Court Opinion

ID: 9750366
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 14:54:26.022982+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:08:02.742127
License: Public Domain

*129Dooley, J.,
dissenting. This defendant was told that he would not be sentenced to jail. Relying on that promise, he pled guilty, admitted he committed the crime, and made other damaging admissions to a probation officer. Once the trial court learned the facts, many of which came out in reliance on the no-incarceration promise, it decided to dishonor the promise and sentence defendant to jail. The majority accepts this judicial' breach of commitment. I believe it undermines the integrity of the judicial system, weakens our assignment-of-counsel system, and results in placing defendant in double jeopardy in violation of the Fifth Amendment. With reluctance, I must dissent.
I will start with the double jeopardy point. Because of its interrelationship with the right to counsel, I find it to be a more complex issue than the majority recognizes. I start with a point of agreement: the court could not have gone forward and sentenced defendant to a jail term based on his uncounseled guilty plea. That sentence would have been illegal under Argersinger v. Hamlin, 407 U.S. 25, 37 (1972), as well as under 13 V.S.A. § 5231 and V.R.Cr.P. 44(a) because defendant’s right to assignment of counsel for a serious crime was not honored. I think it is also agreed that assignment of counsel at sentencing cannot cure the defect. An accused has a constitutional right to assistance of counsel at all critical stages of a criminal proceeding unless the accused knowingly and intelligently waives that right. See State v. Lombard, 146 Vt. 411, 414, 505 A.2d 1182, 1184 (1985); State v. Quintin, 143 Vt. 40, 43, 460 A.2d 458, 460 (1983). The most critical stage of this proceeding was the uncounseled guilty plea, which is still being relied upon to establish the conviction.
It is clear to me that at the point the court accepted the plea of guilty, without condition, defendant was convicted of the crime. See Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238,242 (1969) (“A plea of guilty is more than a confession which admits that the accused did various acts; it is itself a conviction; nothing remains but to give judgment and determine punishment.”). The only thing remaining was for the court to impose a lawful sentence upon defendant, which, in this case, could not be any period of actual imprisonment. Thus, jeopardy attached as of the time when the court accepted the guilty plea. See United States v. Sanchez, 609 F.2d 761, 762 (5th Cir. 1980); State v. Forbes, 147 *130Vt. 612, 616, 523 A.2d 1232, 1234-35 (1987); cf. Brown v. Ohio, 432 U.S. 161, 162-65 (1977).
The basic protections of the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment are as follows:
That guarantee [against double jeopardy] has been said to consist of three separate constitutional protections. It protects against a second prosecution for the same offense after acquittal. It protects against a second prosecution for the same offense after conviction. And it protects against multiple punishments for the same offense.
North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 717 (1969) (footnotes omitted), quoted in State v. Rice, 145 Vt. 25, 29, 483 A.2d 248, 250 (1984). There is no question that defendant here faced the possibility of a second prosecution for the same DUI offense. The trial court gave no indication that its acceptance of defendant’s guilty plea was in any way conditional or “temporary.” See, e.g., United States v. Cruz, 709 F.2d 111, 114 (1st Cir. 1983). Having once been convicted, a conviction on which a jail sentence could not be imposed, he was told that his remedy for the breach of the no-incarceration promise, and the resulting denial of counsel, was to submit to a second prosecution for the same offense — a second jeopardy. In other words, he was denied the lawful consequences of the first conviction on the basis that he could always choose reprosecution with counsel, exactly what the double jeopardy clause prohibits.
The majority seems to have two answers to the double jeopardy quandary: (1) defendant waived his double jeopardy right; and (2) the issue is only a stronger sentence, not a second conviction, and therefore double jeopardy does not apply. Neither answer works.
Once jeopardy attaches, it is a personal right and, in most instances, can be waived only by the voluntary act of the defendant. Thus, unless defendant voluntarily waives his right against double jeopardy, he cannot be prosecuted again for the same DUI charge. See United States v. Anderson, 514 F.2d 583, 586 (7th Cir. 1975). There is no voluntary waiver in this case; indeed, defendant refused to waive at all. He did no act that can be called a waiver. The waiver option was obviously coerced — it required him to forego a lawful and acceptable sentence in favor of the risk of an unfavorable sentence.
*131It is important to distinguish the situation here from one where defendant seeks to withdraw a plea of guilty because of the breach of a plea agreement. When the court imposes a harsher sentence than agreed upon in a plea agreement, it draws into question the voluntariness of the plea and, as a result, the entire conviction. State v. Belanus, 144 Vt. 166, 169, 475 A.2d 227, 228 (1984). Therefore, the court must permit the defendant to withdraw the guilty plea if he or she so desires in order to remove any taint of involuntariness. See State v. Black, 151 Vt. 253, 254-55, 558 A.2d 959, 960 (1988). Here, there is no question of the validity of the conviction; it is not involuntary and defendant seeks its benefit in a lawful sentence. The court’s offer to withdraw a plea which is not in dispute has no curative effect in this case.
