Does Tollett v. Henderson preclude collateral attack on a sentence due to pre-plea prosecutorial misconduct involving confidential attorney-client communications?

QUESTION PRESENTED For untold years, the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas engaged in a secret and “systemic practice of purposeful collection, retention, and exploitation” of confidential attorney-client communications, United States v. Carter, 429 F.Supp.3d 788, 849-854, 900 (D. Kan. 2019), in violation of an unknowable number of defendants’ Sixth Amendment rights to attorney-client confidentiality. When this unprecedented pattern of misconduct came to light, more than 100 federal prisoners sought habeas relief, asking courts, inter alia, to vacate and reduce their sentences to remedy the previously undisclosed prosecutorial misconduct. For those clients (like the petitioner here) who had pleaded guilty, however, the Tenth Circuit summarily denied relief. The Tenth Circuit adopted a novel interpretation of Tollett v. Henderson, 411 U.S. 258 (1973), and held that a defendant’s guilty plea precludes a collateral attack to the sentence based on preplea misconduct. That position, however, has no support in Tollett, any other decision from this Court, any statute, or any other source or principle of law. Nor has any other federal court extended Tollett in this manner. The question presented is: When a defendant pleads guilty, does Tollett v. Henderson, 411 U.S. 258 (1973), preclude the defendant from collaterally attacking the sentence because of surreptitious prosecutorial misconduct into confidential attorney-client communications that predated the guilty plea? i