Guilty plea

“ Nor can we perceive any material difference between a plea that refuses to admit commission of the criminal act and a plea containing a protestation of innocence when, as in the instant case, 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. Here the State had a strong case of first-degree murder against Alford. Whether he realized or disbelieved his guilt, he insisted on his plea because in his view he had absolutely nothing to gain by a trial and much to gain by pleading. ”

“ The Court's formalism is symptomatic of the desire to ignore entirely the motivational aspect of a decision to plead guilty. As long as counsel is present when the defendant pleads, the Court is apparently willing to assume that the government may inject virtually any influence into the process of deciding on a plea. However, as I demonstrated in Parker and Brady, this insistence upon ignoring the factors with which the prosecution confronts the defendant before he pleads departs broadly from the manner in which the voluntariness of guilty pleas has traditionally been approached. ”

“ United States, 201 F.2d 33, 36 (CA10 1952) .↑ Our holding does not mean that a trial judge must accept every constitutionally valid guilty plea merely because a defendant wishes so to plead. A criminal defendant does not have an absolute right under the Constitution to have his guilty plea accepted by the court, see Lynch v. Overholser, 369 U.S., at 719, 82 S.Ct., at 1072, 8 L.Ed.2d 211 (by implication) , although the States may by statute or otherwise confer such a right. Likewise, the States may bar their courts from accepting guilty pleas from any defendants who assert their innocence. ”

“ Gentlemen of the Jury,—The facts in this case are not disputed, and the defence, if my friend will allow me to say so, is so thin that I don't propose to waste the time of the Court by taking you over the evidence. The plea is one of temporary insanity. Well, gentlemen, I daresay it is clearer to me than it is to you why this rather—what shall we call it?—bizarre defence has been set up. The alternative would have been to plead guilty. Now, gentlemen, if the prisoner had pleaded guilty my friend would have had to rely on a simple appeal to his lordship. ”

“ Fed.Rule Crim.Proc. 11, governing pleas in federal courts, now makes clear that the sentencing judge must develop, on the record, the factual basis for the plea, as, for example, by having the accused describe the conduct that gave rise to the charge. [1] The plea must, of course, be voluntary and knowing and if it was induced by promises, the essence of those promises must in some way be made known. There is, of course, no absolute right to have a guilty plea accepted. ”

“ A defendant who seeks to overturn his guilty plea must therefore demonstrate the existence of a sufficient interrelationship or nexus between the plea and the antecedent confession so that the plea may be said to be infected by the State's prior illegal action. Thus to invalidate a guilty plea more must be shown than the mere existence of a coerced confession. The Court of Appeals so held; respondents do not disagree. The critical question, then, is what elements in addition to the coerced confession must be alleged and proved to demonstrate the invalidity of a guilty plea. ”

“ Therefore in a case where an accused agreed to plead guilty, although he had a valid defense, because he was offered probation, absence of counsel at the imposition of the deferred sentence might well result in loss of the right to appeal. While ordinarily appeals from a plea of guilty are less frequent than those following a trial on the merits, the incidence of improperly obtained guilty pleas is not so slight as to be capable of being characterized as de minimis. ”

“ Your client acknowledges that your client’s entry of a guilty plea to the charged offense authorizes the Court to impose any sentence, up to and including the statutory maximum sentence, which may be greater than the applicable Guidelines range. ”

“ MR. CHIEF JUSTICE. The law is clear that you cannot justify a libel.
MR. HAMILTON. I own that, may it please Your Honor, to be so. But, with submission, I understand the word “justify” there to be a justification by plea, as it is in the case upon an indictment for murder or an assault and battery. There the prisoner cannot justify, but pleads “Not guilty.” Yet it will not be denied but he may be, and always is, admitted to give the truth of the fact, or any other matter, in evidence, which goes to his acquittal. As in murder he may prove that it was in defense of his life, his house, etc. ”

“ Facing a lengthy trial against a better armed adversary, the temptation to recommend a guilty plea will be great. The result, if the defendant is convicted, will be a sense, often well grounded, that justice was not done. ”

“ The core justification for providing credit to an offender for pleading guilty is said to be the benefits that accrue to the criminal justice system and to its participants — what is referred to as the utilitarian value of an offender’s plea. ”

“ Furthermore, the legislatively ordained penalty scheme may affect any defendant, even one with respect to whom plea bargaining is wholly inappropriate because his guilt is uncertain. [13] Thus the penalty scheme presents a clear danger that the innocent, or those not clearly guilty, or those who insist upon their innocence, will be induced nevertheless to plead guilty. This hazard necessitates particularly sensitive scrutiny of the voluntariness of guilty pleas entered under this type of death penalty scheme. ”

“ Proc. § 733. 'There can be no trial on the merits without a plea of not guilty.' Id. § 801. Wharton: 'When brought to the bar in capital cases, and at strict practice in all cases whatever, the defendant is formally arraigned by the reading of the indictment and the calling on him for a plea. * * * The right of arraignment in a criminal trial may, in some cases, be waived, but a plea is always essential.' 1 Cr. ”

“ That burden is not fully discharged, nor is there any legal right to take the life of the accused, until guilt is made to appear from all the evidence in the case. The plea of not guilty is unlike a special plea in a civil action, which, admitting the case averred, seeks to establish substantive grounds of defense by a preponderance of evidence. ”

“ However important plea bargaining may be in the administration of criminal justice, our opinions have established that a guilty plea is a serious and sobering occasion inasmuch as it constitutes a waiver of the fundamental rights to a jury trial, Duncan v. ”

