Court Opinion

ID: 9743845
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:46:31.710916+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:44.331484
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion
White, J.
Neither the majority opinion, the State’s brief, nor any authority cited in either, has convinced me that the trial court did not abuse his discretion in rejecting defendant’s offer to plead guilty to a lesser included offense without first pursuing further his questioning of the defendant to determine whether there was a factual basis for the plea and whether he was voluntarily, knowingly, and understanding^ offering to plead guilty to the lesser offense, notwithstanding his claim that he did not “remember doing it, the burglary” nor re*173member going to the place which was burglarized. I say this in full awareness of the opinion in Harshman v. State (1953), 232 Ind. 618, 620, 115 N.E.2d 501, which includes the statement that a guilty plea “should not be accepted from one who does not know, or who, at the time of the arraignment, asserts that he does not know, whether or not he has committed the crime charged, for such would be wholly incompatible with the idea of an admission of guilt, and wholly inconsistent with the administration of justice”. Of the many logical reasons for setting aside the guilty plea in that case, the quoted statement is not one. It should not be necessary for a defendant to expressly admit his guilt in order to have his guilty plea accepted. The Supreme Court of the United States has said that: “An individual accused of crime may voluntarily, knowingly, and understandingly consent to the imposition of a prison sentence even if he is unwilling or unable to admit his participation in the acts constituting the crime.”1 (My emphasis.) The more appropriate plea in that circumstance is nolo contendere, but since it is not available to Indiana defendants there is no justifiable reason they should not employ the guilty plea for that purpose, when it is their informed and well-advised judgment that it is in their best interest so to do.
Of course, on the record before it, the trial court could not have found that defendant’s waiver of trial and consent to be imprisoned for one to five years for entering to commit a felony was “voluntarily, knowingly, and understandingly” given. And by the same token, he could not know that it was not so given.
A plea bargain of the kind the trial court refused to approve involves what amounts to the State’s offer to dismiss the greater charge2 in exchange for the guilty plea to the lesser included charge. Whether the public interest, the State’s *174interest, in the defendant’s prosecution on the greater charge is within the sole discretion of the prosecuting attorney or is shared with the court, is a question not before us, because the court did not appear to be acting in the public interest in refusing to accept this plea bargain.3 He appeared to be acting in defendant’s interest to protect him for the consequences of a guilty plea not intelligently tendered.
The judge asked a rhetorical question (“How can he do it intelligently, if he doesn’t remember?”) which should have been answered before the court decided whether to accept or reject the offer to plead guilty to the lesser offense. The abuse of discretion was in not first probing for an answer to that question.
Had the trial court pursued the matter further it is quite possible that he would have learned that defendant had discussed the case with his attorney (and possibly with the police) and had learned what overwhelming evidence the State had to prove him guilty of second degree burglary (two to five years). The court might also have learned that defendant had been fully and fairly advised of all his rights, all his options, and all the probable consequences of each available option, and had thus knowingly, freely, and willingly arrived at the very sensible conclusion that it was to his best interest to plead guilty to entering to commit a felony (one to five years), and that he really wished to do so. On the other hand, he might have learned that defendant was confused by his want of memory, had not been fully informed nor adequately advised, and was uncertain whether he should plead to the lesser offense or go to trial on the greater charge. In such a state of mind his offer to plead guilty would not have been voluntarily, knowingly,, and understanding^ made.
In expressing this view I am not intending to express any disagreement with the result reached in any of the Indiana *175cases cited by the majority (except Knight v. State [1973], 158 Ind. App. 591, 303 N.E.2d 845) nor with anything quoted therefrom by the majority.4 (I have previously stated a disagreement with one sentence in Harshman v. State, supra [232 Ind. at 620] which is not a part of the majority’s quotation therefrom.) My disagreement is with the conclusion that defendant was questioned sufficiently to enable the judge intelligently to determine whether the offer to plead guilty to the lesser charge, to obtain the lesser sentence, was knowingly and voluntarily made. Furthermore, I cannot agree that the information elicited from defendant constituted a denial of guilt. And if it did, I cannot agree that a denial of guilt, in and of itself, requires a rejection of a plea bargain and demands a trial on the greater charge.
NOTE. — Reported at 304 N.E.2d 802.

. North Carolina v. Alford, (1970) 400 U.S. 25, 37, 91 S. Ct. 160, 167, 27 L. Ed. 2d 162.

. State v. Morrison, (1905) 165 Ind. 461, 463, 75 N.E. 968.

. See United States v. Ammidown (DC Cir. 1973), F.2d, 42 L.W. 2297.

. The quotation from Nicholas v. State (1973), 261 Ind. 115, 300 N.E.2d 656, 661, that defendant had not shown harm by the rejection of his tendered guilty plea, “In fact, it benefits him”, is quite true of Nicholas and quite wwtrue at bar. In Nicholas the defendant offered to plead guilty as charged. Conviction at trial on a not guilty plea put him in no worse position than had his guilty plea been accepted. Not so here, however.