Court Opinion

ID: 9684692
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 14:08:28.400736+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:58.926650
License: Public Domain

HENLEY, Judge
(dissenting).
The court remanded this case to the trial court for the purpose, among others, of *503holding another evidentiary hearing relative to defendant’s plea of guilty in 1955 to the charge of first degree murder of George Zagib and for a determination of whether defendant was telling the truth when he wrote a letter in 1968 admitting this killing to the late Judge Aronson or when he denied the statements made in that letter at the hearing of his 27.26 motion.1
When the case reached the trial court on remand, it was assigned to the Honorable Harry M. James, the same judge who had heard the 27.26 motion. Defendant appeared in person and with counsel, hut he declined to present any evidence relative to the purpose for which the case had been remanded.
The trial court found that when the 1968 letter was written, defendant was a reasonably intelligent person and that his admissions that he had killed George Zagib should be believed, in the absence of exculpatory statements in the letter or otherwise. Following the reasoning of our earlier decision, the trial court concluded that no manifest injustice resulted from acceptance of defendant’s plea of guilty to this charge and for that reason the conviction should not be set aside nor movant permitted to withdraw his plea. With this, the court again overruled the motion and the appeal was perfected.
In this state of the record, I hardly see how we can hold that those findings, conclusions and judgment of the trial court are clearly erroneous. We cannot, unless we conclude that the basic premise of our decision in the earlier case was erroneous.
I cannot agree that our decision in that case was based on a false premise and, obviously, I cannot agree with today’s decision that “ * * * we were following a false issue in our earlier opinion * * * ” I respectfully submit that the principal opinion has, so it appears to me, twisted the reasoning of the earlier opinion out of perspective. The earlier opinion did not hold that the question of a defendant’s guilt or innocence is always a necessary or proper matter for inquiry on a motion to withdraw a plea of guilty.
To put the earlier opinion back in proper perspective, I suggest we look again at the bare facts and Rule 27.25. The facts are that defendant in 1955 entered a plea of guilty to the murder of George Zagib and was sentenced by the late Judge Aron-son to life imprisonment. Some thirteen years later he filed a motion to set aside that conviction and for leave to withdraw his plea, alleging as grounds that the trial judge had failed to determine that the plea was voluntarily and understandingly made. Rule 27.25 provides that a motion to withdraw a plea of guilty may be made only before sentence, but that “ * * * to correct manifest injustice the court after sentence may set aside the judgment of conviction and permit the defendant to withdraw his plea.” [Emphasis mine]
As noted above, defendant had, in the interim between his plea and the hearing of his motion, stated in his letter to Judge Aronson that he had in fact killed George Zagib and that he felt that the seventeen years he had spent imprisoned “ * * * should suffice for the one man I have killed * *
To bring the facts and law into still closer perspective: the trial court and this court were then and are now faced with a man seeking to withdraw his judicial admission of guilt after sentence on the ground that manifest injustice had resulted from acceptance of his plea, a man who, at *504the same time, had in 1968 by letter voluntarily confirmed his guilt. The questions facing the courts were and are: May manifest injustice result from a plea where there is in fact guilt of the crime to which the plea was entered? Are the courts required to permit withdrawal of the plea after sentence where the defendant, figuratively speaking, stands up and says voluntarily, “I killed the man.” ? What the court held in the earlier opinion was that, in these circumstances, manifest injustice could not have resulted and, therefore, there was none to correct, if defendant were in fact guilty; that defendant may not be heard to say from his own mouth that he did murder and at the same time request and be given leave to withdraw his plea of guilty to that crime.
I continue to adhere to our earlier decision and, therefore, respectfully dissent.

. As stated in the opinion (457 'S.W.2d at 720), the ease was remanded to give defendant “* ⅜ * an opportunity to present any exculpatory matter contained in the letter * * ⅝ ” which he had written Judge Aronson dated February 15, 1968, after the pleas of guilty, stating, inter alia, “ * * ⅝ I was not a principal in the killing of John Krieger nor in the wounding of Officer Johnson, only in that of George Zagib ⅜ * ⅞ an(j ¡n whxch he expressed the view that the punishment he had received “ * ⅜ ⅜ should suffice for the one man I have killed ⅜ * ⅛.”