Court Opinion

ID: 9457207
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:15:54.792459+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:15.139789
License: Public Domain

GIBBONS, Circuit Judge,
with whom SEITZ, Chief Judge, concurs.
In this collateral attack on a judgment of conviction after a guilty plea the pe-tioner asserts that his prosecution under 26 U.S.C. § 4744(a) (2) was impermissible because the privilege against self-incrimination afforded an absolute defense. That defense did not exist until it was created by the decision of the Supreme Court in Leary v. United States, 395 U.S. 6, 89 S.Ct. 1532, 23 L.Ed.2d 57 (1969), a decision made long after Bannister’s guilty plea. The result in Leary was foreshadowed but not decided, by the de*1264cisions in Marchetti v. United States, 390 U.S. 39, 88 S.Ct. 697, 19 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), Grosso v. United States, 390 U.S. 62, 88 S.Ct. 709, 19 L.Ed.2d 906 (1968), and Haynes v. United States, 390 U.S. 85, 88 S.Ct. 722, 19 L.Ed.2d 923 (1968). Bannister’s case is rendered difficult because neither in Leary nor in Marchetti, Grosso or Haynes did the Supreme Court say squarely that statutes requiring conduct which for an individual would be self-incriminating were unconstitutional per se. Rather the Court stated that a person charged under the statutes would have an absolute defense to the charge if he asserted his privilege against self-incrimination. The Court may well have adopted this approach, which saved the statutes in certain cases where compliance would not involve individual self-incrimination, as an accommodation between the taxing power of Congress and the fifth amendment rights of individuals subject to such taxation. See Marchetti v. United States, supra, 390 U.S. at 58, 61, 88 S.Ct. 697. This left open the question whether the defense of the privilege against self-incrimination like the privilege itself, could be waived. Judge Biggs’ opinion turns the availability of collateral relief from a judgment of conviction on the retrospective determination of the presence or absence of a waiver of the defense. In Bannister’s case, which involves a guilty plea, he finds that the defense was in some manner asserted, and hence not waived. Apparently in another case he would find the defense waived because of some action or inaction on the part of the defendant. Bannister’s guilty plea took place before the decision in Leary. Realistically neither he nor any other defendant can be deemed to have waived an absolute defense which the Supreme Court had not yet created.
We believe that the fair administration of justice demands that Leary be applied in a similar manner to those cases in which the statute creating the crime has been declared unconstitutional rather than to those cases creating new procedural rules for the criminal justice process.
Bannister’s case presents a collateral attack on the ground of a subsequent change in the law upon a judgment entered after a guilty plea. One approach which would deny relief would be to turn the result on the nonretroactivity of Leary. That approach is foreclosed by the analysis of the Supreme Court in Mackey v. United States, 401 U.S. 667, 91 S.Ct. 1160, 28 L.Ed.2d 404 (1971), and United States v. United States Coin and Currency, 401 U.S. 715, 91 S.Ct. 1041, 28 L.Ed.2d 434 (1971), which hold that the Marchetti and Grosso cases should be applied retroactively.
Judge Hastie quite properly concludes that the cases of Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742, 90 S.Ct. 1463, 25 L.Ed.2d 747 (1970); McMann v. Richardson, 397 U.S. 759, 90 S.Ct. 1441, 25 L.Ed.2d 763 (1970), and Parker v. North Carolina, 397 U.S. 790, 90 S.Ct. 1458, 25 L.Ed.2d 785 (1970) have greatly narrowed the area of collateral attack upon a criminal conviction when the accused has pleaded guilty. He would on this ground deny relief to Bannister.
