Opinion ID: 2405729
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: admissibility of indiana guilty plea

Text: Roberson next argues that the trial court committed reversible error in failing to exclude evidence relating to his Indiana guilty plea. James Snook, an Indiana probation officer, interviewed Roberson while performing a presentence investigation. During the interview, Roberson said he would plead guilty to what was described as happening in Indiana but not what happened in Kentucky, and he said he was sorry and it would never happen again. Snook testified to these statements. The prosecutor also read to the jury a portion of Roberson's Indiana guilty plea proceedings wherein he admitted his guilty to the charge of child molestation. In Roberson's first trial, he was convicted of sexually abusing the victim while in his car in Kentucky on June 24, 1989. At the first trial, when Roberson moved to exclude evidence of the Indiana conviction, the prosecutor claimed it was admissible as a common scheme or plan and the trial court allowed the evidence to be introduced. Evidence from Indiana that Roberson sexually abused the same victim in the same car the same day as one of the charged offenses was properly found to be admissible in the first trial as part of a common plan. In his second trial, Roberson was no longer being tried for sexually abusing the victim in the car on June 24, 1989. Two of the charges did however stem from sexual contact with the same victim on the same day as the offense specified in the Indiana guilty plea, although this sexual contact was of a different nature and occurred in Roberson's home rather than his car. At the second trial, Roberson moved to exclude the Indiana conviction and the statements made during the presentencing investigation as I did at the last trial. The trial court overruled the motion and there was no further discussion regarding grounds for admitting or excluding the evidence. Roberson's motion to exclude the Indiana conviction preserved the issue of its admissibility for appellate review. The issue is whether the evidence was admissible as part of a common plan or scheme or to prove motive, opportunity or intent. KRE 404(b)(1). The 1989 charges and the Indiana act involved sexual contact with the same victim on the same day. The fact that the victim and the date of the crimes were the same, the crimes were related in nature, and the crimes were part of a continuing course of conduct, raises reasonable inferences bearing on motive, opportunity, intent and common plan or scheme. The trial judge did not err in admitting evidence relating to the Indiana conviction. Roberson next claims that he pled guilty in Indiana due to ineffective assistance of counsel. He does not ask us to vacate his Indiana guilty plea, which we could not do no matter how urgent the request, but asks us to exclude evidence regarding the guilty plea because the probative value is outweighed by its unduly prejudicial nature where the voluntariness of the plea is called into question. In order to establish ineffective assistance of counsel with respect to a guilty plea, Roberson must show there exists a reasonable probability that, but for the counsel's errors, he would not have pleaded guilty and would have insisted on going to trial. Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U.S. 52, 59, 106 S.Ct. 366, 370, 88 L.Ed.2d 203 (1985). Although Roberson claims it is obvious that if he had known his guilty plea would have been used against him in Kentucky, he quite likely would have chosen to face trial rather than admitting to child molestation, this claim is unsupported by Roberson's testimony regarding his guilty plea. Assuming that his Indiana counsel did advise him his guilty plea could not be used in Kentucky, a guilty plea that is brought about by a person's own free will is not less valid because he did not know all possible consequences of the plea. . . . Jewell v. Commonwealth, Ky., 725 S.W.2d 593, 594 (1987). Citation omitted. The Indiana courts are the proper forum to attack the Indiana conviction and to question the effectiveness of Indiana counsel. The trial court was within his discretion in allowing evidence relating to a valid conviction from another state. Roberson also claims that statements made during a presentence investigation pursuant to a plea agreement should not be used against him. It may well be against public policy to use statements made pursuant to a withdrawn guilty plea, as Roberson argues, but in this case Roberson pled guilty and the public policy evidenced by KRE 410 is not called into question.