Court Opinion

ID: 9862809
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 02:12:29.009752+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:35:05.322434
License: Public Domain

Arthur H. Healey, J.
(concurring). I concur in the result. I write separately to state that I cannot agree that the circumstances of the present case do not warrant a presumption that defense counsel adequately explained the charge of larceny to the defendant. I do agree that the plea to the larceny charge cannot stand and that “the deficiency of this plea impaired the voluntariness and intelligence of the pleas to first degree robbery and third degree assault.” I do not, however, read or regard Henderson v. Morgan, 426 U.S. 637, 96 S. Ct. 2253, 49 L. Ed. 2d 108 (1976), as controlling in determining that the plea to the larceny charge was deficient.
In Henderson, the issue was “whether a defendant may enter a voluntary plea of guilty to a charge of second-degree murder without being informed that intent to cause the death of his victim was an element of the offense.” Henderson v. Morgan, supra, 638. In that case, the court specifically observed: “Normally the record contains either an explanation of the charge by the trial judge, or at least a representation by defense counsel that the nature of the offense has been explained to the accused. Moreover, even without such an express representation, it may be appropriate to presume that in most cases defense counsel routinely explain the nature of the offense in sufficient detail to give the accused notice of what he is being asked to admit.” Henderson v. Morgan, supra, 647. Hender*128son, however, was “unique” because the trial judge “found as a fact that the element of intent was not explained to respondent [defendant].” Henderson v. Morgan, supra, 647. Unlike Henderson, where there was a complete failure to tell the defendant that intent was even an element of the crime; see Thundershield v. Solem, 429 F. Sup. 944, 956 (D.S.D. 1977), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 954, 98 S. Ct. 1585, 55 L. Ed. 2d 805 (1978); this case is one where the defendant was informed that “futurity” is an element of the crime of larceny by extortion but the explication by the court was constitutionally deficient; this alone vitiated the defendant’s plea. It is for this reason that the presumption that the defendant’s counsel properly explained the elements of the various crimes and the differences among them is not critical in holding the defendant’s plea constitutionally deficient.
It is entirely appropriate, however, to presume that defense counsel did explain the nature of the offense in sufficient detail to give the accused notice of what he was being asked to admit. This is so because the defendant answered in the affirmative the court’s inquiries not only whether he had discussed his plea with his lawyer and whether he was doing so on his advice but also that he was “satisfied with the advice he has given you.” That the presumption may properly be taken here, therefore, brings this branch of the matter squarely within that language of Henderson quoted above concerning such presumption.
The problem arises not from what we can thus fairly presume counsel told the defendant and what the defendant knew from his counsel, but from that explanation in the proceedings given by the court of the difference between larceny, larceny by extor*129tion and robbery. This, withont any necessity to implicate the presumption of the appropriateness of counsel’s explanation to his client, renders the plea one not knowingly and intelligently made. Accordingly, there is no need, as the majority does, to go into the presumption that the defendant’s counsel appropriately explained the elements of the various crimes to which he was pleading nor to refer to the matter of ineffective assistance of counsel at all.
I, therefore, concur in the result.