Court Opinion

ID: 9850311
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:55:06.089732+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:34.946080
License: Public Domain

STEWART, Justice
(concurring in result and concurring in the opinion in part):
I concur in Parts I and II of the plurality opinion, and I concur in the result of the opinion but on somewhat different grounds. The key question in this case is not the validity of the defendant’s plea of guilty, but the enforceability of the condition attached to the plea. The trial judge made an agreement with the defendant that he would plead guilty to a capital homicide charge and in return the trial judge would sentence the defendant to life imprisonment, a lawful sentence in a capital homicide case. The trial judge has now reneged on that agreement and given the defendant the choice of either withdrawing his guilty plea and pleading not guilty or of standing on his plea of guilty and going to a penalty hearing to determine whether he will be sentenced to death or life imprisonment. The defendant seeks to have the Court direct the trial court to sentence the defendant to life imprisonment pursuant to the terms of the agreement.
The issue is whether due process requires the trial court to perform the agreement and sentence the defendant to life imprisonment. In Santobello v. New York, 404 U.S. 257, 262, 92 S.Ct. 495, 498, 30 L.Ed.2d 427 (1971), the Supreme Court held with respect to a plea bargain broken by the government that it is for the state courts to determine whether a defendant is entitled to specific enforcement of the plea bargain or whether he is only entitled to withdraw his guilty plea and go to trial on the crime charged.
In the instant case the condition attached to the defendant’s guilty plea was proposed by the defendant, not the prosecutor or the trial judge. Although it was the defendant who was the prime mover in the whole affair, the prosecution clearly acquiesced in the agreement, at least as far as the record shows. Nevertheless, I submit that the trial judge’s decision to refuse to enforce the condition of the plea was not error in these circumstances. Rule 11 of the Utah Rules of Criminal Procedure states that even after a plea bargain has been accepted by the court, “if the judge decides that final disposition should not be handled in conformity with the plea agreement, he shall so advise the defendant and thus call upon the defendant to either affirm or withdraw his plea.” A number of reasons justify giving the trial judge such discretion up to the time of sentence. But after sentence has been pronounced, the trial judge may not then rescind the sentence, absent fraud or failure of the defendant to abide by the terms of the agreement. I do not believe that this rule violates the Due Process Clause under the ruling in Santo-bello, at least on the facts of this case.
*1310If the defendant withdraws his guilty plea, as he may do under the trial court’s order, he waives his right against double jeopardy and is no worse off than he was before he sought to protect himself from the death penalty by his aborted plea bargain, except that he has given a confession, which, for reasons explained by Justice Zimmerman, is not, in my view, prejudicial.