The second reason advanced by the majority is that this case involves only an increase in sentence and such an increase does not cause a second jeopardy. I agree that the imposition of a harsher sentence alone has no double jeopardy implications, but this principle has nothing to do with this case. It is not the harsher sentence, but the offer of a second prosecution for the same offense to cure the denial of the right to counsel, that causes the double jeopardy violation. It is true that once a defendant is found guilty and has been sentenced, the court may, in certain circumstances, increase the sentence without violating the defendant’s right against double jeopardy. See State v. Boyer, 144 Vt. 393, 395, 481 A.2d 15, 16 (1984) (per curiam). In this case, however, the court was either attempting to increase defendant’s sentence from a lawful one to an unlawful one or attempting to redo the guilt phase of the proceeding for the sole purpose of increasing the sentence. The first option is prohibited by the right to counsel, and the second option is exactly what the double jeopardy clause protects against. The conviction was obtained in violation of the right to counsel. The “cure” used by the trial court and accepted by the majority requires placing defendant twice in jeopardy in violation of the Fifth Amendment. The sentence cannot be sustained for these reasons.
Even if there were no specific violation of the right to counsel and the double jeopardy clause, I find the procedure here to lack the fundamental fairness that we must require in criminal *132proceedings. This case does not involve a “sentencing forecast,” as the majority characterizes it, but instead a firm, unequivocal promise — the court “will not sentence you to a period of imprisonment.” Nor does this case involve a “mistake,” as the majority characterizes the actions of the judge who did not appoint counsel. In fact, defendant disclosed, in response to a request from the court, that he was on probation for another offense.*
Relying on the court’s promise and acting without the advice of counsel, defendant pled guilty and made numerous damaging statements to a probation officer, which in turn were used to breach the promise. Defendant does not present a sympathetic case, but the answer to such cases is to assign counsel in the first instance rather than to renege on firm pledges on how the system would treat an accused. The answer to an unsympathetic defendant is not a judicial system that refuses to honor its commitments.
I find this situation analogous to that the United States Supreme Court encountered in Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S. 610 (1976), where the issue was whether the State could use defendant’s silence against him when the silence came after defendant received a Miranda warning stating that he had a right to remain silent. The Court found that an assurance that defendant would not be punished for silence was implicit in the warning and, *133therefore, that “it would be fundamentally unfair and a deprivation of due process to allow the . . . silence to be used to impeach.” Id. at 618. I find it similarly unfair to use defendant’s uncounseled admissions, made in reliance on a promise that he would not be incarcerated, to incarcerate him.
Finally, this case represents an undesirable practice in administering our assigned-counsel system, which can be corrected only if we say the resulting sentence is unacceptable. Instead of examining carefully the question of whether defendant deserved incarceration if convicted, or erring on the side of appointment of counsel in case defendant’s record and circumstances warranted incarceration on conviction, the trial court did neither.
I recognize that the caseloads in district court sometimes prevent the judge from acquiring the detailed knowledge that allows for an informed judgment of what sentence will be appropriate on conviction. I also recognize that public defenders carry high caseloads. I cannot accept that we must trade basic integrity for a system that works a little bit better. If we must appoint counsel in doubtful or unknown cases in order to avoid firm promises that incarceration will not be imposed, to be revoked three months later, I consider this a price well worth paying.
I am authorized to state that the Chief Justice joins in this dissent.

 The transcript of the arraignment reads as follows:
Judge: Reginald Duval? Mr. Duval is on probation at the present time?
Mr. Duval: Just barely placed on it, yes.
Public Defender: Actually, Your Honor, he was placed on probation subsequent to this offense so I don’t think it could constitute a violation.
Judge: All right. And this is a charge of DWI first, so you can stand with him [counsel], but we’re not grant [sic] him the service of a public defender.
Public Defender: All right.
Mr. Duval: I had a DWI seven years ago though.
Judge: This would be charges of first though, for purposes of punishment because it is more than five years old.
If I understand the majority’s point that defendant “did not recount more recent convictions,” he is supposed to volunteer the details of the convictions for which he was on probation in case those details were of significance to the appointment-of-counsel decision. I do not think it is reasonable to expect a pro se defendant to know that further disclosures should be made, or the significance of those disclosures. It is certainly not reasonable to expect any defendant to put his or her criminal history in its worst light to ensure an accurate decision on appointment of counsel.