Court Opinion

ID: 9425245
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:10.993227+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:54.245051
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Marshall,
with whom Mr. Justice Douglas and Mr. Justice Brennan join,
dissenting.
I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals. I am convinced that Henderson amply demonstrated that he is entitled to relief on any acceptable theory of voluntariness, right to effective assistance of counsel, or waiver, and that no further proceedings are necessary. The Court adopts an inflexible rule in a case where, as the Court of Appeals noted, the facts establish a need for flexibility. 459 F. 2d 237, 242 n. 5 (CA6 1962). In doing so, it disregards this Court’s previous counsel that whether a defendant is to be precluded from establishing a claim that his constitutional rights have been infringed “must depend, in each case, upon the particular facts and circumstances surrounding that case,” Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458, 464 (1938).
The Court relies on the “guilty plea” trilogy, Brady v. United States, 397 U. S. 742 (1970), McMann v. *270Richardson, 397 U. S. 759 (1970), and Parker v. North Carolina, 397 U. S. 790 (1970). In each of those cases the Court held that a guilty plea, intelligently and voluntarily made, barred the assertion of later claims that at some point in the pretrial process, an admission of guilt had been unconstitutionally extracted, either through a coerced confession or through a plea of guilty induced by fear of enhanced punishment if such a plea were not made. In McMann, the Court summarized the view of the criminal process underlying those cases, stating, “In our view a defendant’s plea of guilty based on reasonably competent advice is an intelligent plea not open to attack on the ground that counsel may have misjudged the admissibility of the defendant’s confession.” 397 U. S., at 770.
The Court today extends that holding, so that, even where counsel does not consider and present to his client the possibility of a challenge to the composition of the grand jury, the client is nonetheless held to have made an “intelligent” guilty plea. I think that this extension of the “guilty plea” trilogy is misconceived. Those cases were concerned with the practical consequences of overturning negotiated pleas of guilty simply on the ground that the defense may have misjudged the possibility of successfully raising constitutional challenges to the pretrial proceedings. The Court recognized the importance of plea bargaining to the administration of criminal justice. See, e. g., Brady v. United States, supra, at 750-753. Promises of leniency, which the Court viewed as indistinguishable from the challenges in those cases, are used to induce defendants to forgo possibly meritorious challenges to the proceedings against them. This, the Court believed, permitted the imposition of punishment on offenders who deserved it, without significantly impairing the integrity of the criminal process by leaving unsanctioned all constitutional violations.
*271Whatever one may think of this analysis,1 it is plainly premised on the notion of bargain and exchange: in return for relinquishing a constitutional challenge, the offender receives more lenient treatment. Clearly, that decision must be made by the defendant, for we would not let an attorney bargain away his client’s rights.2 It is the defendant who must, “with the help of counsel, rationally weigh the advantages of going to trial against the advantages of pleading guilty.” Id., at 750. Yet nothing like that happened in this case. Henderson’s attorney never presented to him the possibility that, by insisting upon indictment by a properly composed grand jury, he might secure a more favorable bargain. See App. 83, 96.
The opinion of the Court devotes most of its attention to assertions and reassertions that in all cases a guilty plea “may not be vacated because the defendant was not advised of every conceivable constitutional plea in abatement he might have to the charge.” But the majority gives us almost no reason why those assertions should be accepted, and, with respect, I cannot accept them.
The Court invokes the specter of requiring counsel to present to his client “every conceivable constitutional *272plea in abatement,” suggesting, I suppose, that there are such a huge number of conceivable constitutional objections to the prosecution as to make such a requirement utterly impractical. I doubt that this accurately reflects the true situation; in most cases only one or two possibly meritorious objections to the prosecution can be made before trial. And, after all, these are objections bottomed on constitutional guarantees. I would have thought that the fact that the Constitution placed limits on the prosecution would be very important in deciding whether a lawyer’s professional responsibility required him to consult with his client before taking action that led to a relinquishment of the constitutional objection. Surely Brady implied as much in saying that guilty pleas, because they operate as a waiver of constitutional rights, “must be knowing, intelligent acts done with sufficient awareness of the relevant circumstances and likely consequences,” 397 U. S., at 748 (emphasis added). The Court today extends the holdings of the “guilty plea” trilogy without reference to the rationale by which those cases were reconciled with the requirements of the Constitution that a plea is a waiver of constitutional rights only where the defendant has been informed of those rights and decides not to invoke them in order to gain some advantage.
In the end, the Court seems to adopt a concept of professional responsibility that I cannot accept. It would let an attorney “advance” the interests of his client without even informing himself about the facts underlying a constitutional challenge so that he might inform the client about the way in which, in the attorney’s professional judgment, the course he is taking in fact advances those interests. “[F] aithful representation of the interest of his client,” ante, at 268, means, I believe, that an attorney must consult with the client fully on matters of constitutional magnitude. Without *273such consultation, the representation of criminal defendants becomes only another method of manipulating persons in situations where their control over their lives is precisely what is at stake.
If plea bargaining is to be constitutionally acceptable, it must rest upon personal choices made by defendants informed about possible alternatives; at least, they should know what- options are open to them. In this case, Henderson might have secured a sentence shorter than 99 years by requiring the State to defend the constitutionality of its procedures for selecting grand juries. As is clear from this record, such a defense could not have succeeded, and the embarrassment of attempting a defense might well have led the prosecution to offer a more favorable bargain.3 I find nothing in the opinion of the Court that persuades me that Henderson’s attorney acted “within the range of competence demanded of attorneys in criminal cases,” McMann v. Richardson, supra, at 771, because he did not consult with his client on a matter about which consultation is required.
