Court Opinion

ID: 9454871
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:02:39.160852+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:21.594576
License: Public Domain

COLEMAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent from the denial of an en banc consideration of this case.
Schnautz pleaded guilty in the state court. He was a narcotics addict, but for three days previously had received no narcotics. The panel opinion, dated September 11, 1969, concedes that after “a full and fair hearing” the state court found the plea to have been “wholly voluntary”. The District Court found likewise. Nevertheless, the plea is now invalidated in an opinion which shuns any assertion that these findings were clearly erroneous. The findings are brushed aside on the premise that under the circumstances the state trial judge should have questioned Schnautz as to his understanding of the charge and the voluntariness of the plea.
If such abstinence, standing alone, is of itself enough to destroy the findings of two judges, one state and one federal, then I must ask what the suggested questions and answers would have been worth. Under the rationale of this decision they could not have been worth any more than the response to the inquiry as to how the defendant wished to plead. Moreover, if Schnautz had pleaded guilty at a time when he was under the influence of narcotics that plea most certainly would have been set aside.
The result of this non sequitur is that once again the federal courts move in to render ineffectual the efforts of the state courts to perform the functions confided to them. To this I am unalterably opposed.
The federal courts must be vigilant to protect the constitutional rights of all citizens. They are not justified, in the absence of further facts, in destroying a guilty plea on the fiat that when an addict pleads guilty after three days abstention the plea must be supported by responses given to other questions while the defendant is in the same condition
I respectfully dissent.