Court Opinion

ID: 9466025
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:03:40.231367+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:30.589375
License: Public Domain

CLARK and RUBIN, Circuit Judges, with whom GOLDBERG and GODBOLD, Circuit Judges,
join, dissenting:
I.
In two respects our views are not contrary to the majority:
a.
In making inquiry to satisfy himself that there was a fact basis for Dayton’s plea, the trial judge asked the Assistant United States Attorney to state the facts upon which the government would rely to convict. The attorney recited that at some time between September 5 and 12, 1976, a plane load of marihuana was flown from Mexico to a ranch owned by a co-defendant, Holeman. Dayton’s only connection with this September venture was stated: he “acted as a ground crew, helped unload the marihuana and transported it from the airstrip.” The attorney further stated that another plane load of marihuana was flown in to Holeman’s ranch from Mexico on December 7, 1976. Dayton’s sole involvement in this episode was stated: he “acted as ground crew.” When the court asked if these facts were true and could be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, Dayton answered: “Yes, your Honor.”
Whether these facts and all reasonable inferences therefrom establish a factual basis for Dayton’s plea of unlawfully, knowingly, and intentionally possessing with intent to distribute each of the two plane loads of marihuana does not present an enbancworthy issue. Indeed, it seems doubtful that the panel would have reversed under present circuit law if they had discovered the transcript correction which disclosed that the judge had determined Dayton understood the nature of the charge. However, the affirmance of Dayton’s conviction merely furnished the occasion for the majority’s departure, and the purpose of this dissent is not to differ with the outcome of Dayton’s appeal, but to record our opposition to our brothers’ change of direction.
b.
To the extent our prior holdings have on a per se basis either prescribed or proscribed recitations and responses in the guilty plea dialogue that were neither mandated nor forbidden by the words of Rule 11, we agree that our precedents sweep more broadly than McCarthy requires and that those precedents should now be rejected. Such shadings of broad terminology are interstices we are expected to fill. Where Rule 11 has created no specific per se standard, an ad hoc approach to each case is preferable.
II.
Respectfully, however, we disagree with the majority’s decision that Rule 11 does *948not mandate literal compliance with its requirements on the basis of their interpretation of the effect of the amendments to that rule. As they concede, McCarthy holds that “any noncompliance with Rule 11 constitutes reversible error.” Yet, they conclude that, after the same Supreme Court and the Congress acted to make Rule ll’s procedures more precise — an amendment obviously made with McCarthy in mind as the controlling precedent — the mandate of McCarthy somehow was weakened. Reasoning ipse dixit, the majority states “[njothing from above requires us to view fallings off from post-McCarthy additions to the rule as meriting automatic reversal.”
, McCarthy states categorically, “prejudice inheres in a failure to comply with Rule 11, for noncompliance deprives the defendant of the Rule’s procedural safeguards that are designed to facilitate a more accurate determination of the voluntariness of the plea.” Most recently, in Timmreck, the Supreme Court reasoned- that a collateral attack on a guilty plea could not be maintained on the basis of a technical violation of Rule 11 because McCarthy allows such technicalities to be raised on direct appeal. The majority says this language is “arguably dictum and somewhat ambiguous.” We cannot read it so.1 To us, Timmreck clearly stands for the proposition that McCarthy continues to command what it mandated on the day it was decided: strait compliance with all procedures demanded by Rule 11. Its prophylaxis must be used full strength to be effective.
Today’s retreat from exacting full compliance with Rule 11 seems to be based upon a reluctance to impose on fellow judges requirements the majority regards as ritualistic. We respectfully submit that such a reluctance will prove to be counter-productive. Faithful adherence to the requirements of Rule 11 creates a record that, in the long run, maps the shortest way home not just for appellate courts but for trial courts too. It permits appellate courts to ascertain that defendants who entered guilty pleas did so advisedly and district judges to know what they must and must not do in the plea procedure. The question is not whether we like Rule 11 or would have written it in its present form had the pen been ours. The job of this court is to enforce it as it is written in the light of the Supreme Court’s clear mandate that precise compliance is required.
Alone among the circuits that have considered the question,2 this court now refuses to require literal compliance with Rule 11. Professor Moore was, therefore, profoundly mistaken when he observed:
The question of failure to comply with Rule 11 requirements would not appear academic since the rule not only requires the court to determine that the plea is understood and voluntary, but it further recites the exact ritual to be observed and makes compliance mandatory.
R. 11, Moore’s Federal Practice, 111.03[1], pp. 11-64.
*949Our circuit has considered a number of appeals of guilty pleas in which the claim of failure to comply with Rule 11 was made.3 Yet the statistical facts demonstrate that our past requirements of exact compliance with Rule 11 have produced no burden on the administration of justice. According to the 1978 Annual Report of the Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, the cases of 11,743 criminal defendants were terminated in the Fifth Circuit during the 12 months ending June 30, 1978. (Table D-l). Applying the national rate of convictions, 79.5%, and the ratio of guilty pleas, 85.23%, (Table D — 4) to these terminations indicates that more than 7,900 guilty pleas must have been taken in this circuit during the past one-year period alone. Fewer than a dozen of these guilty plea proceedings have been set aside under McCarthy’s stricture4 and in only one of them would that result have been altered by the adoption of the standard today announced.5
With today’s new layering of Rule 11 into “pre-McCarthy” and “post-McCarthy” requirements, the court is plunged into a record-by-record, sentence-by-sentence analysis of every appeal following a guilty plea. The substitution of this procedure is neither fair to the defendant who was supposed to receive the recorded protection of Rule ll’s more precise provisos nor is it good judicial administration. Given the lights we have, we respectfully dissent from the portions of the majority’s opinion in which it concludes that substantial compliance with Rule 11 is enough.6
III.
We remain not only bound, but convinced, by McCarthy’s reasoning:
Our holding that a defendant whose plea has been accepted in violation of Rule 11 should be afforded the opportunity to plead anew not only will insure that every accused is afforded those procedural safeguards, but also will help reduce the great waste of judicial resources required to process the frivolous attacks on guilty plea convictions that are encouraged, and are more difficult to dispose of when the original record is inadequate.
The en banc majority now impresses a harmless error analysis on future Rule 11 *950cases in this circuit. Such an approach to constitutional or non-constitutional failure to comply with Rule 11 is diametrically contrary to McCarthy's holding that “prejudice inheres in a failure to comply with Rule 11.” It is not meet for an inferior court to overrule Supreme Court precedent, and we disavow any part in this venture.

