Opinion ID: 1160851
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Sumstine Is Limited to Post-Tahl Prior Convictions

Text: Our expectation that evidence pertinent to the concerns addressed in Boykin, supra, 395 U.S. 238, 89 S.Ct. 1709, 23 L.Ed.2d 274, and Tahl, supra, 1 Cal.3d 122, 81 Cal.Rptr. 577, 460 P.2d 449, will appear on the face of the record presupposes that the prior guilty plea was accepted after we decided Tahl on November 7, 1969. It is only in post- Tahl cases that trial courts were on notice that the record must contain on its face direct evidence that the accused was aware, or made aware, of his right to confrontation, to a jury trial, and against self-incrimination, as well as the nature of the charge and the consequences of his plea. ( Tahl, supra, 1 Cal.3d at p. 132, 81 Cal.Rptr. 577, 460 P.2d 449, italics added.) For pre- Tahl guilty pleas, we cannot expect the record clearly or succinctly to demonstrate whether or not the defendant was aware of his constitutional rights before pleading. For such cases, the determination of the voluntariness of the defendant's plea, untethered to anything in the existing record, would be an onerous task requiring resort to much evidence outside the trial record. The disruption of the trial caused by having to determine the voluntariness of a pre- Tahl guilty plea would be similar to that caused by having to determine whether prior counsel was constitutionally ineffective. As in Garcia, supra, 14 Cal.4th 953, 59 Cal.Rptr.2d 858, 928 P.2d 572, we find that permitting defendants to raise challenges to pre- Tahl prior convictions will be judicially inefficient and will saddle the trial courts with an unreasonable burden. Accordingly, we conclude that motions to strike prior felony convictions on Boykin-Tahl grounds are limited to post- Tahl guilty pleas. Moreover, as we find this limitation was implicit in Sumstine, supra, 36 Cal.3d 909, 206 Cal.Rptr. 707, 687 P.2d 904, there is no problem applying this limitation to the present case. [6] The record indicates that defendant was charged in count one of the information with having suffered a prior robbery conviction on or about the 28th day of January, 1969 in the Superior Court of the [S]tate of California, for the [C]ounty of Los Angeles, Case Number A241447. At defendant's request, we take judicial notice of a page from the Los Angeles County Superior Court Registrar of Actions showing defendant withdrew his plea of not guilty and pleaded guilty on June 19, 1969. We filed our opinion in Tahl, supra, 1 Cal.3d 122, 81 Cal.Rptr. 577, 460 P.2d 449, on November 7, 1969. Because defendant entered his guilty plea in the prior case a few months before we decided Tahl, he was not entitled to collaterally attack the voluntariness of that plea by moving to strike the conviction in the trial court. We conclude that, although the trial court erred by relying on Custis, supra, 511 U.S. 485, 114 S.Ct. 1732, 128 L.Ed.2d 517, to reject defendant's motion to strike, the court nevertheless correctly denied the motion. [7]