Lee v. State

Moylan, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. If the appellant were to prevail on this appeal, the criminal trial process would be caught in a “Catch 22” 1 wherein it could move neither forward nor back. ²⁵⁰ The appellant, Mrs. Frances Irene Lee, was convicted in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County by a jury, presided over by Judge Richard B. Latham, of assault with intent to maim and the use of a handgun in the commission of a felony. Upon this appeal, she raises the single contention that the trial judge committed constitutional error when he refused to accept her proffered guilty plea and encouraged her to go forward with a trial upon the merits. Prior to trial, the appellant had entered into a “plea bargain” with the State, whereunder the appellant would plead guilty to the charge of assault with intent to murder and the State would nolle pros the remaining counts of 1) assault with intent to maim, 2) assault and battery, 3) simple assault and 4) the use of a handgun in the commission of a felony.

When the plea was tendered in court, Judge John F. McAuliffe was meticulously solicitous of the appellant’s rights as he sought to explore the voluntariness of the guilty plea. After probing the routine questions as to the waiver of constitutional trial rights, Judge McAuliffe asked the appellant if she had assaulted anyone. She replied that she had — but with no intention of committing murder. Judge McAuliffe then asked, “Then why do you want to plead guilty to it?” Appellant’s counsel explained that the plea was being made under the guidelines of North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U. S. 25 , 91 S. Ct. 160 . 27 L.Ed.2d 162 (1970), whereunder a defendant may proclaim innocence and yet enter a guilty plea in order to negate the threat of greater punishment.

The possibility of greater punishment in this case stemmed from the handgun charge which carried a mandatory minimum five-year sentence. Notwithstanding this articulation of defense strategy, Judge McAuliffe tried to communicate the thought that if one had a good defense to ²⁵¹ the underlying felony and persuaded the fact finder in that regard, then the charge of committing a felony with a handgun would, of necessity, fall with it. The following colloquy took place: “MR. LAMBETH: Your honor, this is an Alford plea.

The State has the fifth count of the indictment, which would mean, I explained to Mrs. Lee, an automatic five-year imprisonment for the commission of a felony with a handgun, and, faced with that, we decided that the guilty plea to the first count, which was the only count that was offered us, was the best way to do it. THE COURT: Where is the State going to get a felony if they can’t get a specific intent crime out of this? MR. LAMBETH: As I read the cases, shooting a person is an implication you intended to murder them, no matter if you intended to kill them.

THE COURT: Well, directing a firearm at a vital point of the body and pulling the trigger certainly may permit such an inference that you intended to kill them or do grievous bodily harm, but that is not an inference that cannot be overcome. Suppose the jury believes you that you didn’t intend to hurt anybody or kill or maim him. THE DEFENDANT: Your Honor, I didn’t intend to even shoot him, but when he stepped toward me I didn’t know what Mr. Stewart was going to do. I thought he was going to strike me or something, and I pulled the handgun, but I didn’t intend to kill him.

It was not my intention to go out there and kill him in the first place, just to go out and talk to him. THE COURT: Do you understand that one of the charges that the State has against you is a charge which could result in your getting an automatic minimum of five years in prison? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir. ²⁵² THE COURT: That is the use of a handgun in the commission of a felony. THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir.

THE COURT: Do you understand that if you did not commit a felony you couldn’t be found guilty of that, even though you used a handgun? Do you understand that? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir.” Judge McAuliffe then went right to the nub of the matter and received the following response: “THE COURT: Wouldn’t you be more satisfied by taking your chances with a trial? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir.” Under the circumstances, Judge McAuliffe refused to accept the plea of guilty: “THE COURT: The Court will decline to accept a plea of guilty.

Set the matter in for trial. Withdraw the plea of guilty to the first count and enter a plea of not guilty to all counts. Counsel, I’m not going to accept the plea of guilty. It would be impossible to sentence this lady, even on an Alford type plea, where she is denying the very thing that she wants to plead guilty to.

How can the Court sentence under those circumstances? I think she is entitled to a trial, and if the State can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she had a specific intent at the time she did this, so be it. At least the die will be cast and the judge who hears this case will know all the facts and circumstances and know what the trier of fact determines really happens. Certainly, she takes a risk of a mandatory five-year sentence, but she understands that.

MR. LAMBETH: I have explained that to her, and in my conversations with her she doesn’t want to take that risk. THE COURT: She just told me she did. ²⁵³ MR. LAMBETH: I know she did, but I don’t know if that is what she meant.

THE COURT: You are going to have to be ironclad, absolutely definite and certain with me you don’t want to take that risk before I accept a plea of guilty.” Defense counsel persisted and asked Judge McAuliffe to question the appellant further. Judge McAuliffe was particularly solicitous as to whether the appellant was making “an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right” 2 because he had developed the fact that she had only completed the ninth grade and the further fact that she had been treated by a county psychiatrist during the years 1972 through 1975. He asked the following question and received the following response: “THE COURT: Do you understand what we are doing, Mrs. Lee? THE DEFENDANT: No, sir.” Questioning whether the relinquishment of the right to stand trial was truly the appellant’s clear choice of action, he probed further: “THE COURT: I am not satisfied that you really want to plead guilty to assault with intent to murder.