We do not agree that the inquiry can stop with the Brady, McMann and Parker cases. Those cases do seem to have rejected, in guilty plea cases, the waiver test for availability of collateral attack announced in Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 83 S.Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837 (1963). We do not quarrel with the proposition that every change in the procedural law governing the criminal justice system cannot be the means for casting wholesale doubt upon the vast bulk of criminal judgments which result from guilty pleas. But the Brady, McMann and Parker cases involved changes in the law which were essentially procedural. They did not involve petitioners confined as a result of a guilty plea to an offense under a statute later held to be unconstitutional as applied to them and their conduct. Under these cases, a guilty plea, if voluntarily made, may well be viewed as a conclusive admission of the acts charged in the indictment. It hardly fol*1265lows, however, that incarceration should continue if the acts themselves are “constitutionally immune from punishment.” United States v. United States Coin and Currency, supra, 401 U.S. at 715, 91 S.Ct. 1041. Bannister’s case presents this distinguishable situation. His guilty plea case, and similar cases arising by virtue of statutes later held to be unconstitutional may present various factual patterns. The petitioner may be a defendant who chose, at the time of his guilty plea, to remain unrepresented, but who received the minimum notice required by McCarthy v. United States, 394 U.S. 459, 89 S.Ct. 1166, 22 L.Ed.2d 418 (1969), and Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238, 89 S.Ct. 1709, 23 L.Ed.2d 274 (1969). He may be a defendant who was represented by an attorney who was not so astute as to anticipate the decisions in Marchetti, Grosso, Haynes, Leary or whatever case subsequently holds the statute unconstitutional as to the defendant’s conduct. He may be a represented defendant who, although his astute attorney anticipated that the statute might be constitutionally defective and so advised him, nevertheless entered a guilty plea. Finally, in any one of the three situations the guilty plea may have resulted from a plea bargain in which the defendant pleaded guilty to a downgraded offense.
The waiver approach as outlined in Judge Biggs’ opinion would draw the line between the defendant represented by the lawyer with foresight and the defendant represented by the less astute lawyer. What should the result be if we suppose, hypothetically, that the defendant represented by the less astute lawyer was a party to a plea bargain ? Such a hypothesis is not farfetched in the field of drug enforcement. Should the existence of some sort of consideration for a bargained for disposition be taken into account?
Rather than looking for a nonexistent personal participatory waiver in cases such as this, our starting point should be a determination of the judicial and public interests presented by the petition.
Our first interest is our abhorrence, from the standpoint of due process, of the continuing incarceration of a defendant for violation of a statute which could not constitutionally make criminal the conduct which he admitted. The statute “deal[s] with the kind of conduct that cannot constitutionally be punished in the first instance.” United States v. United States Coin and Currency, supra, 401 U.S. at 715, 91 S.Ct. at 1046. A competing interest is the imperative necessity, if the criminal justice system is to function, to insulate guilty plea judgments from collateral attack following every change in the law. In deciding between these competing interests a quest for a nonexistent waiver (or more precisely the statement of a conclusion in terms of waiver) is not helpful. In each of the hypothetical guilty plea cases outlined above both interests compete.
A fairly compelling argument can be made in favor of making a defendant live up to his plea bargain even when it results in his incarceration for conduct which could not constitutionally be made criminal. Accepting the now recognized policy of legitimizing plea bargains, North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25, 91 S.Ct. 160, 27 L.Ed.2d 162 (1970); Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742, 90 S.Ct. 1463, 25 L.Ed.2d 747 (1969), such a result would not shock us. On the other hand the government and the judicial process both obtain substantial benefits from the plea bargain process. In view of those substantial benefits it is entirely reasonable that the government bear the risk that a statute to which it accepts a plea may later be held to be unconstitutional as applied to the defendant’s conduct. Weighing the competing considerations we conclude that the government should bear this risk.
We would reach this result not by the elusive pursuit of a phantom waiver, but by a much older notion, that a judicial proceeding under an unconstitutional *1266statute is, for .federal habeas corpus purposes, void. Ex parte Siebold, 100 U.S. 371, 375, 25 L.Ed. 717 (1879). Neither Fay v. Noia, supra, nor the cases since that decision preclude resort to the older habeas corpus jurisdictional assumptions in opening rather than closing the door. This approach requires that Bannister be given relief from his conviction. We therefore concur in the result.