Court Opinion

ID: 9559522
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:30:36.172811+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:09:49.292806
License: Public Domain

RABINOWITZ, Justice,
with whom BOO-CHEVER, Chief Justice, joins, dissenting.
I cannot agree with the majority’s rejection of the rule espoused by the Supreme Court of the United States in McCarthy v. United States, 394 U.S. 459, 89 S.Ct. 1166, 22 L.Ed.2d 418 (1969). There the Supreme Court held that a failure on the trial court’s part to comply with the specified procedures of Rule 11, Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure was per se reversible error entitling the defendant to plead anew. Essentially for the reasons advanced by Chief Justice Warren, I am persuaded that adoption of the McCarthy per se rule for violations of Alaska’s Criminal Rule 11 is preferable to the majority’s approach in the case at bar and overall would have had a more salutary effect on the administration of justice in Alaska.
In McCarthy the government argued that despite the express directives of Rule 11 the District Court “ ‘could properly assume that the petitioner was entering that plea with a complete understanding of the charge against him.’ ” (emphasis in original)1 In rejecting this argument, the Supreme Court noted that to accept the government’s position would require ignoring the two purposes of Rule 11. Regarding the dual purposes of Rule 11, the Supreme Court stated:
First, although the procedure embodied in Rule 11 has not been held to be constitutionally mandated, it is designed to assist the district judge in making the constitutionally required determination that a defendant’s guilty plea is truly voluntary. Second, the Rule is intended to produce a complete record at the time the plea is entered of the factors relevant to this voluntariness determination. Thus, the more meticulously the Rule is adhered to, the more it tends to discourage, or at least to enable more expeditious disposition of, the numerous and often frivolous post-conviction attacks on the constitutional validity of guilty pleas.
. By personally interrogating the defendant, not only will the judge be better able to ascertain the plea’s volun-tariness, but he also will develop a more complete record to support his determination in a subsequent post-conviction attack.2 (footnotes omitted)
The rule adopted by the majority undercuts the dual rationales of Rule 11 and does much to denigrate the importance of compliance by Alaska’s trial judges with Rule 11. Instead of adopting a per se rule, the majority has decided that the consequences of error flowing from non-compliance with Rule 11 should be considered on a case-by-ease basis, reversible only if such error affects “substantial” rights of the defendant. In my view, the majority's test not only signals to the trial bench that this court will not insist upon strict adherence to the mandate of Rule 11 but will undoubtedly result in more numerous post-conviction attacks in the future on convictions obtained after pleas of guilty or nolo contendere have been entered.
Further, I think the majority’s test misses the central focus of Rule 11 which imposes upon the trial court, not counsel, the duty of personally addressing the defendant and advising him of certain specified rights in order to ascertain the voluntariness of the plea in the context of the accused’s relinquishment of important constitutional *855rights.3 Thus, in my opinion, the presence4 or actions of defense counsel should be totally irrelevant in an after the fact inquiry into voluntariness. The proper focus of any such inquiry must be an evaluation pf the trial court’s actions against the standard of its duties established in Rule ll.5
In the case at bar the state has conceded that the trial court did not follow the procedures specified in Rule 11(c). Given this concession, I would hold that the record fails to show substantial compliance with Rule 11 and therefore the convictions in question, must be vacated, withdrawal of the guilty pleas permitted, and the opportunity for new pleading and further trial proceedings given.

. McCarthy v. United States, 394 U.S. 459, 464, 89 S.Ct. 1166, 1170, 22 L.Ed.2d 418, 424 (1969).

. Id. at 465-66, 89 S.Ct. at 1170, 22 L.Ed.2d at 424-25.

. The Supreme Court, in referring to the two purposes of Rule 11, stated in McCarthy that:
These two purposes have their genesis in the nature of a guilty plea. A defendant who enters such a plea simultaneously waives several constitutional rights, including his privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, his right to trial by jury, and his right to confront his accusers. For this waiver to be valid under the Due Process Clause, it must be ‘an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege.’ Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 464, 58 S.Ct. 1019, 82 L.Ed. 1461, 1466, 146 A.L.R. 357 (1938). Consequently, if a defendant’s guilty plea is not equally voluntary and knowing, it has been obtained in violation of due process and is therefore void. Moreover, because a guilty plea is an admission of all the elements of a formal criminal charge, it cannot be truly voluntary unless the defendant possesses an understanding of the law in relation to the facts, (footnotes omitted)
McCarthy v. United States, 394 U.S. 459, 466, 89 S.Ct. 1166, 1171, 22 L.Ed.2d 418, 425 (1969).

. See Else v. State, 555 P.2d 1210, 1215-16 (Alaska 1976) (Rabinowitz, J., concurring).

. In formulating its per se rule, the Supreme Court in McCarthy cited with approval the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Heiden v. United States, 353 F.2d 53 (9th Cir. 1965). More particularly, the Supreme Court said:
Rule 11 is designed to eliminate any need to resort to a later fact-finding proceeding ‘in this highly subjective area.’ Heiden v. United States, supra, at 55. The Rule ‘contemplates that disputes as to the understanding of the defendant and the voluntariness of his action are to be eliminated at the outset . . . .’ Ibid. . . . There is no adequate substitute for demonstrating in the record at the time the plea is entered the defendant’s understanding of the nature of the charge against him. (emphasis in original)
McCarthy v. United States, 394 U.S. at 469-70, 89 S.Ct. at 1172, 22 L.Ed.2d at 427.