Valdez

AMENDED MEMORANDUM *

Appellant Saul Basurto Valdez challenges his conviction by guilty plea, and his resulting ten-year sentence, under 21 U.S.C. § 841 . Valdez argues that his conviction should be reversed based either on the lack of voluntariness of his plea, or on the magistrate judge’s plain error, under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11, in failing to advise him during his plea colloquy that (1) the charged offense carried a ten-year mandatory minimum sentence and (2) the government was required to prove drug amount as an element of the offense. Alternately, Valdez argues that his sentence should be vacated because his counsel was deficient in conceding that a safety valve that might have allowed the district court to sentence below the ten-year mandatory minimum, 18 U.S.C. § 3553 (f), did not apply. We reverse Valdez’s conviction based on the magistrate judge’s plain error in failing to instruct Valdez of the mandatory minimum as required by Rule 11.

Rule 11 contains a checklist of consequences that a court must “inform the defendant of, and ... determine that the defendant understands” before accepting a guilty plea. United States v. Covian-Sandoval, 462 F.3d 1090,…