Do you understand that? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir. THE COURT: It seems to me you would rather have a trial on that, from what you told me, is that right? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir.

THE COURT: Well, I’m going to give you a trial. I will give you a chance to tell the jury.” Judge McAuliffe then declined to accept the guilty plea and the case was set in for a jury trial before Judge Latham. ²⁵⁴ Out of such raw material, the appellant has now spun a remarkable argument. She contends that “she was forced to trial when the court rejected her plea of guilty.” She claims that the rejection of her guilty plea “was not based upon a sufficient factual basis, but was a decision in which the court substituted its own spur-of-the-moment personal view (without an evidentiary hearing) for that-of the appellant.” She bases her present claim to the effect that she suffered “a violation of her rights under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution” upon the fact that she “did not really understand what was happening.” She claims that the trial judge should not have permitted her to elect to stand trial when it “was obvious that the appellant became confused and did not really understand the process, having never participated in a trial before her present experience.” She claims that the election to stand trial was invalid because “it is obvious that the appellant was completely confused. All of her answers were two word responses, one ‘No, sir’ and the rest, ‘Yes sirs’.” The appellant claims, in effect, that she did not knowingly and intelligently waive her “constitutional right” to enter a guilty plea and that when her guilty plea was rejected, she was thereby denied due process of law.

The appellant’s thesis must be denied for any of four closely related reasons, which are, in ascending order of persuasiveness: 1) it has no basis in logic; 2) it has no basis in federal constitutional law; 3) it is flatly contrary to both Maryland law and to Maryland’s interpretation of federal constitutional law; and 4) it is inherently preposterous. 1. An Affirmative Right Does Not Imply Its Converse The appellant, who because trial decisions are presumptively correct bears the burden of proof at this level, offers no authority — constitutional, statutory or decisional — to support her proposition that there is a constitutional right to have a guilty plea accepted. She reasons purely from logic that the existence of the right to stand trial necessarily implies the existence of a correlative right not to stand trial; which is to say, the right to due process implies the right to ²⁵⁵ be free of due process. The proposition will not hold water either in logic or in American constitutional experience.

The existence of “A” does not imply the existence of “non-A”. It rather tells us nothing whatsoever about whether “non-A” exists or not. Chief Justice Warren said as much for a unanimous Supreme Court in Singer v. United States, 380 U. S. 24, 34-35 , 85 S. Ct. 783 , 13 L.Ed.2d 630, 638 (1965): “The ability to waive a constitutional right does not ordinarily carry with it the right to insist upon the opposite of that right.” The right to do something simply does not necessarily imply the right to do the opposite. When we sometimes lose our bearings, we must look for the seminal landmarks.

When the far-flung implications appear blurred, we must return to basics. The constitutional right which we are talking about, the full dimensions of which were painfully hammered out only over the course of decades, is the right to stand trial — with its full matrix of other necessarily engaged constitutional rights, including the right to trial by jury, Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145 , 88 S. Ct. 1444 , 20 L.Ed.2d 491 (1968); the right to be free of compelled self-incrimination, Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U. S. 1 , 84 S. Ct. 1489 , 12 L.Ed.2d 653 (1964); the right to confront one’s accusers, Pointer v. Texas, 380 U. S. 400 , 85 S. Ct. 1065 , 13 L.Ed.2d 923 (1965); the right to the assistance of counsel, Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335 , 83 S. Ct. 792 , 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963); etc., etc. This is the fundamental trial process wherein we, as a people, have lodged our faith that justice will fairly be done. The judgment may be hard; it may be soft; we demand only that it be justly arrived at. The constitutional right which is the foundation of our discussion is the affirmative guarantee of a full and fair trial and not some negative reflection thereof.

It is the right to stand trial and not the right not to stand trial. A rapid running of the Bill of Rights makes this truth self-evident. The right not to have troops quartered in one’s ²⁵⁶ private home except in time of war does not imply the equal and correlative right to have them so quartered. The right to bear arms does not imply the equal and correlative right to be excused from bearing arms.

The right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure does not imply the equal and correlative right to be subjected to unreasonable search and seizure. The right to be indicted by a grand jury does not imply the equal and correlative right not to be indicted by a grand jury. The right to be free of double jeopardy does not imply the equal and correlative right to be subjected to double jeopardy. The right not to be compelled to be a witness against one’s self does not imply the equal and correlative right to be a witness against one’s self. 3 The right to a public trial does not imply the equal and correlative right to a private trial. 4 The right to a speedy trial does not imply the equal and correlative right to a delayed trial.

The right to a jury trial does not imply the equal and correlative right to a non-jury trial. 5 The right to a jury drawn from the vicinage does not imply the equal and correlative right to a jury not from the vicinage. 6 The right to confront one’s accusers does not imply the equal and correlative right to be shielded from one’s accusers. 7 The right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment does not