Opinion ID: 301247
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: misunderstanding of the collateral consequences of a plea

Text: 23 As discussed under Part II, supra, the withdrawal of a plea rests within the discretion of the trial court. Only if there is some law which absolutely requires the trial court to permit appellant here to withdraw his plea does appellant have a valid ground on which we should reverse the trial court. And, as indicated under Part III, supra, a voluntary plea of guilty is a voluntary confession of the acts alleged. 24 The standard as to the voluntariness of guilty pleas was reiterated by the Supreme Court in Brady, supra: 25 A plea of guilty entered by one fully aware of the direct consequences, including the actual value of any commitments made to him by the court, prosecutor, or his own counsel, must stand unless induced by threats (or promises to discontinue improper harassment), misrepresentation (including unfilled or unfulfillable promises), or perhaps by promises that are by their nature improper as having no proper relationship to the prosecutor's business (e. g., bribes). 8 26 We note that the accused must be fully aware of the direct consequences. We presume that the Supreme Court meant what it said when it used the word direct; by doing so, it excluded collateral consequences. 27 We have here then a voluntary plea of guilty by the appellant; there is no contention that he was not fully aware of the direct consequences of his plea, and there is no contention that any of the other circumstances listed by the court could possibly be cited to invalidate the voluntariness of his plea of guilty, i. e., his voluntary confession. That plea of guilty, that confession, has not been repudiated. 28 Appellant's situation is similar to that in Everett v. United States, supra, as described by Judge (now Chief Justice) Burger: 29 [A]ppellant offered no defense to the charge, nor did he allege involuntariness or any other factor which would militate against the correctness and truth of his guilty plea to Count 4 which was entered when he was represented by retained counsel. His contention is virtually a claim of an absolute right to withdraw a guilty plea prior to imposition of sentence. No court has ever so held;   . 9 30 Unless the appellant has an absolute right to withdraw the guilty plea prior to imposition of sentence, unless such withdrawal is not a matter of the trial court's discretion, then there is no ground for reversal of the trial court's action here. No court to our knowledge has ever held that there was such absolute right, and all decisions speak of the discretion of the trial judge to permit or deny the withdrawal of a plea of guilty prior to sentence. 31 United States v. Parrino 10 involved a virtually similar factual situation. There the defendant pled guilty to one count of the indictment, the others were dismissed, and (the only distinction from Sambro) he entered upon service of his sentence. The record showed that before changing his plea the defendant was informed by the lawyer then representing him that a plea of guilty would not subject him to deportation. The Second Circuit held that surprise which results from erroneous information received from the defendant's own attorney, at least without a clear showing of unprofessional conduct, is not enough to set aside a conviction. Moreover, here the subject-matter of the claimed surprise was not the severity of the sentence directly flowing from the judgment but a collateral consequence thereof, namely, deportability.    We think it plainly unsound to hold, as now in principle we are urged to hold, that such defendants are subjected to manifest injustice, if held to their plea, merely because they did not understand or foresee such collateral consequences. We find no case which even looks in that direction, and the absence of cases expressly rejecting such doctrine we attribute to the absence of a rule so palpably unsound. 11 32 This court confronted a converse situation in Briscoe v. United States, 12 where appellant sought to set aside his guilty plea as involuntary. While the case was remanded for determination of the voluntariness of his guilty plea on other grounds, this court held, We do not accept appellant's contention that his guilty plea must be set aside as involuntary because it was induced by his misunderstanding, in that he thought he was in fact to be deported. 13 33