had the death penalty been unavailable. The habeas court, after a trial at which both of the petitioner‘s trial counsel testified, concluded that the petitioner failed to prove that his principal purpose for agreeing to enter a guilty plea was substantially frustrated by the subsequent abolition of the death penalty and that he had assumed the risk that the death penalty subsequently might be abolished. On the granting of certification, the petitioner appealed to this court. Held that the petitioner cannot prevail on his claim that he was entitled to relief under the frustration of purpose doctrine because, even if this court assumed that the frustration of purpose doctrine applied to plea agreements, by accepting the plea agreement, contract principles dictate that the petitioner assumed the risk that at some point the death penalty could be abolished: the record demonstrated that the terms of the agreement were unambiguous, that the petitioner was fully aware of the consequences of his bargain, and the parties, having been made aware of the potential for future favorable changes to the law, intended for the plea agreement to remain enforceable notwithstanding any future changes to the law, including the subsequent abolition of the death penalty in Connecticut, which did not change the petitioner‘s expectations under the agreement, namely, that he serve a full sixty year sentence and not be permitted to appeal or withdraw his guilty plea after the court imposed the agreed upon sentence; moreover, although the petitioner may have miscalculated the likely penalties attached to alternative courses of action, an individual cannot withdraw a guilty plea merely because a subsequent change in the law rendered the maximum penalty for the crime in question less than was reasonably assumed at the time the plea was entered, even when the maximum penalty at issue was death, and any such miscalculation did not provide a basis to grant habeas relief to the petitioner regarding his guilty plea; furthermore, as our Supreme Court unequivocally has rejected the amelioration doctrine, which provides that amendments to statutes that lessen their penalties are applied retroactively, it would be improper to vacate the petitioner‘s guilty plea pursuant to the frustration of purpose doctrine, which in this instance is the functional equivalent of applying the amelioration doctrine and which would work a substantial injustice on the state in new plea negotiations as the petitioner would enjoy a much greater degree of leverage than in the first negotiation because of the numerous difficulties attendant to securing a conviction at trial nearly twenty years after the crime was committed, including evidence that has become stale, memories that have faded, and witnesses that may no longer be available.
Argued October 8, 2020-officially released February 23, 2021
Procedural History
Amended petition for a writ of habeas corpus, brought to the Superior Court in the judicial district of Tolland and tried to the court, Bhatt, J.; judgment denying the petition, from which the petitioner, on the granting of certification, appealed to this court.
Vishal K. Garg, assigned counsel, for the appellant (petitioner).
Tamara Grosso, assistant state‘s attorney, with whom, on the brief, were Laurie N. Feldman, deputy assistant state‘s attorney, and Gail P. Hardy, former state‘s attorney, for the appellee (respondent).
Opinion
PRESCOTT, J. This appeal presents the important question of whether, under the common-law contractual “frustration of purpose” doctrine, a habeas petitioner who had been charged with a capital felony and pleaded guilty to murder in order to avoid the imposition of the death penalty is entitled to withdraw his guilty plea sixteen years later because the death penalty has since been abolished. We conclude that, even if the frustration of purpose doctrine applies to criminal plea agreements, the petitioner, Robert C. Godfrey, is not entitled to relief under that doctrine because by entering
The petitioner appeals from the judgment of the habeas court denying his petition for a writ of habeas corpus.1 On appeal, the petitioner claims that the court improperly concluded that he was not entitled to habeas relief with respect to a collateral attack on his guilty plea because (1) he failed to prove that his principal purpose for entering into a guilty plea with an agreed upon sixty year sentence was substantially frustrated by the subsequent abolition of the death penalty and (2) he had assumed the risk that the law might change in his favor.2 We conclude that the habeas court properly determined that the petitioner had assumed the risk that the death penalty might be abolished at some point while he was serving his sixty year sentence, and, therefore, we do not reach his first claim. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the habeas court.
The following facts and procedural history are relevant to our dispоsition of the petitioner‘s claims.3 On November 9, 2001, the East Hartford police responded to apartment 209 of an apartment complex on a report that a woman was found dead. Upon arrival, the police observed the woman‘s nude body, with a large open wound to the back of her head, lying face down next to the bed. There were large amounts of blood on the walls, the bed, and the floors of the apartment. In the kitchen, there were what appeared to be bloody footprints. The footprints led from apartment 209, up the outer staircase, to the door of apartment 309, which is where the petitioner lived. When the petitioner first was interviewed by the police, he indicated that he knew the victim, and that they may have had a few beers together, but he did not know how the bloody footprints could have ended up outside of his doorway. The petitioner consented to the taking of a DNA sample, which later was determined by the medical examiner to match the semen found in the victim. The cause of the victim‘s death was cranial cerebral trauma, caused by ten to fifteen blows from a sharp instrument. A search warrant was executed at the petitioner‘s apartment, where the police found bloody footprints inside, which later were determined to match the petitioner‘s own footprints, and clothes stained with the victim‘s blood.
