Court Opinion

ID: 9745557
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 23:09:42.271857+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:02.544351
License: Public Domain

CALLAHAN, J., Dissenting.
The majority opinion holds that a defendant (1) who is represented by counsel whose competence is not questioned, (2) in the course of such representation knowingly and intelligently decides to plead guilty, and (3) whose claim of Faretta error does not involve the circumstances surrounding the plea itself, may nevertheless succeed in reversing his conviction by alleging erroneous denial of his pretrial Faretta motion at a time when he was contesting rather than admitting his guilt. (Faretta v. California (1975) 422 U.S. 806 [95 S.Ct. 2525, 45 L.Ed.2d 562].) I disagree.
*374The starting point is Penal Code section 1237.5, subdivision (a), which limits an appeal by a defendant who pleads guilty or nolo contendere to “reasonable constitutional, jurisdictional, or other grounds going to the legality of the proceedings.” As Justice Sparks explained in People v. Turner (1985) 171 Cal.App.3d 116, 125-126 [214 Cal.Rptr. 572]: “[A] guilty plea constitutes an admission of every element of the offense charged and constitutes a conclusive admission of guilt. [Citation.] It waives a trial and obviates the need for the prosecution to come forward with any evidence. [Citations.] A guilty plea thus concedes that the prosecution possesses legally admissible evidence sufficient to prove defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. ...[HA guilty plea also waives any irregularity in the proceedings which would not preclude a conviction. [Citation.] Thus irregularities which could be cured, or which would not preclude subsequent proceedings to establish guilt, are waived and may not be asserted on appeal after a guilty plea. . . .” (Italics added, fn. omitted.)
The denial of a pretrial Faretta motion is not an irregularity which bars subsequent proceedings to establish guilt. Regardless of whether the motion is granted or denied, the People may go forward with their case against the defendant. Indeed, defendant’s guilty plea takes the Faretta issue out of the litigable arena, because it precludes a trial on the merits and the taking of evidence. (People v. Whitton (1952) 112 Cal.App.2d 328, 333 [246 P.2d 60].) At that point, the manner in which defendant defends himself against the charges is truly moot.
Having pleaded guilty, “[a] defendant thereafter can raise only those questions which go to the power of the state to try him despite his guilt.” (People v. Turner, supra, 171 Cal.App.3d at p. 126.) While Faretta safeguards a defendant’s right to waive counsel and represent himself, the exercise of that right has absolutely no effect on the court’s jurisdiction over him or the power of the state to try him despite his guilt. Thus, under the Turner test, the erroneous denial of a pretrial motion for self-representation is not an error cognizable after a guilty plea.
The majority claims that since a Faretta motion is not related to guilt and goes to the “legality of the proceedings” (presumably because self-representation is a constitutional right), it may be raised after a guilty plea. The majority misreads the rule.
First, the fact that Faretta is unrelated to guilt is a makeweight—there are a host of errors “unrelated to guilt,” including those of constitutional magnitude, which are waived by a guilty plea. (See, e.g., People v. Hernandez (1992) 6 Cal.App.4th 1355, 1357 [8 Cal.Rptr.2d 324] [violation of constitutional right to speedy trial]; People v. Lopez (1988) 198 Cal.App.3d 135, *375139-140 [243 Cal.Rptr. 590] [due process violation in state depriving defendant of a material witness]; People v. Haven (1980) 107 Cal.App.3d 983, 986 [167 Cal.Rptr. 376] [improper denial of motion to sever]; People v. Padfield (1982) 136 Cal.App.3d 218 [185 Cal.Rptr. 903] [prosecution barred by statute of limitations]; see also cases collected in People v. Meyer (1986) 183 Cal.App.3d 1150, 1157-1158 [228 Cal.Rptr. 635].)
Second, the majority ignores the language of California Supreme Court cases which state clearly that “legality of the proceedings” under Penal Code section 1237.5 means legality of the proceedings which resulted in the plea. (People v. Kaanehe (1977) 19 Cal.3d 1, 9 [136 Cal.Rptr. 409, 559 P.2d 1028]; People v. DeVaughn (1977) 18 Cal.3d 889, 896 [135 Cal.Rptr. 786, 558 P.2d 872].) Once defendant has conceded “ ‘all matters essential to the conviction’ ” (People v. Turner, supra, 171 Cal.App.3d at p. 126), all issues going to his ability to prove or disprove his guilt or innocence are “ ‘removed from consideration.’ ” (People v. Shults (1984) 151 Cal.App.3d 714, 719 [199 Cal.Rptr. 33] (opn. of Puglia, P. J.), italics added; see also People v. Lopez, supra, 198 Cal.App.3d at p. 142.) Put simply, whether a defendant defends the charges against him through counsel or on his own is not an issue which goes to the “jurisdiction or legality of the proceedings resulting in the plea.” (People v. Kaanehe, supra, at p. 9, italics added.)
The majority concludes Faretta error goes to the legality of the proceedings because the right to self-representation is derived from a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel. However, this reasoning confuses the distinction between the right to counsel and the right of a defendant to represent himself. The two rights are not interchangeable as the majority implies—in fact they are “mutually exclusive.” (People v. Marshall (1997) 15 Cal.4th 1, 20 [61 Cal.Rptr.2d 84, 931 P.2d 262].) “A defendant has the right to be represented by counsel at all critical stages of a criminal prosecution. [Citations.] At the same time, the United States Supreme Court has held that because the Sixth Amendment grants to the accused personally the right to present a defense, a defendant possesses the right to represent himself or herself. [Citation.]” (Ibid.) While the court has concluded the right to counsel is “self-executing,” i.e., the defendant need make no request for counsel in order to be entitled to legal representation, and the right must be assiduously protected throughout the proceedings, “[t]he high court has not extended the same kind of protection to the right of self-representation.” (Marshall, supra, at p. 20, citing McKaskle v. Wiggins (1984) 465 U.S. 168, 187-188 [104 S.Ct. 944, 955-956, 79 L.Ed.2d 122]; Faretta v. California, supra, 422 U.S. at p. 834, fn. 46 [95 S.Ct. at p. 2541, 45 L.Ed.2d at p. 581].)
A defendant’s right to present his or her own defense is not only not self-executing, it must be timely and unequivocally asserted. (People v. *376Marshall, supra, 15 Cal.4th at p. 21; People v. Windham (1977) 19 Cal.3d 121, 127-128 [137 Cal.Rptr. 8, 560 P.2d 1187].) At its core, a defendant’s assertion of his Faretta rights is nothing less than an affirmative waiver of his constitutional right to counsel. Accordingly, the majority’s attempt to place the improper refusal to allow the defendant to represent himself on the same plane as the denial of “effective assistance of counsel” is incorrect. Faretta itself refutes such a notion: “[A] defendant who elects to represent himself cannot thereafter complain that the quality of his own defense amounted to a denial of ‘effective assistance of counsel.’ ” (422 U.S. at pp. 834-835, fn. 46 [95 S.Ct. at p. 2541, 45 L.Ed.2d at p. 581].)
By jumbling the difference between the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, which automatically attaches at all stages of the proceedings, with the denial of a pretrial Faretta motion, the majority sidesteps the basic principles enunciated in Turner. A defendant who pleads guilty without effective assistance of counsel may raise that deprivation on appeal because the constitutional infringement unavoidably impairs his ability to enter a voluntary and intelligent plea. A defendant who desires to act as his own lawyer but is precluded from doing so stands on no such footing. His ability to intelligently decide whether to plead guilty is not impaired by having counsel assist him despite his wishes.1
Ten years ago in People v. Lobaugh (1987) 188 Cal.App.3d 780 [233 Cal.Rptr. 683], a defendant who pleaded guilty to robbery after denial of his motion for new counsel under People v. Marsden (1970) 2 Cal.3d 118 [84 Cal.Rptr. 156, 465 P.2d 44] argued that he was entitled to a reversal of his conviction because the motion was erroneously denied. (188 Cal.App.3d at p. 783.) Though Marsden, like Faretta, is grounded in the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, this court had no trouble concluding that the issue was waived by defendant’s guilty plea. “Defendant makes no contention here that his guilty plea was not intelligently and voluntarily made. Nor does defendant urge that the advice be received from counsel was inappropriate concerning his plea resulting in the plea not being intelligently and voluntarily made. The claimed Marsden error does not go to the legality of the proceedings resulting in the plea. [Citations.] The defendant is thus foreclosed from raising that issue on appeal.” (Lobaugh, supra, at p. 786, italics added; accord, People v. Gonzalez (1993) 13 Cal.App.4th 707, 716 [16 Cal.Rptr.2d *377635].) The majority’s decision in this case cannot be reconciled with Lobaugh.2
In sum, having failed to demonstrate that the improper denial of his Faretta motion affected the guilty plea, defendant may not raise Faretta error on appeal. When defendant accepted the lawyer the court appointed for him, and with the assistance of that counsel entered a voluntary and intelligent plea of guilty, he forfeited his right to reopen the academic question whether the court properly refused to allow him to represent himself during the adversarial stage of the proceedings.3
I would affirm the judgment.
Respondent’s petitions for review by the Supreme Court were denied October 22,1997. Baxter, J., was of the opinion that the petitions should be granted.

