Court Opinion

ID: 9426004
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:16:26.637951+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:58.526529
License: Public Domain

*294Mr. Justice White,
with whom The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Rehnquist join, dissenting.
Because I believe that federal law provides respondent Newsome no right to set aside his plea of guilty — a solemn, counseled admission in open court that he is in fact guilty — even assuming that he had previously been the victim of a search which did not measure up to federal standards, I respectfully dissent.
I
The federal habeas corpus statute, pursuant to which Newsome sought to have the courts below set aside his plea of guilty, provides relief only if the petitioner can establish that "he is in custody in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States.” 28 U. S. C. § 2254 (a). It is common ground, I take it, that the Federal Constitution does not itself entitle a defendant who has pleaded guilty to have that plea set aside upon a showing that he has previously been the victim of an unconstitutional search, even if he can also show that he pleaded guilty only because the prosecution planned to use the fruits of the search against him at trial.1 Blackledge v. Perry, 417 U. S. 21 (1974); Tollett v. Henderson, 411 U. S. 258 (1973); Brady v. United States, 397 U. S. 742 (1970); McMann v. Richardson, 397 U. S. *295759 (1970); Parker v. North Carolina, 397 U. S. 790 (1970). In Tollett, we said:
“We thus reaffirm the principle recognized in the Brady trilogy: a guilty plea represents a break in the chain of events which has preceded it in the criminal process. When a criminal defendant has solemnly admitted in open court that he is in fact guilty of the offense with which he is charged, he may not thereafter raise independent claims relating to the deprivation of constitutional rights that occurred prior to the entry of the guilty plea. He may only attack the voluntary and intelligent character of the guilty plea by showing that the advice he received from counsel was not within the standards set forth in McMann.” 411 U. S., at 267. (Emphasis added.)
This “principle” is a rule of substantive constitutional law limiting the federal constitutional grounds upon which a defendant may attack a judicial admission of guilt. It is not, as the majority assumes, ante, at 289, a rule of procedure, disentitling a defendant to raise a Fourth Amendment claim which was not properly “preserved” under state law. If it were such a rule of procedure, both McMann and Tollett would have come out differently: both were federal habeas corpus proceedings; as the majority points out, ante, at 290 n. 6, federal issues are “preserved” for habeas corpus purposes unless state procedures for litigating them have been “deliberately bypassed”; and neither the petitioner in McMann nor the petitioner in Tollett had “deliberately bypassed” state procedures for raising the coerced-confession or grand-jury-discrimination claims there involved.2 Indeed, the entire majority *296opinion rests on the erroneous notion that we refused to hear antecedent constitutional claims in McMann and Tollett because the defendants had “bypassed” those claims by pleading guilty. In fact, those decisions were based on the substantive proposition that the defendants’ guilt in those cases, and the State’s consequent absolute right to incarcerate them, was established by their voluntary and intelligent pleas of guilty.3
The question raised in this case, therefore, is whether, if a State chooses to open its appellate courts to hear claims of constitutional deprivations preceding entry of a guilty plea and to set aside the plea if the antecedent violation is established, the State thereby creates a fed*297eral constitutional right to set aside the guilty plea where none would have existed otherwise. The question almost answers itself. More importantly, however, it has already been answered by this Court in Parker v. North Carolina, supra.
In Parker, the defendant sought to set aside his guilty plea in a state habeas corpus proceeding alleging, inter alia, that a confession had been unconstitutionally coerced from him and that he pleaded guilty only because of the confession. The state trial court held a hearing on the merits of the coerced-confession claim and found both the confession and the subsequent plea to have been voluntary. On appeal, the North Carolina Court of Appeals clearly accepted the proposition that Parker’s plea should be set aside if the confession was involuntary, and if it was the but-for cause of the plea. Parker v. State, 2 N. C. App. 27, 32, 162 S. E. 2d 526, 529. It concluded, however, that Parker’s confession was voluntary and his plea not the product of it. On cer-tiorari, we did not feel compelled — by the fact that North Carolina gave Parker a right to set aside his plea if it wás based upon a confession coerced in violation of federal standards — to give him a similar right. Instead, assuming that the confession was inadmissible and that he pleaded guilty in the contrary belief, we held that Parker was not entitled “to disavow his admission in open court that he committed the offense with which he was charged.” 397 U. S., at 797.4 Like Newsome in New York, a defendant who loses a pretrial suppression motion in North Carolina and then pleads guilty may assume, by reading the North Carolina Court of Appeals opinion in Parker v. *298State, supra, that state appellate courts will hear the merits of his claim (in a state habeas corpus proceeding, if he can establish that his guilty plea was entered because the suppression motion was denied). However, our decision in Parker would preclude any claim that this Court or any federal court would do likewise. Similarly, here, Newsome's guilt has been established by as reliable a method as is known to the criminal law — his solemn admission of guilt, made in open court. The Federal Constitution entitles him to set aside that plea only upon a showing that it was involuntary or unintelligent. The fact that New York State has nonetheless chosen to set aside his conviction upon a showing that he was the victim of a previous illegal seizure does not and cannot alter substantive federal constitutional law.5