“ In our view a defendant's plea of guilty based on reasonably competent advice is an intelligent plea not open to attack on the ground that counsel may have misjudged the admissibility of the defendant's confession. ”

“ Finally, the Government maintains that the extensive practice of plea bargaining would, as a practical matter, wholly undermine victims' ability to recover fully for their losses because prosecutors often drop charges of which a defendant may be guilty in exchange for a plea to one or more of the other charges. ”

“ After conviction on such a plea, is a defendant entitled to a hearing, and to relief if his factual claims are accepted, when his petition for habeas corpus alleges that his confession was in fact coerced and that it motivated his plea? We think not if he alleges and proves no more than this.
Since we are dealing with a defendant who deems his confession crucial to the State's case against him and who would go to trial if he thought his chances of acquittal were good, his decision to plead guilty or not turns on whether he thinks the law will allow his confession to be used against him. ”

“ A challenge to a plea of guilty made by an indigent defendant, for whom no lawyer has been provided, on the ground that the plea was entered in reliance upon advice given by a government lawyer-agent, raises serious constitutional questions. ”

“ Without undertaking to catalog the various situations in which a lawyer could be of substantial assistance to a defendant in such a case, it can be reiterated that a plea of guilty might well be improperly obtained by the promise to have a defendant placed on the very probation the revocation of which furnishes the occasion for desiring to withdraw the plea. ”

“ Most incarcerations are upon pleas of guilty, and probably most such pleas have been made without the felt need of counsel. It is not for us to suggest that it might be desirable to offer to every accused who desires to plead guilty the opportunities for counsel and to enter with formality upon the record the deliberate disclaimer of his need for counsel because of a full appreciation of the meaning of a plea of guilty as expounded by responsible judges. ”

“ But the right of a court to refuse a plea of guilty is based on the principle that in a free society it is as important that the court make certain that the innocent go free as it is that the guilty be punished. This the court did here and decided that a just disposition of the case would not permit the entry of the plea of guilty. that the evidence of insanity was sufficient is not questioned. ”

“ I have taken into account the matters that were put before me in mitigation for these defendants. Some because of their ages or because they were privy to the arrangements at an earlier stage or to a greater degree than others can be considered more blameworthy than others. I accept that all the defendants who pleaded guilty are entitled to one-third discount for their plea, but having considered the mitigation advanced, I am of the view that no mitigation other than the plea of guilty is really available to them. ”

“ The court has already enlightened her respecting the sentence that will be imposed in the event of her pleading guilty of murder in the second degree. Whatever evidence might be adduced in her behalf at a trial, is certainly not to be weighed against her own voluntary and unconstrained confession. It would be contrary to public policy and to good morals for the court to seal the prisoner’s lips, as the district-attorney appears anxious to have it do. The clerk will now put the necessary inquiries to her; and if she elect to offer the plea in debate, the court will feel obliged to accept it. ”

“ If a recorded confession of every material everment of an indictment puts the confessor upon the country, the institution of jury trial and the legal effect and nature of a plea of guilty have been very imperfectly understood, not only by the authors of the constitution and their successors down to the present time, but also by all the generations of men who have lived under the common law. ”

“ In one such case, which went before the federal grand jury on such a plea of guilt, the jury, with all the facts before them, and with the defendant admitting guilt and pointing out and identifying the confiscated bottles and flasks, turned the prisoner loose as innocent, even though he insisted that he was guilty. ”

“ If the question of law be adjudged in favour of the accused, it is attended with the same results as an acquittal in fact, except that he may be indicted afresh for the same offence; but if the question be determined against the prisoner, the law, in its tenderness, will not allow him, at least in cases of felony, to be punished for his misapprehension of the law, or for his mistake in the conduct of his pleadings, but will, in such case, permit him to plead over to the indictment—that is, to plead not guilty; the consequences of which plea we will consider hereafter. ”

“ Our system assigns him a different mission. He must be and is interested in preventing the conviction of the innocent, but, absent a voluntary plea of guilty, we also insist that he defend his client whether he is innocent or guilty. ”

“ Upon imposition of the twenty year sentence, however, he vigorously protested, asked the court and the prosecuting attorney for a copy of the charge to which he had pleaded guilty, and, this request being refused, asked permission to withdraw his plea of guilty, requested appointment of an attorney to advice and assist him, and asked that he be given a proper opportunity to defend himself. ”

“ The views we have expressed would seem to be the necessary result of section 1032 of the Revised Statutes, which provides: 'When any person indicted for an offense against the United States, whether capital or otherwise, upon his arraignment stands mute or refuses to plead or answer thereto, it shall be the duty of the court to enter the plea of not guilty on his behalf in the same manner as if he had pleaded not guilty thereto. ”

“ Discount/Reduction of sentence for a plea of guilty and assistance to the prosecution
Plea of guilty
52. It is well established that a defendant who tenders a timely plea of guilty is entitled to a discount of one third from the sentence stipulated as the starting point for sentence. However, as the respondent submitted, that discount is afforded only to a defendant who “pleads guilty at the first opportunity”, see R v Chung Kin Wah [32] . ”

“ When the plea is to a named lesser included offense without the use of exceptions and substitutions, the defense counsel should provide a written revised specification accurately reflecting the plea and request that the revised specification be included in the record as an appellate exhibit. A plea of guilty to a lesser included offense does not bar the prosecution from proceeding on the offense as charged. ”