Opinion ID: 1452188
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Entry of guilty plea through counsel.

Text: The most obvious difference between the felony and misdemeanor guilty plea context is that in felony proceedings a defendant must be personally present in court to enter his plea (Pen. Code, § 1018), whereas in misdemeanor prosecutions defendants are authorized by statute to plead guilty through counsel. (Pen. Code, § 1429.) [14] Petitioners in the Wicks case contend that the provision of section 1429 of the Penal Code, authorizing the entry of a guilty plea in a defendant's absence, is irreconcilable with the Boykin-Tahl requirements, and they assert that if Boykin and Tahl are to be applied to misdemeanors  as we have held  it necessarily follows that defendants can no longer plead guilty through counsel. In support of this position, petitioners point to specific passages in both the Boykin and Tahl opinions which speak of the trial court's active participation in canvassing the matter with the accused (395 U.S. at p. 244 [23 L.Ed.2d at p. 280]) and of responses elicited from the person of the defendant (1 Cal.3d at p. 132); such language, petitioners argue, demonstrates that the Boykin and Tahl courts intended to require that a defendant be personally present when his guilty plea was entered. The passages of Boykin and Tahl isolated by petitioners do indicate that those courts contemplated that a defendant's guilty plea would normally be tendered in person. The courts' assumption in this regard, of course, is hardly surprising since Boykin and Tahl both involved felony proceedings, in which pleas could only be entered by a defendant personally. As we read both Boykin and Tahl, however, any assumption as to the presence of the defendant was not conceived by either court to constitute a necessary prerequisite to the entry of a valid guilty plea in every context. When viewed as a whole, Boykin and Tahl do not preclude the state from establishing a procedure, applicable to cases involving less serious offenses, which permits a defendant, at his own option, to appear and plead guilty through counsel, so long as such procedure affords adequate protection to the constitutional interests at stake. As we have discussed earlier, Boykin and Tahl are generally aimed at fulfilling two purposes: first, insuring that a defendant is aware of his constitutional rights and has voluntarily and knowingly waived them; and second, insuring that an adequate record of these facts is made so as to facilitate review on appeal or collateral attack. In our view, both of these purposes can be accomplished by something short of requiring the defendant's personal appearance in every case. The facts of the Wicks case provide an excellent illustration. In Wicks, the defendant personally completed and signed a document which was drafted both to be understandable to the average layman and to require personal participation by the defendant so as to insure that he actually read the form. The form enumerated the various constitutional rights defendant was foregoing by his plea of guilty, advised him of the potential consequences of his plea, and recorded his waiver of the rights. Moreover, the form was signed by his lawyer who attested, both in writing and in open court, that the defendant had personally completed the form and had knowingly and voluntarily waived the various Boykin-Tahl rights. As utilized in the Wicks case, defendant's written change of plea form, supplemented by the in-court colloquy with defendant's counsel, constitutes, when incorporated in the record, a fully adequate on the record showing that defendant was both aware of all his relevant constitutional rights and knowingly, voluntarily and personally waived them. [15] In this misdemeanor context, we believe that this procedure fully satisfies the requirements of Boykin and Tahl. (5) Our conclusion that a guilty plea entered through counsel is valid so long as it is accompanied by an adequately documented showing that the defendant was aware of his constitutional rights and knowingly and intelligently waived them harmonizes the interests underlying the Boykin-Tahl rule, on the one hand, and the defendant's statutory right to appear through counsel, on the other. In establishing a definite line of demarcation between the matter of pleas before the superior courts in felony cases and the matter of pleas in inferior courts in misdemeanor cases ( Dale v. City Court of Merced (1951) 105 Cal. App.2d 602, 606 [234 P.2d 110]), the Legislature has explicitly recognized that for many misdemeanor defendants an absolute requirement of presence in court would frequently impose a greater burden than the punishment for the crime itself, and thus in these less serious prosecutions the Legislature has afforded an option to defendants to appear through counsel. It would indeed be ironic for defendants if the Boykin-Tahl doctrine, developed to provide more complete protection for defendants' rights, were to be interpreted to withdraw from them the practical benefits of the statutory right to appear through counsel. As discussed above, we do not believe that Boykin or Tahl mandates such a result. As the United States Supreme Court observed in a similar context in North Carolina v. Alford (1970) 400 U.S. 25, 39 [27 L.Ed.2d 162, 172, 91 S.Ct. 160]: The prohibitions against involuntary or unintelligent pleas should not be relaxed, but neither should an exercise in arid logic render those constitutional guarantees counterproductive and put in jeopardy the very human values they were meant to preserve. [16]