II
The majority contends, however, that since state law provides a defendant with a “guarantee” that he may plead guilty and still litigate his Fourth Amendment claim, it cannot possibly be said that he has chosen to bypass that claim by pleading guilty. Moreover, the majority asserts that the New York guilty plea involved here is a “guilty plea” in name only, and is something else in reality in light of the “different expectations” surrounding it and the different “legal consequences” flowing from it. There are two things wrong with these contentions.
*299First, the contentions assume that the Brady trilogy was based upon notions of waiver. In other words, it assumes that this Court has in the past refused to set aside “guilty pleas” on the basis of antecedent violations of constitutional rights only because the plea was deemed to have “waived” those rights. This assumption finds some support in the language of those cases, but waiver was not their basic ingredient. In any event, the Court squarely and conclusively rejected the waiver rationale in Tollett v. Henderson, supra. We said there:
“If the issue were to be cast solely in terms of ‘waiver/ the Court of Appeals was undoubtedly correct in concluding that there had been no such waiver here.” 411 U. S., at 266.
Nonetheless, the Court of Appeals’ decision in Tollett was reversed. Under Tollett’s interpretation of the trilogy, and under Tollett itself, federal constitutional principles simply preclude the setting aside of a state conviction by a federal court where the defendant’s guilt has been conclusively established by a voluntary and intelligent plea of guilty. Labels aside, a guilty plea for federal purposes is a judicial admission of guilt conclusively establishing a defendant’s factual guilt. Newsome’s plea plainly qualifies.6
*300Second, the contentions assume that New York State intended to create the expectation and has the power to create the expectation on the part of defendants who plead guilty that they will be able to litigate their antecedent Fourth Amendment claims not only in state courts, but also in federal courts. There is absolutely no reason to suppose that New York intended to create such expectations and, if it had so intended, it would have been acting plainly beyond its power. New York State may, of course, give its defendants as a matter of state law the right to set aside guilty pleas on the basis of antecedent violations of federal constitutional search standards. If they do, it cannot be said that a defendant who pleads guilty has “waived” that state-law right. But, it is for Congress or this Court to decide whether federal law gives a defendant the right to set aside his plea under such circumstances. The “legal circumstances” in federal courts which will flow from a state plea, and the “expectations” which a defendant should have about what will occur in federal courts following the plea are not matters to be decided by the New York *301Legislature and surely not finally by the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. If this Court had followed its prior decisions and reiterated in the present context that Newsome may not litigate his Fourth Amendment claim in federal court, then once those who counsel defendants in the New York court system read the opinion, it would be incontestable that a guilty plea in New York would foreclose federal habeas corpus relief based on already rejected Fourth Amendment claims and that no defendant might legitimately harbor “expectations” to the contrary.7
Thus, even under a waiver theory, counseled defendants waive all rights by pleading guilty, which the applicable law says they waive; and, since the applicable law in this case is federal, it is for us, and not the New York State Legislature, to say whether Fourth Amendment claims such as those involved here will or will not be waived by a guilty plea. To illustrate, suppose instead of passing the statute involved here New York had sought to achieve substantially the same result by permitting pretrial appeals from denials of suppression motions in all cases in which the trial judge certified that the seized evidence was likely to be determinative of the outcome of the trial. Suppose further that a defendant avails himself of this opportunity, loses on the merits of his Fourth Amendment claim in the highest state court, and subsequently pleads guilty. Suppose, finally, the *302State passed a second statute permitting a defendant who pleads guilty under the circumstances just described to appeal his conviction directly to this Court or to bring directly a federal habeas corpus proceeding attacking the constitutionality of the search — the statute expressly stating that the Fourth Amendment right is deemed not waived by the plea of guilty. The second statute would, obviously, be of no effect whatever, since it would be a plain effort by the State to legislate federal law. However, so far as the federal courts are concerned, the hypothesized statute is the functional equivalent of the statute at issue in this case as construed and effectuated by the majority. The only difference is that, in the case of the real statute, the state appeals follow the plea rather than precede it.
Finally, the majority argues that a contrary decision by this Court would interfere with the State’s policy of avoiding unnecessary trials by permitting appeals from guilty pleas. New York, whose policy this Court is seeking to further, has appeared here through its Attorney General and argued precisely to the contrary. Obviously, New York believes that its policy is adequately served by the state appeals. There is no reason for the Court to decide the case one way for New York’s benefit, when New York is arguing strenuously that we should decide the case the other way.

