Court Opinion

ID: 9494614
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:42:18.634107+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:30.872901
License: Public Domain

ROSEN, District Judge,
concurring.
I fully concur in the majority’s opinion in all respects, but write separately only to *1043urge that with respect to the issue of the scope of the District Court’s discretion to reject nolo contendere pleas under Fed. R.Crim.P. 11(b), we should join those Circuits which hold that it is within a judge’s discretion to adopt a general policy against nolo pleas. See, e.g., United States v. Gratton, 525 F.2d 1161, 1163 (7th Cir.1975); United States v. Dorman, 496 F.2d 438, 440 (4th Cir.1974). Although I do not have such a blanket policy, it seems to me that the many sound reasons in favor of one — ranging from a judge’s belief that someone who is unwilling to fully confess guilt should not be permitted to plead guilty, to the view that, by accepting a nolo plea, the court is placing its imprimatur upon a fiction in order to assist a criminal defendant in avoiding civil liability — lead to the conclusion that the adoption of such a general policy is itself within a court’s broad discretion under Rule 11(b). These justifications remain valid — and, hence, a court’s discretionary authority is undiminished — even in those cases in which the government does not object to a nolo plea.