Court Opinion

ID: 9466024
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:03:40.226842+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:30.585055
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. BROWN, Chief Judge,
concurring:
I agree with the Court that the failure of a Trial Court to comply to-the-letter with Rule 11 does not automatically entitle a defendant to have his plea vacated. However, I am troubled by how the majority reaches its decision. More importantly, I am troubled by the tenor of the opinion. I would strongly emphasize that in the vast majority of cases, the failure to comply with Rule 11 should not be considered harmless. Only technical or insubstantial deviations from Rule 11 should be tolerated.
The Court, in reaching its holding, relies heavily on the fact that Rule 11 was amended after the Supreme Court’s decision in McCarthy. Like the dissent, I find the Court’s breakdown into old and new components of the Rule unpersuasive and believe that McCarthy applies to all provisions of new Rule ll.1 See Note, Pleading Guilty: Illinois Supreme Court Rule 402 and the New Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11, 1975 U.Ill.L.Forum 116, 121 ("although the issue in McCarthy was the interpretation of old Rule 11, the decision is nevertheless an important indication of the proper construction of new Rule 11 because the basic policies and objectives are the same.”).
However, unlike the dissent, I believe that McCarthy provides enough flexibility to allow for a rule of reason. The dissent suggests that a guilty plea can be automatically vacated if a Trial Court makes even the most technical error in applying Rule 11. In arriving at this position, the dissent relies on a passage in McCarthy stating that "prejudice inheres in a failure to comply with Rule 11.” Yet McCarthy also indicates that “[mjatters of reality, and not mere ritual, should be controlling.” 394 U.S. at 467 n.20, 89 S.Ct. at 1171, quoting Kennedy v. United States, 6 Cir., 1968, 397 F.2d 16, 17.2 Moreover, in McCarthy the departures *946from Rule 11 were so clearly prejudicial that the Court had no reason to consider the possible application of harmless error.3
A couple of examples will indicate why “matters of reality” demand that a harmless error approach be read into Rule 11. Suppose a defendant initially elects to have a jury trial. Midway during the trial, defendant decides to plead guilty. Rule 11(c)(3) provides that the Court must instruct defendant of his right to a trial by jury. Obviously defendant already knows this and a Trial Court, in an effort to make Rule 11 something other than a ritual, may choose not to mention this. Under the dissent’s view, the defendant’s plea would have to be vacated. Similarly, Rule 11(c)(3) requires the Court to instruct defendant that at trial he “has the right to assistance of counsel.” If the Court has already appointed a lawyer for defendant, defendant could not have been prejudiced by the Court’s failure to give this instruction. See Santa Clara Comment, supra, at 693-97 (giving examples of “technical” departures from Rule 11).
On the other hand, while I believe that some flexibility under Rule 11 is necessary, I think the Court carries things too far. The majority holds that post-McCarthy elements of the Rule should be subject to clearly erroneous and harmless error tests “as in the case of any other finding by a trial judge sitting in a criminal case where a jury has been waived.” Op. at 940. This language signals excessive tolerance for deviations from Rule 11. 'The Court fails to recognize the unique posture of Rule 11, as interpreted by McCarthy. If McCarthy means anything, it means that Rule 11 is different from other rules governing trial court conduct. And since Judges should have the Rule in front of them when conducting guilty plea proceedings, most errors are inexcusable. Finally, at the direct appeal stage, the costs on the judicial system of vacating a guilty plea are simply not that enormous.4
I would therefore eliminate all references to the clearly erroneous standard. Since so much of the Rule is constitutionally based, see, e. g., Boykin v. Alabama, 1969, 395 U.S. 238, 89 S.Ct. 1709, 23 L.Ed.2d 274, I would leave no doubt that the only proper standard is the harmless error standard applicable to constitutional infringements, i.’e., harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, see Chapman v. California, 1967, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705, and on occasion substantial, although technically not satisfied, compliance. I would emphasize, moreover, that Trial Courts should rarely under*947take to depart from the literal wording of Rule 11, and would underscore that many deviations from Rule 11 could never be harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.I. ***5 I would reserve use of harmless error for situations in which the failure to comply with Rule 11 is merely a technical departure from the Rule or in which there has been substantial compliance with the demands of Rule 11.
While the various opinions in this case appear to be completely at odds with one another, there is one important point upon which the entire Court agrees. A number of our decisions have gone beyond the wording of Rule 11 in imposing requirements on Trial Judges conducting guilty plea proceedings. We now overrule these cases. In my view, the disposition in the instant case is governed by our decision to overrule these prior cases. The errors alleged by Dayton were not failures to comply with the wording of Rule 11, but were failures to comply with certain of our cases adding a gloss to the Rule. Since we now overrule these cases, Dayton’s conviction must be affirmed.