Petitioner suggests, however, that Henderson’s attorney may have considered the possibility of challenging the indictment but rejected that course because he believed, that the grand jury was in fact selected by procedures that conformed to constitutional requirements. There is only the barest support in the record for this contention,4 and the District Judge explicitly found that *274no objection was made by counsel “quite simply, because the possibility never occurred to him.” 342 F. Supp. 113, 115. But even if petitioner’s suggestion were correct, it would not advance his cause. For then, as Judge Celebrezze aptly put it, the attorney’s decision would have been “grossly inadequate in light of the clearly established constitutional law of the period.” 459 F. 2d, at 242 n. 5.5
Henderson was indicted in March 1948 by a grand jury in Davidson County, Tennessee.6 Although Negroes constituted 25% of the population of the county in 1948, not a single Negro had served on the grand jury in the years before 1948.7 In addition, whenever the name of a Negro appeared on the lists from which members of the grand jury were chosen, the letters “c” or “col” were marked next to the name. In the words of the Court of Appeals, “officials were thus provided with a simple means of determining which citizens might be appropriately 'excused’ from grand jury duty. It is apparent from the absence of any Negroes on the grand jury panels that the means were used and the impermissible end of exclusion accomplished.” 459 F. 2d, at 239 n. 2.
Two points about these facts must be emphasized. First, the law was clear in 1948 that it was extremely difficult for a State to establish that it did not unconstitutionally exclude Negroes from service on the grand jury if no Negroes in fact served and a method of selection was used *275that brought to the attention of the persons selecting the grand jury the race of potential grand jurors. See, e. g., Patton v. Mississippi, 332 U. S. 463, 466 (1947); Hill v. Texas, 316 U. S. 400 (1942); Smith v. Texas, 311 U. S. 128 (1940). It was therefore relatively easy to assess whether, if an attorney could present that kind of evidence, a constitutional challenge to the indictment was likely to succeed. Thus, making the decision to challenge the grand jury is different from making the decision to challenge a confession as coerced or a search as unreasonable. The latter decision, as the Court emphasized in McMann v. Richardson, supra, at 769-770, often turns upon predictions about how certain facts will be viewed by a court attempting to apply largely unstructured tests of reasonableness or voluntariness under all the circumstances. I would therefore accord less weight to the fact that an attorney must make professional judgments in cases like this one than in cases like McMann, in line with the difference in the ease with which such judgments can confidently be made.
Second, it takes almost no inquiry at all to determine whether any Negroes had served on local grand juries and whether racial designations appeared on the lists from which grand jurors were chosen. In its quest to establish a general rule applicable to all cases of challenges to the composition of grand juries, the Court disregards this fact. Instead, it characterizes the problem as involving “amass [ing] a large quantum of factual data” and “elaborate consideration of whether pleas in abatement . . . might be factually supported.” Ante, at 268. Whatever might be the situation in other cases, the facts in this case show that no large amounts of data or elaborate consideration is involved. That is enough to demonstrate the fallacy of the Court’s attempt to define a broad general rule. I would adhere to tests *276that turn on the facts of each case. Cf. Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458 (1938).
The Court suggests that the failure by Henderson's attorney to consider the possibility of a constitutional challenge may' be excused because, in the words of a judge of the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals, 3 Tenn. Crim. App. 204, 211, 459 S. W. 2d 176, 179 (1970), “No lawyer in this State would have ever thought of objecting to the fact that Negroes did not serve on the Grand Jury in Tennessee in 1948.” That statement is simply untrue. Even cursory research has disclosed several cases at the appellate level in which such challenges were raised by local attorneys. Kennedy v. State, 186 Tenn. 310, 210 S. W. 2d 132 (1947); Williamson v. State, 194 Tenn. 341, 250 S. W. 2d 556 (1952);8 Beckett v. United States, 84 F. 2d 731 (CA6 1936). It may well be that Henderson “received the same advice on this point [that is, none at all] that he would have received from most other lawyers in Tennessee in 1948.” 459 F. 2d, at 242 n. 6. That should not exonerate Henderson's attorney, though; it reflects, as Judge Celebrezze said, “a too-long tolerated gap between the requirements of the Constitution and realities of Tennessee Criminal-practice.” Ibid. Determination of whether counsel is competent should not turn on the fact that many attorneys in a particular place at a given time would not think of raising certain claims. The test must be whether the advice was competent in light of the law of the time,9 and *277without regard to local peculiarities. Cf. United States ex rel. Goldsby v. Harpole, 263 F. 2d 71, 82 (CA5 1959) ; Window, v. Cook, 423 F. 2d 721 (CA5 1970).
If Henderson’s attorney had had even a passing acquaintance with the Tennessee Supreme Court’s decision in Kennedy v. State, supra, a decision plainly relevant to Henderson’s situation and recently decided, he would have immediately noticed that he had a very strong case. The Tennessee Supreme Court held that Kennedy had failed to prove his claim of unconstitutional discrimination in the selection of grand jurors. The court emphasized that the jury commissioners in Maury County selected names from tax books that “contained no identifying symbols whereby the race of any taxpayer might be known,” and that 10 persons of 109 summoned for jury service were Negroes. 186 Tenn., at 316, 210 S. W. 2d, at 134. An attorney of minimal competence would have realized that, where no Negroes had been summoned for service over many years and where racial designations were used, the Tennessee Supreme Court would very probably have held the selection system unconstitutional, in line with the decisions of this Court.10
*278I believe that the Court today adopts a rule that does not reflect the variety of circumstances in which claims like Henderson's arise. The Court's rule is particularly inappropriate in this very case. I therefore dissent.

