U.S. v. Lundy, 63 M.J. 299

Trial Stages: Merits: Pretrial Agreements

1. a pretrial agreement is a contract between the accused and the convening authority; a court looks to the basic principles of contract law when interpreting pretrial agreements
2. a pretrial agreement is a constitutional rather than a commercial contract; typically, an accused foregoes his constitutional rights, including the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, the right to trial by members, and the right to confront witnesses against him in exchange for a reduction in sentence or other benefit; as a result, when interpreting pretrial agreements, contract principles are outweighed by the Constitution’s Due Process Clause protections for an accused; in a criminal context, the government is bound to keep its constitutional promises, whereas in a commercial context it might accept the financial consequences of breach; thus, financial remedies are not necessarily an appropriate or available remedy for breach of a plea agreement
3. in this case, the pretrial agreement term in dispute obligated the convening authority to suspend and waive all automatic reductions and forfeitures, and pay them to appellant’s wife to the full extent of the law; because of an Army regulation, the convening authority failed to suspend the reduction at the time of his action, and appellant’s wife received payments based on the rate of pay of an E-1 rather than that of an E-6; only years later, after a Secretarial waiver of that regulation, did appellant’s wife receive the monetary benefit of the bargain; the agreement was silent as to the timing of performance; appellant argued that the timing of the government’s execution of this term was material to his agreement and to his decision to plead guilty and that he was entitled to withdraw his plea as improvident; but appellant failed to meet his burden of demonstrating that the timing of the payment to his wife of the difference between the two pay grades with interest was material to his agreement to plead guilty where the clause “to the full extent of the law” in the agreement suggested emphasis on the amount of payment and not necessarily the speed or timing of payment and where the third-party beneficiary, appellant’s wife, did not complain about the partial performance until 13 months after the fact; thus, the belated payment to appellant’s wife was not alternative relief, but constituted specific performance of the original pretrial agreement

Trial Stages: Appeals: Standards of Review, Burdens, etc.

1. interpretation of a pretrial agreement is a question of law, which an appellate court reviews de novo
2. whether the government has complied with the material terms and conditions of an agreement presents a mixed question of law and fact; generally courts look to all of the facts and circumstances for this determination, and the inquiry is generally considered a question of fact
3. in the context of pretrial agreements involving the constitutional rights of a military accused, an appellate court looks not only to the terms of the agreement, or contract, but to the accused’s understanding of the terms of an agreement as reflected in the record as a whole; where the relevant facts are undisputed, the materiality determination necessarily reduces to a question of law
4. an appellant bears the burden of establishing that there is a significant basis in law or fact to overturn a guilty plea; in the context of this case, in this context, appellant bears the burden of establishing that a term or condition of the agreement was material to his decision to plead guilty, that the government failed to comply with that term or condition, and therefore, that his plea was improvident