United States v. Anthony Conrad Beeks , 167 F. App'x 777 ( 2006 )

[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FILED
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
________________________ ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
FEBRUARY 15, 2006
No. 05-12946 THOMAS K. KAHN
Non-Argument Calendar CLERK
________________________
D. C. Docket No. 04-00049-CR-J-99-MCR
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
versus
ANTHONY CONRAD BEEKS,
Defendant-Appellant.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Florida
_________________________
(February 15, 2006)
Before TJOFLAT, BLACK and HULL, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Anthony Conrad Beeks appeals the district court’s denial of his motion to
dismiss an indictment charging him with identity theft and credit card fraud. After
review, we conclude that the district court properly denied Beeks’s motion and
affirm Beeks’s conviction and sentence.
I. BACKGROUND
In May 2003, Beeks pled guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud, in
violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371. The “Factual Basis” attached to and incorporated
into the written plea agreement stated that, in approximately June 1999 and August
2000, Beeks conspired with another individual, Milton B. Miller, to assist people
with bad credit to obtain fraudulent automobile loans from federally insured
financial institutions. Specifically, for a fee, Miller would provide the car-buyers
with falsified credit information indicating that the car-buyer earned more than he
or she actually did, and then Beeks would send the car-buyers to financial
institutions where he had paid employees to process car-buyers’ fraudulent loan
applications.
The plea agreement also contained a provision in which the government
agreed not to pursue other federal charges known to the U.S. Attorney and “related
to conduct giving rise to the plea agreement,” as follows:
4. No Further Charges
If the court accepts this plea agreement, the United States
Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida agrees not to
2
charge the defendant with committing any other federal criminal
offenses known to the United States Attorney’s Office at the time of
the execution of this agreement, related to the conduct giving rise to
this plea agreement.
The plea agreement also stated that it was the entire agreement between the
government and Beeks, and that no other promises, agreements or representations
existed or had been made to Beeks or his attorney.
In February 2004, the government obtained an indictment against Beeks
charging him with identity theft of a man named David J. Bird, in violation of 18
U.S.C. § 1028(a)(7) and (b)(1), and credit card fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §
1029(a)(2) and (c)(1), between June 24, 2002 and October 24, 2002. Beeks moved
to dismiss the indictment based on the “No Further Charges” provision in his plea
agreement for the bank fraud conspiracy offense. After holding an evidentiary
hearing, the district court denied Beeks’s motion, finding that, because the identity
theft and credit card fraud charges were not related to Beeks’s conduct that gave
rise to the bank fraud charge, the government did not breach the “No Further
Charges” clause of the plea agreement.
Beeks pled guilty to the identity theft and credit card fraud charges,
reserving his right to appeal the denial of his motion to dismiss the indictment.
This appeal followed.
II. DISCUSSION
3
On appeal, Beeks argues that the district court erred in denying his motion to
dismiss the indictment. According to Beeks, the “No Further Charges” provision
of his prior plea agreement barred the government from bringing the identity theft
and credit card charges contained in the present indictment. We disagree.1
When a guilty plea “rests in any significant degree on a promise or
agreement of the prosecutor, so that it can be said to be part of the inducement or
consideration, such promise must be fulfilled.” Santobello v. New York, 404 U.S.
257, 262, 92 S. Ct. 495, 499 (1971). “[I]n determining whether the government
has breached a plea agreement, we must first determine the scope of the
government’s promises.” United States v. Copeland, 381 F.3d 1101, 1105 (11 th
Cir. 2004). To determine the meaning of any disputed terms in the agreement, we
apply an objective standard, deciding whether the government’s actions are
consistent with what the defendant reasonably understood when entering his guilty
plea. Id.In determining the scope of the plea agreement, we must first decide whether
the language in the plea agreement is ambiguous. “If it is, we will consider
1
We review de novo whether the government has breached a plea agreement when, as
here, the defendant preserved that argument in district court. United States v. Copeland, 381
F.3d 1101, 1104 (11th Cir. 2004). The district court’s factual findings regarding the scope of the
agreement, including the government’s promises, will only be set aside if they are clearly
erroneous. Id. at 1105.
