Court Opinion

ID: 9541766
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:28:28.999627+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:04:38.146634
License: Public Domain

LINDE, J.,
concurring.
I agree that defendant’s claim in this case, an asserted error in accepting a guilty plea, cannot be raised in an appeal under ORS 138.050. I am less certain, however, that such a claim is not within appellate jurisdiction under ORS 138.040, quoted in the Court’s footnote 1.
The Court observes that such an appeal was understood to be the law before the predecessor of ORS 138.050 was enacted. State v. Lewis, 113 Or 359, 230 P 543, 232 P 1013 (1925). That 1945 statute, prescribing appellate review of sentences imposed on pleas of guilty, did not in terms amend the predecessor of ORS 138.040 or say anything about challenges to the conviction rather than the sentence. It seems unlikely, when the validity of a guilty plea long could be reviewed by appeal, that the legislature would do away with this means to scrutinize an allegedly invalid conviction, and do so sub silentio in the course of regulating review of sentences.
Acceptance of a guilty plea may be improper for a number of reasons, at least some' of which would go to the essence of the plea and of the supposed guilt that it is taken to establish. There might even he a claim that the purported plea was not made, or made to a different offense, or when the defendant was incompetent to make an intelligent plea. The notion that, once a trial court enters a plea of guilty, the validity of the court’s action cannot thereafter be reviewed is so improbable that I would expect the legislature to make such a change only explicitly.
*247In short, I think that State v. Jairl, 229 Or 533, 368 P2d 323 (1962), which the Court follows today, may well have been wrongly decided. Its argument, quoted by the Court, that ORS 138.050 would be meaningless if it did not intend to overrule State v. Lewis, supra, is not compelling. In fact, ORS 138.050 can easily be read to mean that “[a] defendant who [validly] has pleaded guilty or no contest [nevertheless] may take an appeal” challenging only the sentence. (Italicized words added). Appeals challenging the trial court’s action with respect to the plea would remain under ORS 138.040.
It is impossible to reconstruct the intention of the 1945 Legislative Assembly now, and the Court considers itself bound by State v. Jairl. It puts off the incongruous possibility that there might be no forum to review an allegedly invalid plea of guilty or no contest by noting the State’s repeated contention that the proper remedy is post-conviction relief under ORS 138.510 to 138.680. Perhaps it is true that even in the absence of any inadequacy of counsel when such a plea was entered, a court’s improper acceptance and refusal to set aside the plea is of constitutional magnitude as a denial of the right to trial guaranteed by Article I, section 11 of the Oregon Constitution.
Because I agree that once this court has considered and decided on the interpretation of a statute, the interpretation should be considered settled, cf. State v. Newton, 291 Or 788, 636 P2d 393 (1981), and because the holdings inconsistent with State v. Jairl did not set forth a competing interpretation of ORS 138.050,1 concur in the decision. Whether post-conviction proceedings or appeal is the preferable procedure to review a challenged entry of a guilty plea is something the legislature can consider in reviewing the sentencing laws, as the Court observes.
Jones, J., joins in this concurring opinion.