Only a few weeks ago, the Appellate Division, Second Department, reversed a plea as coerced when the defendant was given the choice of remand or a guilty plea and probation.  It seems that the plea coercion bug has migrated north, according to this post from the NY Criminal Defense Blog, with the Fourth Department reversal in People v. Flynn.

What’s remarkable about this decision is that the trial court’s arm twisting was so fundamentally mundane, of the sort seen daily for as long as I can remember in the bowels of courts across the state.

At the plea proceeding, the court stated that it would treat defendant “very differently as far as the sentence is concerned” if he exercised his right to a trial and that his sentence after trial would be “nothing like the sentence that [he] would get if [he] stood up and accepted [his] responsibility.” The court further stated that defendant was “going to be sentenced [to] substantially longer than” the agreed-upon term of six years of imprisonment if he exercised his right to a trial.

The Memorandum decision offers little insight as to why this plea, as opposed to almost every other plea ever coerced taken from a defendant, stood out.  Or, could it be that courts have finally had enough of the decades of manipulation of defendants minds and hearts during that 30 seconds standing before the court to move their cases along.  The closest the court comes to offering a rationale is this:

We agree with defendant that the court’s statements do not amount to a description of the range of the potential sentences but, rather, they constitute impermissible coercion, “rendering the plea involuntary and requiring its vacatur.” (citations omitted)

Adding to the mystery, this was an unpreserved argument, reached under the court’s discretionary “interest of justice” jurisdiction, the one pulled out when the court chooses to do its job even though a lawyer failed to mouth the requisite words at the right time.

While the court’s explanation is obviously correct, and the overt threat of “substantially longer” time if the defendant “exercised his right to trial” bore no similarity to the benign “description of the range of the potential sentences,” it’s not like this isn’t de rigor in the trenches.  Does this signal the end of basic everyday plea coercion? 

Of course, consider the flip side of this decision, where the defendant was represented by my old friend Gary Muldoon.  His conviction is reversed, his guilty plea withdrawn, and he’s back on the docket for trial.  Decisions like this are more likely to pull the defendant out of the frying pan and into the fire, unless the defendant now feels confident that he’s got a better defense than he did with the job staring him down the last time. 

While the Flynn decision is a wonderful doctrinal advance, and the management of plea discussions by lower court judges is long overdue for the elimination of coercive and manipulative treatment of defendants, I wonder whether it will have any real effect on how judge’s function in the ordinary course, assuming of course that anyone reads the decision.  While criminal defense lawyers would do well to be very aware of the ruling, in order to “remind” judges when they start threatening defendants that they will spend the rest of their lives in prison if they fail to cop out, the flip side of appeal and reversal doesn’t necessarily offer much of a benefit to the coerced defendant, and might well backfire should the players not feel as kindly on the next time around and the defendant not have much trial leverage.

Still, any decision that diminishes the coercive nature of plea discussions, and particularly threats by the judge, is a good and welcome decision.  Plea bargaining will still be a part of the everyday game in courtrooms, but this trend toward more deliberate and less coercive pleas is long overdue.