United States of America v. RONALD SMITH, AKA Skeet, AKA Ski

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
RONALD SMITH, AKA Skeet, AKA Ski,
Defendant-Appellant.
No. 17-50075
D.C. No.
8:09-cr-00248-DOC-13
MEMORANDUM*
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Central District of California
David O. Carter, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted December 7, 2018
Pasadena, California
Before: WARDLAW and OWENS, Circuit Judges, and DORSEY,** District
Judge.
Ronald Smith appeals from his sentence imposed following his guilty plea to
conspiracy to commit bank fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1349) and aggravated identity theft
(18 U.S.C. § 1028A(a)(1)). “We review de novo whether a defendant received
* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
** The Honorable Jennifer A. Dorsey, United States District Judge for
the District of Nevada, sitting by designation.
FILED
DEC 26 2018
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS

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ineffective assistance of trial counsel.” United States v. Benford, 574 F.3d 1228,
1230 (9th Cir. 2009). As the parties are familiar with the facts, we do not recount
them here. We affirm.
Smith contends that his Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of
counsel was violated because his first counsel failed to communicate to Smith a
plea agreement before it expired, even though Smith was later re-offered and
accepted the original plea agreement. Specifically, Smith contends that the re-offer
of the original plea agreement was insufficient to remedy his first counsel’s failure
to timely convey the plea agreement because Smith purportedly would have
received a more lenient sentence if he had pled earlier. See United States v.
Blaylock, 20 F.3d 1458, 1468 (9th Cir. 1994) (“[T]he remedy for counsel’s
ineffective assistance should put the defendant back in the position he would have
been in if the Sixth Amendment violation had not occurred[.]”).
However, Smith has not established prejudice because he has not shown “a
reasonable probability that the end result of the criminal process would have been
more favorable by reason of . . . a sentence of less prison time” if he had pled
earlier. Missouri v. Frye, 566 U.S. 134, 147 (2012). Further, Smith already
received the sufficient remedy of the reinstatement of the original plea offer.
See Lafler v. Cooper, 566 U.S. 156, 174 (2012) (holding that the “correct remedy”
for the ineffective assistance of counsel that caused rejection of a plea leading to a

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trial and a more severe sentence was “to order the State to reoffer the plea
agreement”); Blaylock, 20 F.3d at 1468 (stating that where “the defendant was
deprived of the opportunity to accept a plea offer, putting him in the position he
was in prior to the Sixth Amendment violation ordinarily will involve reinstating
the original offer”).
AFFIRMED.

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