Court Opinion

ID: 9457839
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:34:36.222979+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:31.813330
License: Public Domain

ELY, Circuit Judge
(concurring):
I concur in the result. When, on October 22, 1970, the district judge stated that the appellant’s plea of guilty would not be accepted, he apparently granted a continuance to allow time for the preparation for the defense. Not at that time, nor at any time prior to trial on the original indictment, did Pineda-Espi-noza protest the District Court’s rejection of his tendered plea. The trial did not commence until October 27, 1970. In these circumstances, there is the unmistakable inference that the appellant acquiesced in the court’s refusal to accept his plea of guilty to the less severe offense. If the record disclosed, as it does not, that the plea of guilty was tendered as a result of plea bargaining, then it is my opinion that the court might have appropriately accepted the plea, despite Pineda-Espinoza’s insistence that he was ignorant of the nature of the material which he possessed. All doubts might have been eliminated had the court carried his Rule 11 inquiry a bit further so as to have been made aware, if such were the fact, that Pine-da-Espinoza had understandably chosen to enter the plea to the lesser offense so as to avoid the risk of conviction on those charged offenses which were more *500severe. See North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25, 37-38, 91 S.Ct. 160, 27 L. Ed.2d 162 (1970); cf., McCarthy v. United States, 394 U.S. 459, 464-467, 470-471, 89 S.Ct. 1166, 22 L.Ed.2d 418 (1969).