Court Opinion

ID: 9795565
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:31:32.01693+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:30:18.739394
License: Public Domain

Agosti, J.,
with whom Rose and Leavitt, JJ., agree, concurring:
I agree with the majority that the State has an obligation to prove the prior convictions upon which it relies to enhance Hudson’s conviction for possession of a controlled substance. I agree with the majority that the district court did have jurisdiction over the charges against Hudson of causing substantial bodily harm while driving under the influence of a controlled substance. I agree with the majority that the district court’s denial of the petition was error as it relates to Hudson’s guilty pleas, but I disagree with its reasons why.
I disagree with the majority’s proposition that under the “totality of the circumstances” Hudson’s guilty pleas were entered freely and voluntarily. The district court failed in its colloquy with Hudson, at the moment of his entry of guilty pleas to extremely serious charges, to ask Hudson if he understood any of his con*402stitutional rights and if he voluntarily waived any of these critical rights. The district court failed to advise Hudson of the elements of the offenses to which he was pleading guilty. The district court failed to advise Hudson as to the consequences of his guilty pleas. The district court failed to advise Hudson of the maximum and minimum sentences that applied to each charge. The district court failed to ask whether Hudson had voluntarily signed the guilty plea agreement. The district court failed to make a finding concerning whether Hudson’s guilty pleas were knowingly entered.
And yet, under all these circumstances, the majority clings to the principle that if these matters are properly set out in a written plea agreement, a defendant’s plea of guilty can be found to be blowing, voluntary and intelligent. If such were the case here, the majority would affirm Hudson’s convictions based upon its decision in State v. Freese.1 I dissented from the majority in Freese, and for the same reasons stated there, I continue to disagree with the majority’s analysis here.
The majority correctly determined that while Hudson had been properly advised of the possible sentences when he entered his not guilty pleas, the district court was still obliged to advise him again, when Hudson withdrew his not guilty pleas and entered his pleas of guilty, of the possible sentences he faced. The majority acknowledged that Hudson, because of the inconsistency in the plea agreement, did not understand the consequences of his pleas. The majority concluded, therefore, that while Hudson’s pleas were “freely entered and made on a voluntary basis,” they were not knowingly entered.
As I noted in my dissent in Freese, the district court is constitutionally required to determine that a defendant’s guilty plea is knowing, voluntary and intelligent.2 If the majority takes “freely and voluntarily entered” to mean that Hudson’s guilty pleas were not coerced, it may be correct. However, the voluntariness of a plea involves more than a lack of coercion. I believe Hudson’s pleas of guilty were also involuntary and unintelligent because they were, as the majority concedes, unknowing. I question how one can voluntarily plead guilty if one does not know the applicable maximum possible sentence.
This case underscores the problem with the holding in Freese. The possibility of inconsistencies, wrong information, misleading information or incomplete information creeping into these word-processed, mass-produced plea agreements is not theoretical, it is actual. It happened here. In my experience as a trial judge, it happens frequently. Often, errors are identified and corrected. Sometimes they are not. The majority must recognize the peril of *403allowing district judges to abandon their traditional, thorough canvass of a defendant because the majority specifically encourages the district judges not to rely upon a plea memorandum but to conduct a thorough canvass of their own.
I am not content merely to encourage, as good and expedient practice, the district judges to conduct a thorough canvass. I would require it.

 116 Nev. 1097, 13 P.3d 442 (2000) (Agosti, J., dissenting).

Id. at 1108, 13 P.3d at 449 (Agosti, J., dissenting).