Court Opinion

ID: 9733143
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:54:35.899045+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:38.696214
License: Public Domain

Shanahan, J.,
dissenting.
Tejral is another in the growing parade of this court’s decisions that a defendant faced with enhancement of penalty due to a prior plea-based conviction cannot inquire into the prior conviction to determine whether the defendant was *336informed and, therefore, intelligently and voluntarily waived the constitutional rights to a trial by jury and to confront accusers and the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, information which is essential to a defendant’s valid entry of a guilty plea in accordance with due process. See, Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238, 89 S. Ct. 1709, 23 L. Ed. 2d 274 (1969); State v. White, 238 Neb. 840, 472 N.W.2d 720 (1991); State v. Irish, 223 Neb. 814, 394 N.W.2d 879 (1986).
Reflected in Tejral is this court’s relentless reversion to a pre-Boykin-Irish presumption that a defendant represented by counsel at the time of a prior plea-based conviction has voluntarily and intelligently waived the constitutional rights mentioned in Boykin and Irish. As evidenced by Tejral, “Nebraska procedure lacks a method to judicially process a Boykin or Irish claim as an inquiry into the constitutional validity of a prior plea-based conviction used for enhancement of penalty and, hence, fails due process.” State v. Crane, antep. 32, 43, 480 N.W.2d 401, 407-08 (1992) (Shanahan, J., dissenting). See, also, State v. Johns, 233 Neb. 477, 445 N.W.2d 914 (1989) (Shanahan, J., dissenting); State v. Oliver, 230 Neb. 864, 434 N.W.2d 293 (1989) (Shanahan, J., dissenting).
There may be, however, eventual resolution to the deficiency of due process in Nebraska’s procedure or, more appropriately, lack of procedure pertaining to a constitutional inquiry into a prior plea-based conviction used for enhancement purposes. On March 2, 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in Raley v. Parke, 945 F.2d 137 (6th Cir. 1991), cert. granted 60 U.S.L.W. 3593 (U.S. Mar. 2, 1992) (No. 91-719), apparently on the question whether due process under the Fourteenth Amendment requires a state to prove compliance with Boykin for constitutional validity of a prior plea-based conviction used for enhancement, when the record for the prior conviction shows that the defendant was represented by counsel, but is silent concerning the colloquy required by Boykin for a constitutionally valid plea of guilty.
Thus, the Nebraska decisional parade continues along a route on which the U.S. Supreme Court will love the Nebraska parade, or rain on it. Time will tell. Meanwhile, I dissent to *337Tejral as a part of the swelling parade in the denial of due process through use of a prior and unconstitutional plea-based conviction for enhancement of penalty.