It is important to note that defendant does not attack his guilty plea on the grounds that he felt coerced to enter it because of the denial of his Faretta motion. Had he done so, an appealable issue might very well be raised, since the issue whether the plea was improperly induced goes directly to the legality of the proceedings which resulted in the plea. (See People v. DeVaughn, supra, 18 Cal.3d at p. 896.)

One may well wonder what practical implications will flow from today’s ruling. Will district attorneys and judges be as confident accepting guilty pleas where there has been a previous Faretta denial, knowing that the defendant has an “automatic reversal” ace up his sleeve? Will Faretta motions become increasingly more common as defendants discover that if they eventually decide to plead guilty, they will still have a chance to wipe the slate clean and start all over by invoking Faretta error? How many new habeas corpus petitions will suddenly surface based upon the fact that the defendant had a Faretta motion denied before he pleaded guilty?
As one federal appeals court recently observed: “Many a defendant would like to plant an error and grow a risk-free trial.” (U.S. v. Boyd (7th Cir. 1996) 86 F.3d 719, 721-722.) The majority’s decision gives them the seeds and the watering pail to grow a risk-free guilty plea.

I would also reject defendant’s alternative argument that the trial court abused its discretion in failing to set aside his guilty plea on the ground it was coerced by the district attorney’s threat to prosecute his wife, an issue not reached in the majority opinion. At the time the plea was taken, the trial court asked defendant directly, “Have you or anyone else been threatened in any way to get you to plead guilty," and defendant answered, “No.” (Italics added.) The declarations of the witnesses to the alleged “threat” recited inconsistent versions of the same conversation. Finally, after accepting the negotiated plea, defendant confided to the police in a videotaped conversation, “[M]y attomey[] want[ed] me to take it [the plea] back because she knows we [could] beat the case.” These items of evidence provided solid, tangible evidence supporting the court’s denial of defendant’s request to change his plea due to alleged prosecutorial extortion.