. Apart from subdivision (e) of Rule 11, which involves plea bargaining negotiations and is not relevant here, new Rule 11 is essentially an elaboration and clarification of old Rule 11. For example, whereas old Rule 11 simply required the Trial Judge to find that the plea was made with an “understanding of the nature of the charge and the consequences of the plea,” new Rule 11 “identifies more specifically what must be explained to the defendant . . . .” Advisory Committee Notes to the 1974 Amendment to Rule 11, 18 U.S.C.A. F.R.Crim.P. 11 (1975) (emphasis added). Thus, under the new Rule, the defendant must be informed of specific constitutional rights that are waived by a guilty (or nolo contendere) plea. Rule 11(c)(3), (4). The Congressional Conference Committee emphasized that subdivision (c) of the new Rule “enumerates certain things that a judge must tell a defendant before the judge can accept that defendant’s plea.” House Conf. Rep. No. 94 — 414, 94th Cong., 1st Sess. 9 (1975) (emphasis added). Congress, in considering amendments to old Rule 11, specifically rejected a version of Rulé 11(c)(3) proposed by the Advisory Committee on Rules of Criminal Procedure which provided that the court “may-want to explain some of the aspects of the trial such as the right to confront Witnesses, to subpoena witnesses, to testify in his own behalf, or, if he chooses, not to testify.” (Emphasis added.) Consequently, all signals by Congress suggest that the teachings of McCarthy are fully applicable to the various clarifications and elaborations of the new Rule. I can find absolutely nothing to support the Court’s view that two standards of review should apply to new Rule 11, one for “basic pillars,” the other for “fallings off from the post-McCarthy elaboration of Rule 11.”

. As one commentator observed:
Though [a] flexible approach [to Rule 11] weakens the absolute (prophylactic) effect of the presumed prejudice standard, it remains faithful to the McCarthy analysis. In an important caveat, the McCarthy Court empha*946sized that matters of reality, not mere ritual, were to control in the review of plea proceedings. Flexible review gives reasonable effect to this precaution without defeating the purpose of the strict review standard.
Comment, Appellate Review of Guilty Plea Acceptances in Federal Court: Harmless Error in a Rule 11 Proceeding? 1978, 18 Santa Clara L.Rev. 687, 707 (hereinafter cited as Santá Clara Comment).

. The dissent contends that the Fifth Circuit is the only Circuit that refuses to require literal compliance (although an accompanying footnote recants slightly). With deference, this is not strictly correct. It is true that no Circuit has taken as far-reaching an approach as the . majority and, indeed, in 1976, the Second Circuit explicitly rejected a harmless error approach in United States v. Journet, 2 Cir., 1976, 544 F.2d 633. Yet there are numerous cases from a variety of Circuits (including post-1976 cases from the Second Circuit) in which technical deviations from the letter of Rule 11 have been held not to warrant vacating the plea. See, e. g., United States v. Hamilton, 9 Cir., 1978, 568 F.2d 1302, 1306 (Trial Court’s reliance on prosecutor to inform defendant of possible penalties under plea; in affirming the conviction, Court emphasized that “Rule 11 [should] not become the vehicle to transform plea hearings into ritualistic performances”); United States v. Saft, 2 Cir., 1977, 558 F.2d 1073, 1080 (failure to advise of right to counsel in situation where defendant had already been assigned a lawyer; Court emphasized that matters of reality should govern); United States v. Michaelson, 2 Cir., 1977, 552 F.2d 472, 477 (failure to advise of privilege against self-incrimination; Court observed that a “minimum of flexibility” must be read into the Rule). Whether the phrase “harmless error” is used to describe the rationale of these cases is merely a question of semantics.

. Of course, the costs are much greater at the collateral review stage, and this Circuit rightfully requires the defendant to demonstrate actual prejudice at that stage. See Keel v. United States, 5 Cir., 1978, 585 F.2d 110 (en banc).

. The majority uses tough language when discussing the “basic pillars” of the Rule. However, the section dealing with “fallings off from the post-McCarthy elaborations of Rule 11” (whatever these might be) is much too casual in its treatment of deviations from Rule 11.