Opinion ID: 353179
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The June 6, 1969, Sentencing

Text: 88 Suggs appeared with newly appointed counsel, Mr. Tobin, before Justice Schweitzer on June 6, 1969. The court clerk declared the proceeding an arraign(ment) . . . for sentence on your plea of guilty to the crimes of rape and robbery, each in the first degree. When asked by the clerk whether Suggs could show legal cause why judgment should not be pronounced against him, he replied in the affirmative, saying: Judge, at that time I wasn't capable of understanding the case. 89 The sentencing minutes reveal that his attorney had received an adjournment sometime earlier to formalize an application to withdraw the pleas of guilty. However, two days before the June 6 proceeding Mr. Tobin had informed Justice Schweitzer that Suggs did not want to withdraw his plea and was willing to accept sentence. Suggs was then interrogated at the proceeding on whether he wished to be sentenced today or to have an adjournment of his sentence to confer further with his attorney about withdrawing his guilty pleas. He wished to be sentenced today, not to withdraw his pleas of guilty and not to have an adjournment. 90 He was sentenced, based on his guilty pleas of September 13, 1968, after a plea for leniency by counsel, to five to fifteen years' imprisonment on each of the two counts, the sentences to run concurrently. He is still serving these sentences in the New York prison system. In the sentencing colloquy before Justice Schweitzer, none of the questions on voluntariness, factual basis for the pleas, or comprehension of waiver of rights, required by Boykin v. Alabama, supra, and United States ex rel. Dunn v. Casscles, 494 F.2d 397 (2d Cir. 1974), was asked.