Stevenson v. State

⁶³⁶ Gilbert, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The right to trial by jury and the concomitant right to plead not guilty, thus requiring the State to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, are so fundamentally ingrained in our law as not to require support by citation of authority. Not quite so well established, but recognized as a basic principle, is the opportunity for an accused to plead guilty. Such a plea is, as we have indicated, an opportunity, not a right.

Indeed, the court may refuse to accept a plea of guilty, enter a plea of not guilty, and direct the question of guilt vel non to be adjudicated. Md. Rule 731 c. 1 Furthermore, the court is empowered, “when justice requires,” to strike a guilty plea anytime before sentencing, Rule 731 fl, and under certain conditions, within three (3) days after sentence. Rule 731 f2. 2 Ordinarily, when a plea of guilty is tendered and accepted, 3 the case proceeds on a statement of fact, which, so long as the dictates of Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U. S. 238 , 89 S. Ct. 1709 , 23 L.Ed.2d 274 (1969); Davis v. State, 278 Md. 103 , 361 A. 2d 113 (1976); and Miller v. State, 32 Md. App. 482 , 361 A. 2d 152 (1976) are satiated, is legally sufficient. There is, however, a new specie of plea that the prosecution and the criminal defense bar have been utilizing with growing frequency.

We refer to the “plea of not guilty upon an agreed statement of fact.” That hybrid of a plea finds no express support in the Rules relative to Criminal Causes, ch. 700. 4 ⁶³⁷ This appeal seeks to raise the question of whether the trial judge must accept such a plea. 5 The posture of the case as it reaches us, however, precludes our undertaking to answer that cryptogenic quandary. We now explain why we are so estopped. Jewel Ann Stevenson, appellant, was charged on two (2) indictments with receiving stolen goods and forgery. She initially sought to enter a plea of not guilty and to submit the issue on an agreed statement of fact to Judge John R. Hargrove in the Criminal Court of Baltimore.

Judge Hargrove refused to hear the case in that manner. Appellant’s attorney protested the trial judge’s declination to proceed on the proposed basis, questioned the possibility of an immediate appeal, but ultimately pled his client guilty to the first counts of each indictment. Judge Hargrove sentenced appellant to concurrent three year terms of incarceration. In this Court, appellant poses the following questions to us: “1.

Does the trial court have the right to refuse to hear a case on an agreed and stipulated statement of fact pursuant to a plea of not guilty? 2. Did the appellant’s subsequent guilty plea lack the essential voluntariness and unconditionality because the court refused to accept a plea of not guilty on an agreed stipulated statement of fact?” By the plea of guilty subsequent to the aborted effort to proceed by way of a plea of not guilty on “an agreed and stipulated statement of fact,” 6 the appellant has removed ⁶³⁸ the first question from our consideration. This is so because a plea of guilty eliminates all defects in the proceeding except those that go to the jurisdiction of the court. 7 Deyermond v. State, 19 Md. App. 698 , 313 A. 2d 709 (1974); Waller v. State, 13 Md. App. 615 , 284 A. 2d 446 (1971); Fix v. State, 5 Md. App. 703 , 249 A. 2d 224 (1969). Nevertheless, the propriety of the acceptance of the plea, measured by a constitutional yardstick, is subject to appellate review.

English v. State, 16 Md. App. 439 , 298 A. 2d 464 (1973). See also Davis v. State, 278 Md. 103 , 361 A. 2d 113 (1976). We shall turn then to appellant’s second issue and gauge her plea of guilty by the strictures of the Constitution as pronounced by the Supreme Court of the United States in Boykin v. Alabama, supra, and explicated by the Court of Appeals in Davis v. State, 278 Md. at 114 , 361 A. 2d at 119. There, Judge Digges, writing for the Court, said: “[W]e conclude that Boykin does not stand for the proposition that the due process clause requires state trial courts to specifically enumerate certain rights, or go through any particular litany, before accepting a defendant’s guilty plea; rather, we think Boykin merely holds that the record must affirmatively disclose that the accused entered his confession of guilt voluntarily and understanding^.” 8 See Edwards v. State, 32 Md. App. 398 , 361 A. 2d 131 (1976).

An examination of the record of the