Court Opinion

ID: 9483110
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:11:23.663159+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:25.796448
License: Public Domain

TANG, Circuit Judge,
dissenting, joined by Judges PREGERSON and NORRIS:
I wholeheartedly agree with Judge Pre-gerson’s discussion of the flaws in the majority’s analysis of Adams’ claim. The nature of the stipulation in this case belies the majority’s assertion that the judge merely inferred guilt. The stipulation established both facts and unavoidable legal conclusions. The stipulation admitted of no contrary inferences. The finding of guilt was ineluctable. While a strong argument can be made that Boykin does not apply when a stipulation permits conflicting inferences or alternative legal conclusions, that is not this case. Just like the guilty plea in Boykin, this stipulation was more than an admission that Adams committed various acts. “[I]t is itself a conviction; nothing remains but to give judgment and determine punishment.” Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238, 242, 89 S.Ct. 1709, 1711-12, 23 L.Ed.2d 274 (1969). To adopt the majority’s distinction is to engage in legalistic hair-splitting, and to exalt form over substance at the expense of constitutional rights.
I write separately simply to express my deep regret and frustration over the majority’s and concurrence’s talismanic devotion to “bright-line” rules. Bright lines are best left to computer programs and engineers’ blueprints. As tools of constitutional interpretation, they leave much to be desired. The Bill of Rights is a proud enunciation of enduring principles governing the relation between individuals and the government they created. It demeans our constitutional heritage to reduce the Bill of Rights to a formalistic matrix of bright-line rules, where deducing the answer to complex conflicts between the rights of the person and the needs of the state is as simple as turning a light switch on or off.
Moreover, the majority’s insistence that only the label “Guilty Plea”, at the top of a piece of paper can trigger Boykin’s constitutional protections abdicates to attorneys the judiciary’s traditional responsibility for determining what constitutional protections a criminal defendant enjoys. While an agreement may look like a guilty plea, sound like a guilty plea, smell like a guilty plea, and have the same practical effect as a guilty plea, judges of this court must now turn a blind eye to reality and defer to the characterization of the document imposed by the attorneys. Admittedly, the majority’s approach makes our job as judges much easier. But it does so at the expense of those individuals subject to government’s most awesome and frightening power to imprison and to sentence to death.
In sum, I cannot subscribe to the majority’s resolution of this case. I believe, like Judge Pregerson, that the same concerns animating the Supreme Court in Boykin obtain in the case of stipulated fact trials where the facts admit of only one verdict. To draw the line that the majority proposes will exalt form over substance and hinge constitutional rights on the labels employed by attorneys. More importantly, limiting Boykin to de jure, and not de facto, guilty *848pleas will invite abuse by prosecutors. Stipulated fact trials could be employed by prosecutors to evade the constitutional protections afforded defendants who plead guilty outright. Alas, the outcome will be the same — a guaranteed guilty verdict. Only the rights of the defendants will be changed.
I dissent.