Court Opinion

ID: 9424055
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:10:05.922972+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:47.886422
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Harlan,
whom Mr. Justice Black joins,
dissenting.
The Court today holds that petitioner Boykin was denied due process of law, and that his robbery convictions must be reversed outright, solely because “the record *245[is] inadequate to show that petitioner . . . intelligently and knowingly pleaded guilty.” Ante, at 241. The Court thus in effect fastens upon the States, as a matter of federal constitutional law, the rigid prophylactic requirements of Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. It does so in circumstances where the Court itself has only very recently held application of Rule 11 to be unnecessary in the federal courts. See Halliday v. United States, 394 U. S. 831 (1969). Moreover, the Court does all this at the behest of a petitioner who has never at any time alleged that his guilty plea was involuntary or made without knowledge of the consequences. I cannot possibly subscribe to so bizarre a result.
I.
In June 1966, an Alabama grand jury returned five indictments against petitioner Boykin, on five separate charges of common-law robbery. He was determined to be indigent, and on July 11 an attorney was appointed to represent him. Petitioner was arraigned three days later. At that time, in open court and in the presence of his attorney, petitioner pleaded guilty to all five indictments. The record does not show what inquiries were made by the arraigning judge to confirm that the plea was made voluntarily and knowingly.1
Petitioner was not sentenced immediately after the acceptance of his plea. Instead, pursuant to an Alabama statute, the court ordered that “witnesses ... be examined, to ascertain the character of the offense,” in the presence of a jury which would then fix petitioner’s sen*246tence. See Ala. Code, Tit. 14, § 415 (1958); Tit. 15, § 277. That proceeding occurred some two months after petitioner pleaded guilty. During that period, petitioner made no attempt to withdraw his plea. Petitioner was present in court with his attorney when the witnesses were examined. Petitioner heard the judge state the elements of common-law robbery and heard him announce that petitioner had pleaded guilty to that offense and might be sentenced to death. Again, petitioner made no effort to withdraw his plea.
On his appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court, petitioner did not claim that his guilty plea was made involuntarily or without full knowledge of the consequences. In fact, petitioner raised no questions at all concerning the plea.2 In his petition and brief in this Court, and in oral argument by counsel, petitioner has never asserted that the plea was coerced or made in ignorance of the consequences.
II.
Against this background, the Court holds that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires the outright reversal of petitioner’s conviction. This result is wholly unprecedented. There are past holdings of this Court to the effect that a federal habeas corpus petitioner who makes sufficiently credible allegations that his state guilty plea was involuntary is entitled to a hearing as to the truth of those allegations. See, e. g., Waley v. Johnston, 316 U. S. 101 (1942); cf. Machibroda v. United States, 368 U. S. 487 (1962). These holdings suggest that if equally convincing allegations were made in a petition for certiorari on direct review, the petitioner might in some circumstances be *247entitled to have a judgment of affirmance vacated and the ease remanded for a state hearing on voluntariness. Cf. Jackson v. Denno, 378 U. S. 368, 393-394 (1964). However, as has been noted, this petitioner makes no allegations of actual involuntariness.
The Court’s reversal is therefore predicated entirely upon the failure of the arraigning state judge to make an “adequate” record. In holding that this is a ground for reversal, the Court quotes copiously from McCarthy v. United States, 394 U. S. 459 (1969), in which we held earlier this Term that when a federal district judge fails to comply in every respect with the procedure for accepting a guilty plea which is prescribed in Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the plea must be set aside and the defendant permitted to re-plead, regardless of lower-court findings that the plea was in fact voluntary. What the Court omits to mention is that in McCarthy we stated that our decision was based “solely upon our construction of Rule 11,” and explicitly disavowed any reliance upon the Constitution. Id., at 464. Thus McCarthy can provide no support whatever for today’s constitutional edict.
III.
So far as one can make out from the Court’s opinion, what is now in effect being held is that the prophylactic procedures of Criminal Rule 11 are substantially applicable to the States as a matter of federal constitutional due process. If this is the basis upon which Boykin’s conviction is being reversed, then the Court’s disposition is plainly out of keeping with a sequel case to McCarthy, decided only last month. For the Court held in Halliday v. United States, 394 U. S. 831 (1969), that “in view of the large number of constitutionally valid convictions that may have been obtained without full compliance with Rule 11, we decline to apply McCarthy retroac*248tively.” Id., at 833. The Court quite evidently found Halliday’s conviction to be “constitutionally valid,” for it affirmed the conviction even though Halliday’s guilty plea was accepted in 1954 without any explicit inquiry into whether it was knowingly and understandingly made, as now required by present Rule 11. In justification, the Court noted that two lower courts had found in collateral proceedings that the plea was voluntary. The Court declared that:
“ [A] defendant whose plea has been accepted without full compliance with Rule 11 may still resort to appropriate post-conviction remedies to attack his plea’s voluntariness. Thus, if his plea was accepted prior to our decision in McCarthy, he is not without a remedy to correct constitutional defects in his conviction.” Id., at 833.
It seems elementary that the Fifth Amendment due process to which petitioner Halliday was entitled must be at least as demanding as the Fourteenth Amendment process due petitioner Boykin. Yet petitioner Halliday’s federal conviction has been affirmed as “constitutionally valid,” despite the omission of any judicial inquiry of record at the time of his plea, because he initiated collateral proceedings which revealed that the plea was actually voluntary. Petitioner Boykin, on the other hand, today has his Alabama conviction reversed because of exactly the same omission, even though he too “may . . . resort to appropriate post-conviction remedies to attack his plea’s voluntariness” and thus “is not without a remedy to correct constitutional defects in his conviction.” In short, I find it utterly impossible to square today’s holding with what the Court has so recently done.
I would hold that petitioner Boykin is not entitled to outright reversal of his conviction simply because of *249the “inadequacy” of the record pertaining to his guilty plea. Further, I would not vacate the judgment below and remand for a state-court hearing on voluntariness. For even if it is assumed for the sake of argument that petitioner would be entitled to such a hearing if he had alleged that the plea was involuntary, a matter which I find it unnecessary to decide, the fact is that he has never made any such claim. Hence, I consider that petitioner’s present arguments relating to his guilty plea entitle him to no federal relief.3

 The record states only that:
“This day in open court came the State of Alabama by its District Attorney and the defendant in his own proper person and with his attorney, Evan Austill, and the defendant in open court on this day being arraigned on the indictment in these eases charging him with the offense of Robbery and plead guilty.” Appendix 4.

 However, I am willing to accept the majority’s view that we do have jurisdiction to consider the question.

 Petitioner advances two additional constitutional arguments: that imposition of the death penalty for common-law robbery is “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment; and that to permit a jury to inflict the death penalty without any “standards” to guide its discretion amounts to a denial of due process. I do not reach these issues because the Court has not done so.