Court Opinion

ID: 9465813
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 00:56:26.274502+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:23.048087
License: Public Domain

PELL, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I am not unmindful that the purpose of Rule 11 is to provide procedural safeguards to facilitate a more accurate determination of the voluntariness of a guilty plea. McCarthy v. United States, 394 U.S. 459, 471-72, 89 S.Ct. 1166, 22 L.Ed.2d 418 (1969). Nevertheless, it strikes me as unfortunate that in a case such as the present one where I can perceive no reasonable basis whatsoever for thinking that all three defendants who were represented by retained counsel did not knowingly and voluntarily plead guilty to the crimes of which they were obviously guilty, we must send the case back to a court with an overcrowded docket for a rerun of what should have been final judgments.
While I would agree that there should be substantial compliance with the requirements of Rule 11, the purpose of doing so is to be certain, both to the judge receiving the plea and to a reviewing court, that the plea was truly voluntary. To accomplish this would not seem to require a slavish and hypertechnical ritualistic enunciation of every facet of the Rule if in the process of personally addressing the pleader there is a sufficient development of facts to show that the pleader knows what he is doing and is doing so voluntarily. I think that situation existed here.
The judge made it quite clear that what he was saying was meant for all three. All were standing in front of the judge with retained counsel. The matter of negotiations with the prosecutor was explored and there is no contention that the pleaders were in any way misled or prejudiced as a result of these negotiations. The record remains silent also as to any contention that any of the pleaders had been subjected to any force or threats or had received any promises to induce any of them to plead guilty. The reversal here is quite simply primarily because the judge apparently overlooked asking about force, threats, and promises. The entire colloquy though, from my reading of the transcript, adequately should have demonstrated to the trial judge, particularly in view of the freely admitted participation in the crimes charged, that these people with their retained counsel present were not acting other than voluntarily. For that reason I would affirm the judgments based upon the guilty pleas and accordingly I respectfully dissent.
Having said that, I must also say that until the case law gives more attention to what is patent as to voluntariness from all that occurred at the plea session and less attention to a requirement of a literal and woodenly undeviating pronouncement of each part of Rule 11, district court judges, to avoid the result that has occurred in this case, should vocalize each point and aspect of Rule 11, this litany to be personally and completely addressed to each defendant where there are more than one and, further, the judges should see to it that the appropriate responses are made for the record, and this should be done notwithstanding that the judge, as well as everyone else connected with the case, is fully aware that the plea is being made voluntarily in every sense of that word. This is, as Chief Justice Warren said a decade ago in McCarthy, nothing more than a matter of “district judges [taking] the few minutes necessary to inform them of their rights and to determine whether they understand the action they are taking.” 394 U.S. at 472, 89 S.Ct. at 1174.