Background
Ricky Grover Aaron pled guilty to possession of child sexual abuse material in violation of Section eighteen U.S.C. Section two thousand two hundred fifty-two A subsection a five B and subsection b. The district court sentenced him to one hundred twenty months of imprisonment and a lifetime of supervised release. On appeal, Aaron’s counsel filed an Anders brief stating there were no meritorious grounds for appeal but raised an issue regarding the district court’s limitation on the topics an expert could evaluate when authorizing funds for a psychology evaluation.
The court’s reasoning
The court held that because Aaron entered a valid and unconditional guilty plea, he waived all non-jurisdictional defects and could not attack the judgment except for inadequacy of the plea under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure eleven. Consequently, the challenge to the funding authorization was not properly before the court. The court also reviewed the record in its entirety pursuant to Anders and found no meritorious grounds for appeal. Regarding the claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, the court concluded that such ineffectiveness did not conclusively appear on the face of the record and should be raised in a Section twenty-eight U.S.C. Section two thousand two hundred fifty-five motion.
when a defendant pleads guilty, he waives all nonjurisdictional defects in the proceedings conducted prior to entry of the plea and has no nonjurisdictional ground upon which to attack that judgment except the inadequacy of the plea under Fed. R. Crim. P. 11.
United States v. Glover, 8 F.4th 239, 245 (4th Cir. 2021)
What it means going forward
Defendants who plead guilty cannot challenge pre-plea procedural errors on direct appeal, and claims of ineffective assistance of counsel must typically be pursued through habeas corpus motions rather than direct appeals unless the record conclusively shows deficiency.