4
extrinsic evidence of the parties’ intent in arriving at an interpretation of the
agreement’s language and will rely on [recognized] standards of interpretation;
otherwise, we are limited to the unambiguous meaning of the language in the
agreement.” Id. at 1106.2
Here, Beeks’s claim that the government breached the plea agreement turns
on the scope of the “No Further Charges” provision. Specifically, we must decide
whether Beeks’s identity theft and credit card fraud charges are “related to the
conduct giving rise to this plea agreement.”
First, we find no facial ambiguity to the phrase “related to the conduct
giving rise to this plea agreement.” The term “related to” is used in its ordinary
sense to mean connected to or associated with. Thus, the plain meaning of the “No
Further Charges” provision is that the government agrees not to bring any other
charges in connection with Beeks’s participation in the bank fraud scheme.
Second, no defendant could have reasonably understood the phrase “related
to the conduct giving rise to this plea agreement” to include Beeks’s stealing David
J. Bird’s identity and engaging in credit card fraud. Beeks’s present offenses bear
2
The standards applied to the interpretation of ambiguous plea agreements include the
following: (1) the court should avoid a “hyper-technical reading of the written agreement” or
employing “a rigidly literal approach in the construction of language”; (2) “the written
agreement should be viewed against the background of the negotiations and should not be
interpreted to directly contradic[t] [an] oral understanding”; and (3) ambiguous terms should be
read against the government. United States v. Jefferies, 908 F.2d 1520, 1523 (11th Cir. 1990)
(internal quotation marks omitted) (alteration in original).
5
no relation to the bank fraud conduct. First, they are temporally distinct. The bank
fraud occurred between 1999 and 2000. The identity theft and credit card fraud
occurred between June and October, 2002, two years later. Second, the bank fraud
involved qualitatively different misconduct. Beeks’s role in the bank fraud scheme
was to direct prospective car buyers referred by his co-conspirator to employees at
financial institutions whom Beeks had already paid to process the fraudulent loan
applications. This conduct did not involve either identity theft or credit card fraud.
Third, the two sets of offenses involved different individuals. Specifically, Beeks’s
co-conspirator in the bank fraud, Miller, was not implicated in Beeks’s identity
theft and credit card fraud, and Beeks’s victim in the identity theft and credit card
fraud, Bird, was not implicated in the bank fraud.
Indeed, the only thing these two sets of offenses have in common is Beeks.
However, to be barred by the plea agreement, the charges must relate to Beeks’s
conduct in the bank fraud scheme, not just to Beeks himself. Likewise, the fact
that the government may have begun investigating Beeks’s identity theft and credit
card fraud while he was under arrest for bank fraud does not mean that the identity
theft and credit card fraud are “related to” Beeks’s conduct in the bank fraud
scheme.3
3
The district court concluded that the phrase “related to the conduct giving rise to this
plea agreement” was ambiguous and considered extrinsic evidence to conclude that the instant
6
Because the government did not breach the bank fraud plea agreement by
bringing the identity theft and credit card fraud charges, the district court properly
denied Beeks’s motion to dismiss the indictment. Therefore, we affirm Beeks’s
conviction and sentence.
AFFIRMED.
charges did not fall within the scope of government’s promise not to bring further charges.
Specifically, the district court considered the following: (1) at the time Beeks was arrested on
bank fraud charges in February 2003, evidence was collected during a search of his residence
that might have supported identity theft and credit card fraud charges; (2) postal inspectors
interviewed Beeks at that time regarding a complaint of credit card/identity theft relating to Bird;
(3) Beeks’s counsel was told by the prosecutor that the government believed Beeks may have
participated in credit card fraud; (4) Beeks’s counsel had asked for, but had been refused, a
promise from the government to drop any credit card fraud charges; and (5) the government had
threatened Beeks’s counsel with the possibility of more serious bank fraud charges under a
superseding indictment. Because we conclude that the phrase is not ambiguous, our ruling does
not rely upon the extrinsic evidence considered by the district court. See Copeland, 381 F.3d at
1106 (explaining that, where the plea agreement’s language is unambiguous, the court is limited
to that unambiguous meaning and does not consider extrinsic evidence). However, even if the
language is ambiguous, the district court did not err in denying the motion because the above-
listed extrinsic evidence supports the conclusion that the “No Further Charges” provision of the
plea agreement did not bar the identity theft and credit card fraud charges.
7