Court Opinion

ID: 9426462
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:18:04.413342+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:01.099355
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice White,
with whom Mr. Justice Stewart, Mr. Justice Blackmun, and Mr. Justice Powell join, concurring.
There are essentially two ways under our system of criminal justice in which the factual guilt of a defendant may be-established such that he may be deprived of his *648liberty consistent with the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The first is by a verdict of a jury which, or a decision of a judge who, concludes after trial that the elements of the crime have been proved beyond a reasonable doubt. The second is by the defendant’s own solemn admission “in open court that he is in fact guilty of the offense with which he is charged,” Tollett v. Henderson, 411 U. S. 258, 267 (1973) (emphasis added), i. e., by a plea of guilty. The Court has repeatedly emphasized that “a guilty plea for federal purposes is a judicial admission of guilt conclusively establishing a defendant’s factual guilt.” Lefkowitz v. Newsome, 420 U. S. 283, 299 (1975) (White, J., dissenting) (emphasis added). We said in Brady v. United States, 397 U. S. 742, 748 (1970), that “central to the plea and the foundation for entering judgment against the defendant is the defendant’s admission in open court that he committed the acts charged in the indictment.” In McMann v. Richardson, 397 U. S. 759, 773 (1970), we said that the defendant who pleads guilty is “convicted on his counseled admission in open court that he committed the crime charged against him”; and that “'[a] conviction after a plea of guilty normally rests bn the defendant’s own admission in open court that he committed the acts with which he is charged.” Id., at 766.1 (Emphasis added.)
*649The problem in this case is that the defendant’s guilt has been established neither by a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt after trial nor by the defendant’s own admission that he is in fact guilty. The defendant did not expressly admit that he intended the victim’s death (such intent being an element of the crime for which he stands convicted); and his plea of guilty cannot be construed as an implied admission that he intended her death because the District Court has found that he was not told and did not know that intent to kill was an element of the offense with which he was charged.2
*650Accordingly, the best that can be said for the judgment of conviction entered against the defendant is that it rests on strong evidence- — -never presented to a trier of fact — or that it rests on the judgment of his lawyer that he would probably be convicted of second-degree murder if he went to trial. It should hardly need saying that a judgment of conviction cannot be entered against a defendant no matter how strong the evidence is against him, unless that evidence has been presented to a jury (or a judge, if a jury is waived) and unless the jury (or judge) finds from that evidence that the defendant’s guilt has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt. It cannot be “harmless error” wholly to deny a defendant a jury trial on one or all elements of the offense with which he is charged. Similarly, it is too late in the day to permit a guilty plea to be entered against a defendant solely on the consent of the defendant’s agent — his lawyer. Our cases make absolutely clear that the choice to plead guilty must be the defendant’s: it is he who must be informed of the consequences of his plea and what it is that he waives when he pleads, Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U. S. 238 (1969); and it is on his admission that he is in fact guilty that his conviction will rest.
In this case the defendant’s factual guilt of second-degree murder has never been established in any fashion permitted by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The dissent concedes that the conviction in this case was entered in violation of the United States Constitu*651tion. The dissent argues, however, that to set this defendant's conviction aside is to apply a new constitutional rule retroactively. The argument was not made by the petitioner in this case and is, in any event, untenable. In order to escape application of a constitutional rule to a particular criminal case, on nonretroactivity grounds, the State must point to a judicial decision occurring after the operative facts of the case in question clearly establishing the rule. The constitutional rule relevant to this case is that the defendant’s guilt is not deemed established by entry of a guilty plea, unless he either admits that he committed the crime charged, or enters his plea knowing what the elements of the crime charged are. If this is a new rule, created since the defendant entered his plea, I am at a loss to know what case, other than this one, established it. McCarthy v. United States, 394 U. S. 459 (1969), did not do so. That case involved only a construction of Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 11, and has no application to the States. Boykin v. Alabama, supra, did not do so. It does not mention the method of establishing the defendant’s factual guilt. The only case which arguably addresses the issue in this case is Brady v. United States, 397 U. S. 742, 749 n. 6, which observed in dictum: “[T]he importance of assuring that a defendant does not plead guilty except with a full understanding of the charges against him . . . was at the heart of our recent decisions in McCarthy v. United States, supra, and Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U. S. 238 (1969).” However, new rules of constitutional law are not established in dicta in footnotes. Either a new constitutional rule is being established in this case— in which event we will have to address at some future time the question whether this rule is retroactive — or, as I believe to be true, this case rests on the long-accepted principle that a guilty plea must provide a *652trustworthy basis for believing that the defendant is in fact guilty. If so, then the principle will and should govern all similar cases presented to us in the future. In any event, the judgment of the court below should be affirmed, and I join the opinion of the Court.

 There exists what may be viewed as a third method of establishing a defendant’s factual guilt. We have permitted judgment to be entered against a defendant on his intelligent plea of guilty accompanied by a claim of innocence. We said in North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U. S. 25, 37 (1970):
“[W]hile most pleas of guilty consist of both a waiver of trial and an express admission of guilt, the latter element is not a constitutional requisite to the imposition of criminal penalty. An individual accused of crime may voluntarily, knowingly, and understanding^ *649consent to the imposition of a prison sentence even if he is unwilling or unable to admit his participation in the acts constituting the crime.”
We held that where “a defendant intelligently concludes that his interests require entry of a guilty plea and the record before the judge contains strong evidence of actual guilt” a plea may be accepted even if accompanied by protestations of innocence. Ibid. (Emphasis added.) However, in that case the defendant pleaded guilty to second-degree murder after acknowledging that his “counsel had informed him of the difference between second- and first-degree murder.” Id., at 28-29. Alford is based on the fact that the defendant could intelligently have concluded that, whether he believed himself to be innocent and whether he could bring himself to admit guilt or not, the State's case against him was so strong that he would have been convicted anyway. Since such a defendant has every incentive to conclude otherwise, such a decision made after consultation with counsel is viewed as a sufficiently reliable substitute for a jury verdict that a judgment may be entered against the defendant. Plainly, a defendant cannot “intelligently” reach that conclusion if he does not know the elements of the crime to which he is pleading and therefore does not know what the State has to prove; and his ignorant decision to plead guilty under such circumstances is not a reliable indication that he is in fact guilty.

 This case is unusual in that the offense to which the defendant pleaded was not charged in the indictment. The indictment charged first-degree murder. The defendant pleaded guilty to the included offense of second-degree murder, the elements of which were not set forth in any document which had been read to the *650defendant or to which he had access. See McCarthy v. United States, 394 U. S. 459, 467 n. 20 (1969). In those eases in which the indictment is read to the defendant by the court at arraignment or at the time of his plea, his plea of guilty may well be deemed a factual admission that he did what he is charged with doing so- that a judgment of conviction may validly be entered against him.