Opinion ID: 1697522
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: direct consequences

Text: We have previously held that the trial court must inform a defendant of the direct, but not the collateral, consequences of a plea. See Major v. State, 814 So.2d 424, 426-27 (Fla.2002); State v. Ginebra, 511 So.2d 960, 961 (Fla.1987). The reason a defendant must be informed of the direct consequences of a guilty plea is to ensure that a plea is voluntarily and intelligently made under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. See Major, 814 So.2d at 427 (citing Mabry v. Johnson, 467 U.S. 504, 508-09, 104 S.Ct. 2543, 81 L.Ed.2d 437 (1984)). As the United States Supreme Court explained in McCarthy v. United States, 394 U.S. 459, 89 S.Ct. 1166, 22 L.Ed.2d 418 (1969): A defendant who enters such a plea simultaneously waives several constitutional rights, including his privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, his right to trial by jury, and his right to confront his accusers. For this waiver to be valid under the Due Process Clause, it must be an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege. Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 464, 58 S.Ct. 1019, 82 L.Ed. 1461 (1938). Consequently, if a defendant's guilty plea is not equally voluntary and knowing, it has been obtained in violation of due process and is therefore void. Moreover, because a guilty plea is an admission of all the elements of a formal criminal charge, it cannot be truly voluntary unless the defendant possesses an understanding of the law in relation to the facts. Id. at 466, 89 S.Ct. 1166 (footnotes omitted). The question of what constitutes a direct consequence has therefore been heavily litigated. In Ginebra, we stated that [t]he trial judge's obligation to ensure that the defendant understands the direct consequences of his plea has been consistently interpreted to encompass only those consequences of the sentence which the trial court can impose. 511 So.2d at 961. Thus, we clearly linked direct consequences to the criminal punishment imposed. In Major, we made this explicit: The distinction between `direct' and `collateral' consequences of a plea, while sometimes shaded in the relevant decisions, turns on whether the result represents a definite, immediate and largely automatic effect on the range of the defendant's punishment.  814 So.2d at 431 (emphasis added) (quoting Zambuto v. State, 413 So.2d 461, 462 (Fla. 4th DCA 1982)). A year later, we reiterated that a direct consequence must affect the range of punishment in a definite, immediate, and largely automatic way. State v. Partlow, 840 So.2d 1040, 1043 (Fla.2003) (emphasis added). We have therefore clearly held that, for a penalty to be deemed a direct consequence of a plea, it must constitute punishment. Otherwise, it could not affect the range of punishment. In several cases, we have held that various consequences of a plea, while undoubtedly serious, are nevertheless collateral to it, and thus a defendant need not be informed about them. See, e.g., Major, 814 So.2d at 431 (holding that the potential for the conviction to be used to enhance the sentence of a future crime was collateral); Ginebra, 511 So.2d at 960 (holding that deportation, which may, in fact, be a much more severe sanction than the prison sentence actually imposed on a defendant, nevertheless was a collateral consequence); see also State v. Harris, 881 So.2d 1079, 1084-85 & n. 5 (Fla.2004) (acknowledging the Court's previous holding that the involuntary civil commitment of sexually violent predators under the Jimmy Ryce Act is not punishment, but referring for an amendment to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.172 to require that a defendant be informed of this potential consequence). In fact, we have held that even the onerous registration requirements of the sexual offender statute are collateral consequences. In Partlow, we explained that the sexual offender registration requirement is not punishment at all. 840 So.2d at 1043. Yet these requirements impose significant burdens. [4] To many, these requirements and restrictions may be much more onerous than the revocation of a driver's license. But because they do not constitute punishment, we have deemed them a collateral consequence. Our prior cases demonstrate that neither the seriousness of the sanction nor its burden on the defendant affects the inquiry. If the consequence has a definite, immediate and largely automatic effect on the range of the defendant's punishment, then it is direct. Major, 814 So.2d at 431 (quoting Major v. State, 790 So.2d 550, 551 (Fla. 3d DCA 2001), approved, 814 So.2d 424 (Fla.2002)). However, if the consequence does not affect the range of punishment, it is collateral to the plea. See id. As we will now discuss, because we have consistently held that driver's license revocation is not punishment, it cannot constitute a direct consequence.