. The majority detects “a faint redolence of waiver” in the Supreme Court’s language. Whether or not this be true is beside the mark.

. See United States v. Cammisano, 8 Cir. 1979, 599 F.2d 851, 855; United States v. Fels, 7 Cir. 1979, 599 F.2d 142, 149 & fn. 5; United States v. Journet, 2 Cir. 1976, 544 F.2d 633, 634; United States v. Boone, 4 Cir. 1976, 543 F.2d 1090, 1092; United States v. O’Donnell, 9 Cir. 1976, 539 F.2d 1233, cert. denied, 429 U.S. 960, 97 S.Ct. 386, 50 L.Ed.2d 328. But see United States v. Dawkins, E.D.Pa.1978, 448 F.Supp. 1343, aftd 3 Cir., without published opinion, 577 F.2d 729 (deeming a failure to inform defendant of his right to cross-examine witnesses “insignificant”). One might wonder whether the Second Circuit’s devotion to literal compliance is unwavering. See United States v. Saft, 2 Cir. 1977, 558 F.2d 1073, 1080, and United States v. Michaelson, 2 Cir. 1977, 552 F.2d 472, 477, in which the Second Circuit, although expressly refusing to overrule Journet, rejected challenges to guilty pleas based on Rule 11. In each case the court explained its decision as being consistent with Journet on the basis of local practice, which made the 11(c)(5) warnings unnecessary, and of the peculiar facts of the cases, which made it clear that the rights not explicitly mentioned by the court were understood by the defendant to be included in his right to a jury trial. Compare Judge Wisdom’s comment in United States v. Adams, 5 Cir. 1978, 566 F.2d 962, 964 n.2, interpreting these cases as authorizing “certain slight deviations from strict compliance with Rule 11.”

. See, e. g., United States v. Benavides, 5 Cir. 1979, 596 F.2d 137; United States v. Sanderson, 5 Cir. 1979, 595 F.2d 1021; United States v. Cobos, 5 Cir. 1979, 590 F.2d 1338; United States v. Kahn, 5 Cir. 1979, 588 F.2d 964; United States v. Taylor, 5 Cir. 1978, 583 F.2d 178; United States v. Broussard, 5 Cir. 1978, 582 F.2d 10.

. There are ten reported decisions, but some involve consolidated cases. See United States v. Benavides, 5 Cir. 1979, 596 F.2d 137; United States v. Cobos, 5 Cir. 1979, 590 F.2d 1338; United States v. Kahn, 5 Cir. 1979, 588 F.2d 964; United States v. Boatright, 5 Cir. 1979, 588 F.2d 471; United States v. Gray, 5 Cir. 1978, 584 F.2d 96; United States v. Clark, 5 Cir. 1978, 574 F.2d 1357; United States v. Lincecum, 5 Cir. 1978, 568 F.2d 1229; United States v. Adams, 5 Cir. 1978, 566 F.2d 962; United States v. Hart, 5 Cir. 1978, 566 F.2d 977; Government of Canal Zone v. Tobar T., 5 Cir. 1978, 565 F.2d 1321. Subsequent developments reduced even further the number of cases that reached trial. Two of the defendants whose pleas were set aside promptly pleaded guilty again after the case was remanded. After remand three other indictments were dismissed by government motion.

. See United States v. Hart, 5 Cir. 1978, 566 F.2d 977. To the extent that the majority’s opinion not only establishes a new standard for reviewing violations of post-amendment additions to Rule 11, but also rewrites the judicial gloss placed on pre-amendment Rule 11 by such cases as Sierra v. Government of Canal Zone, 5 Cir. 1977, 546 F.2d 77, the impact of the opinion on our prior decisions would be greater.

. For example, the rule requires that the court address the defendant personally in open session and inform him, and determine that he understands each of the matters enumerated in subparagraphs (l)-(5) of paragraph (c). It also specifies that the court address the defendant personally in open court and determine that the plea is voluntary as provided in paragraph (d). The rule is similarly exact in its paragraph (e) requirement that inquiry must be made by the court as to plea discussions, and in paragraph (f) that inquiry by the court must satisfy itself that there is a factual basis for the plea. We would continue to read McCarthy’s gloss on Rule 11 to require the court do each (not some or most) of these things itself, not by proxy— sore throat or no.