Case Title: Avery v. State

Citation: 355 N.E.2d 395

Docket Number: 176S2

State: indiana

Court: Indiana Supreme Court

Date: 1976-09-30T00:00:00Z

Document:
355 N.E.2d 395 (1976)
Lloyd AVERY, Jr., Appellant,
v.
STATE of Indiana, Appellee.
No. 176S2.

Supreme Court of Indiana.
September 30, 1976.
Harriette Bailey Conn, Public Defender, Larry A. Landis, Deputy Public Defender, Indianapolis, for appellant.
Theodore L. Sendak, Atty. Gen., Wesley T. Wilson, Deputy Atty. Gen., Indianapolis, for appellee.
DeBRULER, Justice.
Appellant, Lloyd Avery, Jr., appeals from the denial of his post-conviction petition in which he sought to withdraw his guilty pleas to two criminal charges, and to plead anew to them. He was charged with first degree murder in the shooting deaths of his wife and brother-in-law. Upon his plea of guilty to the included offense of second degree murder before the Honorable John H. McKenna, appellant received a sentence of fifteen to twenty-five years.
The guilty plea proceeding occurred on October 28, 1971, and the order book entry, memorializing that event, states the following:
A transcript of the guilty plea proceeding occurring on October 28, 1971, certified to by the official court reporter to be true, full and complete, reads in its entirety as follows:
Upon consideration of the order book entry and transcript set out above, the judge hearing appellant's post-conviction petition found as follows:
However, the trial judge went on to conclude from testimony given at the post-conviction hearing that appellant had failed in his burden to prove that his guilty plea had not been voluntary, and that he had not intelligently and understandingly waived his federal constitutional rights to confrontation of witnesses and to the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination. Thereupon the court adjudged that appellant was not entitled to withdraw his pleas of guilty and to make new pleas.
The court's finding number five above and the records of the guilty plea proceedings themselves inescapably demonstrate that those records are inadequate to show that appellant was advised of the right to confront his accusers and to be free from compulsory self-incrimination, and that he was offered an opportunity to exercise them, and that he intelligently and understandingly rejected that offer. No lesser content than that could serve as a record upon which to base a waiver of federal constitutional rights. Carnley v. Cochran, (1962) 369 U.S. 506, 82 S. Ct. 884, 8 L. Ed. 2d 70. The duty of Indiana trial judges to preserve a record of such plea proceedings adequate to show that the plea was voluntary and that an intelligent and understanding waiver of federal constitutional rights had occurred at the guilty plea proceeding was first imposed as a matter of federal constitutional due process in 1969, two years prior to the guilty plea under consideration when the Supreme Court of the United States handed down the cases of McCarthy v. United States, (1969) 394 U.S. 459, 89 S. Ct. 1166, 22 L. Ed. 2d 418, and Boykin v. Alabama, (1969) 395 U.S. 238, 89 S. Ct. 1709, 23 L. Ed. 2d 274. In 1972, we applied the McCarthy-Boykin standards for testing the sufficiency of a guilty plea proceeding to an Indiana guilty plea which had taken place in 1970 in the case of Brimhall v. State, (1972) 258 Ind. 153, 279 N.E.2d 557.
If there was any lingering doubt about whether this Court deemed the requirements of McCarthy and Boykin applicable to pleas of guilty occurring after those cases were handed down, that doubt should have been dispelled by this Court's opinion in Williams v. State, (1975) Ind., 325 N.E.2d 827. The judge in the post-conviction proceeding before us now for review, relied upon Williams in arriving at his conclusion that he could conduct a hearing into the issue of voluntariness after having been presented with a constitutionally deficient plea proceeding record by petition. Such reliance was misplaced. In Williams, the record of the guilty plea proceeding incorporated a written statement of the accused in which he affirmed that he had been advised of more than seven federal constitutional rights, specified in the statement, including those found omitted from the record of the proceedings being considered in this appeal. The Court concluded:
The record of the guilty plea proceedings before us now, contains nothing from which one might conclude that appellant was informed of the right to confront witnesses and to have the benefit of the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, and as required by the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the United States Constitution, made applicable to the State of Indiana through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, upon such record appellant is entitled to withdraw his guilty pleas and to plead anew.
The judgment of the trial court is reversed with instructions to grant the petition.
GIVAN, C.J., and HUNTER and PRENTICE, JJ., concur.
ARTERBURN, J., dissents with opinion.
ARTERBURN, Justice (dissenting).
I dissent from the granting of Post Conviction relief in this case.
The record shows that this was a bargained plea in which the first degree murder charge was reduced to second degree by agreement with the prosecutor. Now the defendant reneges on that arrangement after 4 or 5 years and contends that the trial court did not properly instruct him on his constitutional rights.
The record clearly shows that his contention is not true. The record shows: "and the defendant is now interrogated by the Court and instructed as to his constitutional rights... ." I find no cases that require that the Judge has to read the Constitution, read every provision and give a lecture on constitutional law and put the lecture in the record before he can take a plea of guilty.
This man had adequate, competent counsel which was for the purpose of informing him of his legal rights. I can see no grounds whatever or any evidence that this man was deceived or misinformed of his constitutional rights.