Opinion ID: 1104955
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Effect of the Deficient Plea Forms

Text: Mr. Kelly contends that his 1995 and 1997 plea forms did not accurately reflect a criminal defendant's right to counsel in Florida. We agree with this assessment as applied to the facts of this case. The versions of Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.111(b)(1) that applied to each of Kelly's no-contest pleas are identical. In relevant part, these provisions indicate that Florida is a prospective imprisonment jurisdiction that provides indigent criminal defendants a right to counsel in all criminal prosecutions punishable by imprisonment,  except in misdemeanor or ordinance-violation cases where the trial judge affirmatively certifies in writingbefore trialthat the defendant will not face a term of imprisonment for the charged offense. See Fla. R.Crim. P. 3.111(b)(1) (1992). In other words, in Florida, indigent defendants have a right to counsel in all criminal prosecutions punishable by imprisonmenteven misdemeanor prosecutionsunless the trial judge opts out by providing the defendant a written, pretrial certification that the defendant will not be imprisoned for the charged offense. See id.; see also Fla. R.Crim. P. 3.160 (advising indigents of the right to appointed counsel); § 27.51, Fla. Stat. (2003) (mandating that the public defender represent indigents charged with violations of chapter 316, Florida Statutes; DUI is a chapter 316 offense punishable by imprisonment). This is not the legal landscape Mr. Kelly's State-prepared plea forms described. Rather, they provided the misleading impression that an indigent criminal defendant lacks a right to counsel so long as the trial judge is not currently considering jail time as an appropriate sentence. This mischaracterization relieved the trial judges of their duty to make the affirmative, written, pretrial certification that the rule then required, and still requires today in a slightly modified form. See Fla. R.Crim. P. 3.111(b)(1) (In the discretion of the court, counsel does not have to be provided to an indigent person in a prosecution for a misdemeanor or violation of a municipal ordinance if the judge, at least 15 days prior to trial, files in the cause a written order of no incarceration certifying that the defendant will not be incarcerated .... (emphasis supplied) (the current version of this rule permits the defendant or defense counsel to waive the fifteen-day requirement)). Consequently, even if Mr. Kelly read and understood these plea forms, he would not have been properly informed of his right to counsel. Nevertheless, if the misdemeanor trial judges had properly executed on-the-record plea colloquies, which indicated that Mr. Kelly had a right to counsel but chose to waive that right, these hypothetical colloquies could have cured this error. Cf., e.g., Ramos v. Rogers, 170 F.3d 560, 565 (6th Cir.1999) ([A] state trial court's proper colloquy can be said to have cured any misunderstanding [the defendant] may have had about the consequences of his plea.). The record in this case, however, is silent as to whether there were proper colloquies with Mr. Kelly before he pled no contest to his prior misdemeanor DUI charges.