Case Title: Ware v. State

Citation: 169 N.W.2d 16

Docket Number: 

State: minnesota

Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

Date: 1969-06-13T00:00:00Z

Document:
169 N.W.2d 16 (1969) Paul C. WARE, Appellant, v. STATE of Minnesota, Respondent. No. 41331. Supreme Court of Minnesota. June 13, 1969. Erickson, Popham, Haik & Schnobrich, and Robert Minish, Minneapolis, for appellant. Douglas M. Head, Atty. Gen., St. Paul, George M. Scott, Co. Atty., Henry W. McCarr, Asst. County Atty., Minneapolis, for respondent. Heard before KNUTSON, C.J., and OTIS, ROGOSHESKE, SHERAN and PETERSON, JJ. PER CURIAM. This is an appeal from an order dismissing, without an evidentiary hearing, a petition for postconviction relief alleging denial of petitioner's constitutional right to counsel. Although such summary disposition is ordinarily inappropriate, we think the situation in this case is sufficiently exceptional to preclude reversal. 1. Petitioner's first contention is that he was wholly denied counsel at a critical stage in the criminal proceeding when, at arraignment and prior to availability of counsel, the trial court directed the entry of a plea of not guilty. Petitioner does not, however, undertake to establish that he suffered any particular prejudice as a result of the court-directed plea. He simply asserts, *17 upon the authority of Hamilton v. Alabama, 368 U.S. 52, 82 S. Ct. 157, 7 L. Ed. 2d 114, that prejudice should in effect be presumed. This contention obviously would not in this posture have been illuminated had an evidentiary hearing been held. We perceive no likelihood that petitioner was prejudiced by the court's entry of a not guilty plea pending appointment of counsel. What we said in State ex rel. Lacklineo v. Tahash, 267 Minn. 237, 241, 126 N.W.2d 646, 650, is fully applicable here: We in effect held, as we do now, that in cases of a not guilty plea being entered without the consent of the accused it would be an abuse of judicial discretion to deny his motion to withdraw his not guilty plea in order to assert a substantive or procedural right or defense. See, also, Lacklineo v. Tahash (8 Cir.) 351 F.2d 58; Madison v. Tahash (D.Minn.) 249 F. Supp. 600, leave to appeal denied, (8 Cir.) 359 F.2d 60; DeToro v. Pepersack (4 Cir.) 332 F.2d 341. This arraignment situation is plainly distinguishable, therefore, from the uncertainties and potential prejudice which existed at the arraignment in Hamilton v. Alabama, supra, and, of course, White v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 59, 83 S. Ct. 1050, 10 L. Ed. 2d 193. 2. Petitioner's second contention is that the public defender, when subsequently appointed to represent him, did so inadequately by permitting him to plead guilty to second-degree murder in the face of serious doubt as to his guilt of the crime. The basis of doubt, as he argues, was in the confusion and inconsistency of the coroner's testimony as to whether the victim died from a bullet of the kind fired from petitioner's gun or the police guns and in his alternative claim that any shooting from his gun was the result of reflex action as he himself was felled by police bullets. A careful examination of all the circumstances and the testimony to which petitioner refers discloses no basis for such doubt. This claim of inadequate counsel is not new, moreover, for it has been previously considered at length and rejected in coram nobis proceedings instituted by petitioner more than 5 years ago. State v. Ware, 267 Minn. 191, 126 N.W.2d 429. His assertion of these same claims for postconviction relief a second time is in our opinion an abuse of process. Summary disposition without further evidentiary proceedings was in these circumstances not improper. Affirmed.