The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed the conviction, considering that the non-English speaking defendant did not understand his rights under those circumstances.

Carlos Dominguez Benitez arranged to sell several pounds of methamphetamine to an informant secretly working with law enforcement.

Benitez, who could only speak and write in Spanish, sent several letters to the District Court, in which he expressed dissatisfaction with his attorney and the plea agreement he was being encouraged to sign.

A three-judge panel of the court consisting of Circuit Judges James R. Browning, Stephen Reinhardt, and Richard C. Tallman voted 2-1 to reverse his conviction and sentence.

Judge Tallman's dissent argued that Vonn required the court to view the proceedings as a whole in determining whether the Rule 11 violation constituted plain error.

He believed that although the record showed that the Rule 11 "magic words" may not have been spoken, Benitez's counsel and the District Court had fully discussed the plea agreement with him, and that he had expressed understanding of all the relevant issues.

The Court acknowledged that the standard it imposed would be very rarely met, but that it was still easier than if the defendant had to prove the claim by a preponderance of the evidence.

Though the Supreme Court did not explicitly decide whether Benitez met the proper standard, its opinion nonetheless proceeded with an unfavorable analysis of his case.

The strength of the government's case was also a factor, and the Court did not think that the proper Rule 11 warning would have changed his "assessment of his strategic position."

Scalia listed four different standards that the Court had adopted in different contexts to prove what would have happened in a trial absent error, and stated that these "ineffable gradations of probability" confused judicial reasoning more than aided it.