Torres v. Kernan

Background

Mario Torres, proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging aspects of his state conviction and sentence. The state cases were resolved through a February 2015 plea agreement. Torres received a six-year prison sentence in one case, with concurrent terms in the other cases. The prosecutor dismissed the remaining counts and another case.

An abstract of judgment for one case mistakenly stated that the prison terms would run consecutively rather than concurrently. After the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation asked the state court for clarification, the state court initially repeated the error. On October 3, 2018, the court issued a corrected abstract showing that the term was concurrent. Torres was released from prison on November 14, 2018.

Torres had previously raised the plea-agreement issue in a prior related federal habeas proceeding. The court denied that petition, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied a certificate of appealability, and the United States Supreme Court denied review. The current petition was filed after the amended judgment and after further state-court proceedings.

Claims and Rulings

Torres asserted two main grounds for relief: (1) the erroneous abstract violated his plea agreement and improperly resentenced him, and (2) restitution was improperly imposed or instituted when the abstract was corrected.

Plea-agreement claim. The court explained that when a plea depends on a prosecutor’s promise, the promise must be fulfilled. It also explained that the recognized remedies for a plea-agreement violation are specific performance—carrying out the agreement—or allowing the defendant to withdraw the guilty plea.

The court concluded that the abstract initially violated the plea agreement because it incorrectly listed consecutive terms. But the error was later corrected to reflect concurrent sentences. The court held that this correction provided specific performance of the agreement, so the state court’s rejection of the claim was not objectively unreasonable under the federal standard governing review of state-court decisions. The court also rejected Torres’s argument that his due-process rights were violated because he was not informed of or present when the abstract was corrected, finding that he had not shown that the state court’s decision unreasonably applied United States Supreme Court authority.

Restitution claim. The court ruled that it lacked jurisdiction to review Torres’s challenge to the restitution order. Federal habeas relief generally addresses the legality or duration of custody. A challenge to a money judgment, including restitution, does not directly affect the source or length of custody. The court therefore concluded that the restitution claim was outside federal habeas jurisdiction. It added that, even if it had jurisdiction, Torres had acknowledged when entering his plea that he would be required to pay appropriate restitution, and the claim would be denied on that basis as well.

Disposition

The court denied the petition for a writ of habeas corpus on the merits. It also denied a certificate of appealability because none of the claims met the required standard for showing that reasonable judges could debate the court’s assessment of a constitutional claim. The clerk was directed to close the file.