On November 27, 2001, the petitioner was charged with capital felony in violation of
On April 25, 2012,
Following the release of the Santiago decision, the petitioner filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. On April 17, 2018, the petitioner filed an amended petition that alleged ineffective assistance of trial counsel in count one and, in count two, that his guilty plea should be vacated pursuant to the doctrine of frustration of purpose because the abolishment of the death penalty in Connecticut frustrated his principal purpose in accepting the plea agreement, namely, to avoid the death penalty. The relief sought in the petition is a judgment vacating the original plea agreement and the remand of his case for resentencing “in accordance with the plea that would have been negotiated had the death penalty been unavailable.” The respondent, the Commissioner of Correction, filed a return on May 21, 2018, in which he asserted that the petitioner failed to state a ground on which rеlief can be granted, and raised the defense of procedural default. Thereafter, the respondent filed a motion to dismiss count two of the petition on the same grounds alleged in the return. At the habeas trial, on September 4, 2018, the petitioner withdrew count one of the petition and three witnesses testified, including the petitioner and both of his trial counsel, as to count two.
Specifically, both trial counsel testified, inter alia, that they recommended to the petitioner that he plead guilty because there was a significant likelihood that he would receive the death penalty if the case went to trial because of the “horrific” nature of the crime and the weakness of evidence regarding any mitigating factors that might persuade the jury to decline to vote in favor of the death penalty.4 One of
The habeas court rendered judgment on March 8, 2019, denying the amеnded habeas petition.6 Specifically, the court concluded that, as a matter of first impression, the frustration of purpose doctrine, which is typically applied in civil cases alleging breach of contract, also applies to criminal plea agreements. The court then applied
On appeal, the petitioner claims that the habeas court properly determined that the frustration of purpose doctrine applies to plea agreements, but improperly concluded that he was not entitled to habeas relief because (1) he failed to prove that his principal purpose for entering into a guilty plea was substantially frustrated by the subsequent abolition of the death penalty and (2) he had assumed the risk that the law might change in his favor. In response, the respondent argues that this court need not decide whether the frustration of purpose doctrine applies to plea agreements in general or in all circumstances because, even assuming arguendo that it does apply, the petitioner has failed to satisfy all four factors required for its applicability. We agree with the respondent.
We begin by setting forth certain governing principles of law as well as our standard of review. “It is well settled that [p]rinciples of contract law and special due process concerns for fairness govern our interpretation of plea agreements. . . . As has previously been explained in the context of plea agreements, [t]he primary goal of contract interpretation is tо effectuate the intent of the parties . . . . In ascertaining that intent, we employ an objective standard and look to what the parties reasonably understood to be the terms of the plea agreement on the basis of their words and conduct, and in light of the circumstances surrounding the making of the agreement and the purposes they sought to accomplish. . . . [T]he threshold determination as to whether a plea agreement is ambiguous as to the parties’ intent is a question of law subject to plenary review.” (Citations omitted; footnote omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Kallberg, 326 Conn. 1, 14-16, 160 A.3d 1034 (2017).
“The doctrine of frustration of purpose . . . excuses a promisor in certain situations where the objectives of the contract have been utterly defeated by circumstances arising after the formation of the agreement. . . . Excuse is allowed under this rule even though there is no impediment to actual performance.9 . . . A party claiming that a supervening event or contingency has frustrated, and thus excused, a promised performance must demonstrate that: (1) the event substantially frustrated his principal purpose; (2) the nonoccurrence of the supervening event was a basic assumption on which the contract was made; (3) the frustration resulted without the fault of the party seeking to be excused; and (4) the party has not
“The habeas judge, as the trier of facts, is the sole arbiter of the credibility of witnesses and the weight to be given to their testimony. . . . [T]his court cannot disturb the underlying facts found by the habeas court unless they are clearly erroneous . . . .” (Citation omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Brooks v. Commissioner of Correction, 105 Conn. App. 149, 153, 937 A.2d 699, cert. denied, 286 Conn. 904, 943 A.2d 1101 (2008). “The application of the habeas court‘s factual findings to the pertinent legal standard, however, presents a mixed question of law and fact, which is subject to plenary review.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Gaines v. Commissioner of Correction, 306 Conn. 664, 677, 51 A.3d 948 (2012). “The excuse of frustration [of purpose] is a question of law, to be determined by the court from the facts of the case.” 17A Am. Jur. 2d, supra, § 640. Accordingly, we apply a plenary standard of review to the present case, and will not disturb the underlying facts found by the habeas court unless they are clearly erroneous.
