Sanders

MEMORANDUM **

Appellant Joshua William Sanders collaterally attacks his conviction by guilty plea to two counts of mailing threatening communications in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 876 . Because his counsel was ineffective by recommending that Sanders withdraw his initial guilty plea and Sanders was prejudiced by this advice, we reverse and direct the district court to grant the writ of habeas corpus.

We agree with the magistrate and district court’s conclusion that Sanders’s counsel was clearly incompetent in advising Sanders to withdraw his plea. Sanders’s counsel did not attempt to reach a new agreement with the government, which was openly displeased about the decision to withdraw the plea. Sanders’s counsel was so focused on the possibility of reducing the sentence that he did not adequately consider the consequences of losing the government’s agreement not to oppose the four-level reduction for single instance or of losing the government’s stipulation about the lack of deliberation (a significant component of the four-level reduction). The four-level reduction was the key to Sanders’s sentence: if applied, then pleading to the two felonies made sense. Sanders’s counsel failed…