 Indeed, not only does the United States Constitution grant no such entitlement, but the federal courts have for the most part refused to create such an entitlement in the exercise of their supervisory powers over the administration of criminal justice in the federal system. See United, States v. Sepe, 474 F. 2d 784 (CA5), aff’d en banc, 486 F. 2d 1044 (1973); United States v. Cox, 464 F. 2d 937 (CA6 1972); United States v. Mizell, 488 F. 2d 97 (CA5 1973), and cases there cited. But see United States v. Doyle, 348 F. 2d 715, 719 (CA2), cert. denied, 382 U. S. 843 (1965).

 McMann was a case involving a coerced-confession claim in which the plea was entered before Jackson v. Denno, 378 U. S. 368 (1964), and therefore at a time when the defendant believed the jury would *296hear his confession regardless. Tollett involved a guilty plea entered in ignorance of the facts underlying the defendant’s later attack on the grand jury.

 It is true that Fourth Amendment claims are never attacks on the accuracy of the finding of factual guilt, Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U. S. 618 (1965). Under our legal system, reversal of a conviction on Fourth Amendment grounds is perfectly consistent with a recognition that the defendant is, in fact, guilty. Thus, it may be argued that, unlike some other claims, Fourth Amendment claims are not undercut by a guilty plea in which guilt is solemnly admitted. The short answer to this argument is that it applies as well in the case of States which do not permit appeals from guilty pleas as in the case of those which do, and the argument has therefore already been rejected. Tollett v. Henderson, 411 U. S. 258 (1973); Brady v. United States, 397 U. S. 742 (1970); McMann v. Richardson, 397 U. S. 759 (1970); Parker v. North Carolina, 397 U. S. 790 (1970); United States v. Sepe, supra. More to the point, the deterrent purpose of the exclusionary rule should be furthered at the lowest possible cost to society in terms of freeing the guilty. By precluding defendants who plead guilty from litigating Fourth Amendment issues, we do not seriously detract from the deterrent purpose of the rule (a policeman about to improperly invade someone’s privacy can hardly rely upon the erroneous pretrial denial of a suppression motion by a trial judge and the defendant’s mistaken decision to plead guilty) and we avoid unnecessarily freeing the guilty.

 We did hold that a plea entered upon advice of counsel with regard to the admissibility of the confession, which advice was not “within the range of competence required of attorneys representing defendants in criminal cases,” 397 U. S., at 797-798, would warrant vacation of the plea on Sixth Amendment grounds.

 Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40 (1968), in which we heard a Fourth Amendment claim on direct appeal after a guilty plea, was decided before the Court created the relevant constitutional rule in the Brady trilogy; and in Sibron the Court never addressed the question whether the Federal Constitution entitled the defendant to set aside his guilty plea upon establishing the antecedent Fourth Amendment violation.

 The majority argues that Newsome would have had a right to set aside his conviction on the basis of a Fourth Amendment claim if he had pleaded not guilty and permitted his attorney to stipulate that, if called, certain government witnesses would testify to certain facts, and introduce certain exhibits, among them the allegedly illegally seized evidence; and that, therefore, he should be permitted to set aside his functionally equivalent plea of guilty on the basis of the same Fourth Amendment claim. The premise is correct; the conclusion is not. In the first place, if the conclusion were correct, it should apply equally to States which do not permit appeals from guilty pleas. As our decisions in the Brady trilogy and Tollett establish, however, guilty pleas in those States are not infirm on *300the basis of antecedent constitutional violations, even though convictions in uncontested trials are. The majority offers no reason why this distinction should be ignored for federal purposes just because New York ignores it for state purposes. Moreover, a conviction based upon the defendant’s solemn admission of factual guilt is not the functional equivalent of a conviction on uncontested evidence. In the latter case, the conviction is not based on the defendant’s admission but on the evidence: the trial judge may always acquit, if unpersuaded, and an appellate court may find the illegally seized evidence not to have contributed to the verdict. See discussion of the differences for appeal purposes between a plea of guilty and a stipulation to evidence in United States v. Mizell, 488 F. 2d, at 99-101 (guilty plea not appealable), and United States v. Mendoza, 491 F. 2d 534, 536-538 (CA5 1974) (conviction on stipulated evidence appealable). See also United States v. Cox, 464 F. 2d, at 944-945.

 Because of the possibility that prior Second Circuit law, e. g., United States ex rel. Rogers v. Warden, 381 F. 2d 209 (1967), and United States ex rel. Molloy v. Follette, 391 F. 2d 231 (1968), affirmatively misled respondent’s lawyer into believing that federal law does permit collateral relitigation of the antecedent Fourth Amendment violation after a New York guilty plea, the best course would have been to permit all those, including Newsome, who pleaded guilty before the date of this decision in reliance on Second Circuit law to replead. United States v. Mizell, supra, at 101. Cf. Santobello v. New York, 404 U. S. 257 (1971).