I
As the respondent correctly recognizes, we do not need to determine definitively whether the frustration of purpose doctrine applies to plea agreements in Connecticut because, even if we assume, consistent with the conclusion of numerous state and federal courts, that it does, the petitioner would not be entitled to relief under the doctrine because, by accepting the plea agreement, contract principles dictate that hе assumed the risk that at some point the death penalty could be abolished. See United States v. Morgan, 406 F.3d 135, 137 (2d Cir. 2005) (“the possibility of a favorable change in the law after a plea is simply one of the risks that accompanies pleas and plea agreements“), cert. denied, 546 U.S. 980, 126 S. Ct. 549, 163 L. Ed. 2d 465 (2005); see also United States v. Bradley, 400 F.3d 459, 464 (6th Cir. 2005) (“Plea bargains always entail risks for the parties . . . [including] risks relating to future developments in the law. The salient point is that a plea agreement allocates risk between the two parties as they see fit. If courts disturb the parties’ allocation of risk in an agreement, they threaten to damage the parties’ ability to
Here, the record is clear that the terms of the agreement were unambiguous and that the petitioner was fully aware of the consequences of his bargain. In other words, he knew precisely what he was gaining and what he was giving up when he opted for the certainty of pleading guilty to a single count of murder in exchange for a sixty year sentence, as opposed to standing trial for capital felony, murder, felony murder, burglary in the first degree, and sexual assault in the first degree and facing a potential sentence of (1) death, (2) life in prison without the possibility of parole, or (3) a sentence of 100 years or more of incarceration. See United States v. Roque, 421 F.3d 118, 123 (2d Cir. 2005) (“Viewing this plea agreement as a contract, we agree that certain conditions have changed since the bargain was struck. We further acknowledge that, had the parties known what they know now . . . they might have bargained differently and might even have reached a different bargain. This is simply not relevant to whether [the defendant‘s] plea is enforceable, however. [The defendant] understood fully the consequences of his bargain, both in terms of what he was gaining and what he was giving up. . . . [I]n opting for certainty, both parties accepted the risk that conditions relevant to their then-contemporary bargain, including [the law], might change.” (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.)), cert. denied sub nom. Delahoz v. United States, 546 U.S. 1120, 126 S. Ct. 1094, 163 L. Ed. 2d 908 (2006).
Specifically, Attorney Butler advised the petitioner that a sixty year sentence, which he would be required to serve in full, is preferable to a life sentence without the possibility of parole because of the potential for future changes to the law that would make someone with a finite sentence eligible for early release. Attorney Butler likewise discussed with the petitioner the possibility that one day the state might abolish the death penalty. In addition, both of the petitioner‘s trial counsel recommended to him that he take the plea deal in view of what they perceived to be a significant likelihood that he would be convicted at trial and sentenced to death. With this knowledge, the petitioner elected to limit his criminal exposure, forgo a lengthy capital trial and its attendant stress for himself and his family,10 аnd accept a sixty year sentence, which left open the potential for him to be released at age ninety or earlier if he became eligible for parole because of a favorable change in our parole eligibility laws. Moreover, as the trial court‘s thorough canvass illustrates, the petitioner understood that under the terms of the agreement (1) his guilty plea was “for keeps” in that he would not be permitted to “change his mind later and take it back,” (2) he was waiving “any rights to an appeal,” (3) he could not withdraw his guilty plea unless the court did not impose the agreed upon sentence, and (4) he would serve a sixty year sentence “day for day.” See United States v. Roque, supra, 421 F.3d 123 (“In no circumstances . . . may a defendant, who has secured the benefits of a
Furthermore, the subsequent abolition of the death penalty in Connecticut did not change the petitioner‘s expectations under the agreement, namely, that he serve a full sixty year sentence and not be permitted to appeal or withdraw his guilty plea after the court imposed the agreed upon sentence. See United States v. Archie, 771 F.3d 217, 222 (4th Cir. 2014) (“[A]lthough the law changed after [the defendant] [pleaded] guilty, his expectations (as reflected in the plea agreement) did not. . . . A plea agreement, like any contract, allocates risk. . . . And the possibility of a favorable change in the law occurring after a plea is one of the normal risks that accompan[ies] a guilty plea.” (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.)), cert. denied, 575 U.S. 925, 135 S. Ct. 1579, 191 L. Ed. 2d 660 (2015). The petitioner struck a deal, the terms of which were unambiguous, and he is now seeking to retain the benefits of the bargain while reneging on his commitments to not withdraw his guilty plea and serve a sixty year sentence. See United States v. Bradley, supra, 400 F.3d 465 (“[h]aving voluntarily and knowingly bargained for a decrease in the number of counts charged against him and for a decreased sentence, [the defendant] cannot now extract two components of that bargain . . . оn the basis of changes in the law after that bargain was struck“). As succinctly stated by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, “contract principles [simply] do not support [the petitioner‘s] attempt to have his cake and eat it, too.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) United States v. Roque, supra, 421 F.3d 124.