 Mr. Justice Douglas, Mr. Justice Brennan, and I dissented in McMann and Parker, believing that guilty pleas were so prevalent that it did impair constitutional protections to permit a plea to bar challenges to the prosecution.

 Some of this Court’s decisions suggest that an attorney’s decision, in which the defendant does not participate, not to raise a constitutional objection may sometimes preclude successful reliance on the constitutional claim. See Henry v. Mississippi, 379 U. S. 443, 451 (1965); Brookhart v. Janis, 384 U. S. 1, 7-8 (1966). If such a rule is to be squarely adopted by this Court, it should be limited narrowly to situations in which practical realities bar consultation, as often may happen during the course of trial. Cf. Murch v. Mottram, 409 U. S. 41 (1972).

 Even if the State successfully defended its procedures in a preliminary attack, or if it decided to institute proceedings anew by convening a new grand jury, Henderson would have secured time in which to prepare a better defense and in which passions over his offense might subside, so that a plea of not guilty might have been more attractive to him.

 In a hearing held in state court on Henderson’s application for collateral relief, an affidavit from the attorney who had represented him was introduced. It stated in part, “I have never been aware of any irregularity in the method of selection of grand or petit juries, *274particularly in regard to systematic exclusion of members of any race . . . App. 96.

 In this regard the strictures in McMann v. Richardson, 397 U. S. 759, 772-773 (1970), against assessing decisions by counsel in the light of subsequent developments in the law have no force.

 Davidson County includes the city of Nashville.

 The first Negro to serve on the Davidson County grand jury was selected in 1953.

 The offense in this case occurred in 1949; the report does not indicate when the trial commenced. In its opinion, the Tennessee Supreme Court noted that “some months ago this Court reversed a conviction . . . because no members of the colored race were summoned for jury service.” 194 Tenn. 341, 346, 250 S. W. 2d 556, 558 (1952) (emphasis added).

 Including, of course, consideration of recent trends that might suggest fruitful attempts to raise claims rejected in decisions whose *277rationale has been undermined by later decisions. Cf. Tehan v. Shott, 382 U. S. 406 (1966); Milton v. Wainwright, 407 U. S. 371, 381-382 (Stewart, J., dissenting).

 Notwithstanding these differences between Kennedy and this case, petitioner suggests that it would have been “an exercise in futility” to have challenged the composition of the grand jury in this case. Brief for Petitioner 12. I would not lightly assume that a State’s highest court would disregard clear holdings, consistently reiterated, of this Court. But even if petitioner’s assessment is correct, it would further undercut extending the rationale of the “guilty plea” trilogy to this case. As I have said above, plea bargaining rests on an exchange. If the State refuses to acknowledge that it may have something to lose, by taking the position that state courts would fail to apply established constitutional standards to *278undisputed facts, no bargain is possible. In such a case, even on the rationale of the “guilty plea” cases, the plea would be involuntary.
Petitioner’s suggestion is of course premised on an estimate of how a competent attorney would have assessed the chances of prevailing on the constitutional challenge. Since Henderson’s attorney made no such assessment anyway, the suggestion has no relevance to this case.