Opinion ID: 1677220
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Parke v. Raley

Text: In Parke v. Raley, ___ U.S. ___, 113 S.Ct. 517, 121 L.Ed.2d 391 (1992), a criminal defendant challenged as unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment Kentucky's largely jurisprudential procedure for determining a prior guilty plea's validity under Boykin when the plea was used to find a defendant an habitual offender. The defendant claimed the procedure was unconstitutional because it did not require the State to carry the entire burden of proof. The Kentucky Supreme Court had in a previous case held that if the defendant files a proper motion to suppress evidence of his prior convictions in an habitual offender proceeding, the burden was on the State to prove the fact of the guilty pleas and that defendant was represented by counsel at the time they were taken. The burden then shifted to the defendant to show any infringement of his rights or irregularity of procedure in the taking of the plea. If defendant met this burden of production, the burden of persuasion then shifted to the State to show the conviction was entered in a manner that did in fact protect the defendant's rights. The United States Supreme Court held that this scheme easily passes constitutional muster. [21] The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Parke had held the scheme was unconstitutional because it permitted the State to carry its burden of persuasion upon bare proof of conviction where the defendant was unable to offer rebuttal evidence. This approach, the appellate court believed, violated Boykin's requirement that a voluntary waiver of rights could not be presumed from a silent record. The United States Supreme Court, however, saw no conflict between Boykin and Kentucky's scheme, nor did it find that Boykin prohibited the State from meeting its ultimate burden of proof with evidence other than a transcript. Boykin involved direct review of a conviction allegedly based upon an uninformed guilty plea. Respondent, however, never appealed his earlier convictions. They became final years ago, and he now seeks to revisit the question of their validity in a separate recidivism proceeding. To import Boykin's presumption of invalidity into this very different context would, in our view, improperly ignore another presumption deeply rooted in our jurisprudence: the presumption of regularity that attaches to final judgments, even when the question is waiver of constitutional rights. Although we are perhaps most familiar with this principle in habeas corpus actions, it has long been applied equally to other forms of collateral attack, see e.g., Voorhees v. Jackson, 35 U.S. (10 Pet.) 449, 472 9 L.Ed. 490 (1836) (observing, in a collateral challenge to a court-ordered sale of property in an ejectment action, that [t]here is no principle of law better settled, than that every act of a court of competent jurisdiction shall be presumed to have been rightly done, till the contrary appears). Respondent, by definition, collaterally attacked his previous convictions; he sought to deprive them of their normal force and effect in a proceeding that had an independent purpose other than to overturn the prior judgments. ... On collateral review, we think it defies logic to presume from the mere unavailability of a transcript (assuming no allegation that the unavailability is due to governmental misconduct) that the defendant was not advised of his rights. In this situation, Boykin does not prohibit a state court from presuming, at least initially, that a final judgment of conviction offered for purposes of sentence enhancement was validly obtained. ... Our precedents make clear ... that even when a collateral attack on a final conviction rests on constitutional grounds, the presumption of regularity that attaches to final judgments makes it appropriate to assign a proof burden to the defendant. [22] In response to defendant's argument that it would be difficult for him to put on any affirmative proof of the invalidity of a guilty plea entered several years earlier, the Supreme Court noted there would be practical difficulties encountered by either party if assigned a burden of proof; however, the Court stated: `The Due Process Clause does not ... require a State to adopt one procedure over another on the basis that it may produce results more favorable to the accused.' Parke, ___ U.S. at ___, 113 S.Ct. at 524 (quoting Medina v. California, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 112 S.Ct. 2572, 2573, 120 L.Ed.2d 353 (1992)). The Court went on: To the extent that the government fails to carry its burden due to the staleness or unavailability of evidence, of course, its legitimate interest in differentially punishing repeat offenders is compromised. In light of the relative positions of the defendant and the prosecution in recidivism proceedings, we cannot say that it is fundamentally unfair to place at least a burden of production on the defendant. Parke, ___ U.S. at ___, 113 S.Ct. at 525. The Court found no historical tradition or contemporary practice which would render Kentucky's shifting burdens fundamentally unfair. Furthermore, such a practice was more than consistent with the approach under federal recidivist statutes where the entire burden of proving the invalidity of a prior conviction based on a guilty plea is placed on the defendant. In light of the above, the Court held the Due Process Clause permits a State to impose a burden of production of a recidivism defendant who challenges the validity of a prior conviction under Boykin.  Parke, ___ U.S. at ___ _ ___, 113 S.Ct. at 525-26. In light of the fact that Parke holds Boykin does not require that the entire burden be placed on the prosecution in a recidivism proceeding and because our present system of placing the entire burden on the State fails to give any presumption of regularity to a final conviction used in an habitual offender hearing, we today revise our previous scheme allocating burdens of proof in habitual offender proceedings. [23] If the defendant denies the allegations of the bill of information, the burden is on the State to prove the existence of the prior guilty pleas and that defendant was represented by counsel when they were taken. If the State meets this burden, the defendant has the burden to produce some affirmative evidence showing an infringement of his rights or a procedural irregularity in the taking of the plea. [24] If the defendant is able to do this, then the burden of proving the constitutionality of the plea shifts to the State. The State will meet its burden of proof if it introduces a perfect transcript of the taking of the guilty plea, one which reflects a colloquy between judge and defendant wherein the defendant was informed of and specifically waived his right to trial by jury, his privilege against self incrimination, and his right to confront his accusers. If the State introduces anything less than a perfect transcript, for example, a guilty plea form, a minute entry, an imperfect transcript, or any combination thereof, the judge then must weigh the evidence submitted by the defendant and by the State to determine whether the State has met its burden of proving that defendant's prior guilty plea was informed and voluntary, and made with an articulated waiver of the three Boykin rights. [25] We note that this new procedure will not only give appropriate significance to the presumption of regularity which attaches to judgments of conviction which have become final, but will also provide an advantage to defendants who were previously under Lewis unable to introduce any extra-record evidence and whose guilty pleas were heretofore under Tucker found constitutionally valid by mere proof of a minute entry and a guilty plea form. The State in this case has submitted sufficient proof of the existence of the prior guilty plea and that defendant was represented by counsel at the time it was taken. The case is remanded to allow the defendant an opportunity to attempt to meet his burden of production at a hearing to be held consistent with this opinion. REVERSED AND REMANDED. MARCUS, J., concurs and assigns reasons. WATSON, J., concurs for the reasons assigned by MARCUS, J.