II
We next turn to a discussion of factually related precedent from other jurisdictions that informs our application of the frustration of purpose doctrine to the petitioner‘s plea agreement. We begin by addressing two lines of cases in which courts have excused a party‘s performance under a plea agreement pursuant to the frustration of purpose doctrine. In the first line of cases, the frustrating event at issue was a change in the law subsequent to a criminal defendant‘s guilty plea. These cases are fundamentally distinguishable, however, because the change in the law affected the criminality of the conduct for which the defendant pleaded guilty. For instance, in United States v. Bunner, 134 F.3d 1000 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 525 U.S. 830, 119 S. Ct. 81, 142 L. Ed. 2d 64 (1998), after the defendant had served threе years of a five year sentence, the United States Supreme Court issued a decision; Bailey v. United States, 516 U.S. 137, 116 S. Ct. 501, 133 L. Ed. 2d 472 (1995); under which the facts supporting the defendant‘s plea no longer constituted a crime. The defendant successfully moved to vacate his sentence pursuant to
In a second line of cases in which the frustration of purpose doctrine has been applied to plea agreements, courts have held that the principal purpose of the agreement was substantially frustrated when the specific terms of the agreement were not actually imposed. See United States v. Thompson, 237 F.3d 1258, 1260-61 (10th Cir.) (federal government charged defendant with crime and defendant entered into plea agreement with government to pleаd guilty in Oklahoma state court and be sentenced to ten years of imprisonment, but when state failed to charge defendant within applicable statute of limitations, government no longer bound by plea agreement), cert. denied, 532 U.S. 987, 121 S. Ct. 1637, 149 L. Ed. 2d 497 (2001); United States v. Jureidini, 846 F.2d 964, 965 (4th Cir. 1988) (parties agreed that for purposes of parole consideration defendant would be classified as having committed category six offense but parole board placed him in category eight); see also United States v. Torres, 926 F.2d 321, 322, 325-26 (3d Cir. 1991) (parties agreed that defendant‘s sentencing range was to be based on lesser quantity of drugs than that which court ultimately relied when sentencing defendant); United States v. Kemper, 908 F.2d 33, 37 (6th Cir. 1990) (same). These cases are readily distinguishable because, here, the court imposed the agreed upon sentence, and there
The cases that are most instructive to our analysis of the assumption of risk prong of the frustration of purpose doctrine involve defendants charged with a capital felony, who pleaded guilty to avoid capital punishment, and, after a subsequent change in the law that would have rendered them ineligible for the death penalty if the new law was in place at the time they were charged, sought to withdraw the guilty plea.14
For example, in Dingle v. Stevenson, 840 F.3d 171, 172-73 (4th Cir. 2016), cert. denied, 137 S. Ct. 2094, 197 L. Ed. 2d 897 (2017), the defendant, who was seventeen years old when he pleaded guilty to several charges to avoid the death penalty, sought to invalidate his plea after the United States Supreme Court held, in Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551, 125 S. Ct. 1183, 161 L. Ed. 2d 1 (2005), that imposing capital punishment on juvenile offenders was a violation of the eighth amendment to the United States constitution. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit rejected the defendant‘s claim, holding that Roper could not be applied retroactively to invalidate the defendant‘s guilty plea. Dingle v. Stevenson, supra, 175.
In reaching this conclusion, the court reasoned: “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 [forgo] future favorable legal developments. [The defendant] received that present benefit-avoiding the death penalty and life without parole-under the law as it existed at the time. Although Roper, in hindsight, altered the calculus underlying [the defendant‘s] decision to accept a plea agreement, it does not undermine the voluntariness of his plea. . . . [T]he tradeoff between present certainty and future uncertainty is emblematic of the process of plea bargaining. Brady [v. United States, 397 U.S. 742, 90 S. Ct. 1463, 25 L. Ed. 2d 747 (1970)] makes all that exceptionally clear . . . .” Dingle v. Stevenson, supra, 840 F.3d 175-76; see also Brant v. State, 830 S.E.2d 140, 142 (Ga. 2019) (rejecting claim by defendant, who was seventeen years old when he entered plea agreement to avoid possibility of receiving death penalty, that his plea was rendered involuntary by Roper).
Indeed, in Brady, the Supreme Court ruled that the petitioner, who was charged with kidnapping pursuant to
“A defendant is not entitled to withdraw his plea merely because he discovers long after the plea has been accepted that his calculus misapprehended the quality of the [s]tate‘s case or the likely penalties attached to alternative courses of actions. 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.” (Citation omitted.) Id., 756-57. In other words, “[a] plea of guilty triggered by the expectations of a competently counseled defendant that the [s]tate will have a strong case аgainst him is not subject to later attack because the defendant‘s lawyer correctly advised him with respect to the then existing law as to possible penalties but later pronouncements of the courts, as in this case, hold that the maximum penalty for the crime in question was less than was reasonably assumed at the time the plea was entered.” Id., 757.
As Dingle, Brant, and Brady illustrate, an individual cannot withdraw a guilty plea merely because a subsequent change in the law renders the maximum penalty for the crime in question less than was reasonably assumed at the time the plea was entered-even when the maximum penalty at issue was death. The natural implication of these cases is that a criminal defendant who negotiates a plea agreement “in the shadow of the death penalty” assumes the risk that the law subsequently could change such that the death penalty is no longer a permissible punishment for the crime(s) for which the defendant originally was charged. Dingle v. Stevenson, supra, 840 F.3d 174.
As in Brady, the petitioner here may have miscalculated the likely penalties аttached to alternative courses of action. Despite being aware that it was possible that the state someday might abolish the death penalty, the petitioner and his counsel possibly misjudged the likelihood of this happening at some point while he was serving his sixty year sentence. Any such miscalculation, however, does not provide a basis to grant habeas relief to the petitioner regarding his guilty plea. See State v. Reid, 277 Conn. 764, 788-89, 894 A.2d 963 (2006) (“[I]mperfect knowledge of future developments in the law has no bearing on the validity of a [guilty plea]. . . . More than [thirty] years later the Supreme Court reaffirmed Brady and explained that the [c]onstitution . . . permits a court to accept a guilty plea, with its accompanying waiver of various constitutional rights, despite various forms of misapprehension under which a defendant might labor.” (Citation omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.)), citing Brady v. United States, supra, 397 U.S. 742, and United States v. Ruiz, 536 U.S. 622, 630, 122 S. Ct. 2450, 153 L. Ed. 2d 586 (2002). Accordingly, we conclude that the petitioner has failed to satisfy the assumption of risk prong of the frustration of purpose doctrine and, therefore, is not еntitled to any relief.
III
Finally, our conclusion that the petitioner‘s guilty plea cannot be withdrawn pursuant to the frustration of purpose doctrine is buttressed by two policy rationales: (1) fundamental fairness; and (2) our Supreme Court‘s refusal to adopt the amelioration doctrine. We address each of these in turn.
Our habeas corpus statute,
In addition, because our Supreme Court repeatedly has refused to adopt the amelioration doctrine, it would be improper to vacate the petitioner‘s guilty plea pursuant to the frustration of purpose doctrine in this instance where it would accomplish the same objective. In State v. Kalil, 314 Conn. 529, 107 A.3d 343 (2014), our Supreme Court discussed that doctrine and declined to adopt it, stating: “In criminal cases, to determine whether a change in the law applies to a defendant, we generally have applied the law in existence on the date of the offense . . . . This principle is derived from the legislature‘s enactment of saving statutes such as
By holding that the petitioner cannot withdraw his guilty plea and be resentenced in accordance with the plea that would have been negotiated if the death penalty had been unavailable, we are effectively requiring adherence to the law that was in existence on the date of the offense. Stated differently, to allow the petitioner to be resentenced, in accordance with the plea that would have been negotiated if the death penalty was not available at the time of the offense, would be the functional equivalent of applying the amelioration doctrine because it would allow the petitioner to benefit from the retroactive application of a law that lessened the penalty
The judgment is affirmed.
In this opinion the other judges concurred.
PRESCOTT, J.