Turner v. State

MURPHY, Chief Judge. A jury in the Criminal Court of Baltimore convicted Ernest Turner of simple assault; it acquitted him of the crime of assault with intent to maim. The trial judge imposed a ten-year sentence. The judgment was affirmed on appeal to the Court of Special Appeals.

Turner v. State, 55 Md.App. 367, 462 A.2d 70 (1983). We granted certiorari upon Turner’s petition to determine whether the trial judge erred (1) in refusing to admit evidence that Turner’s prior conviction of robbery, adduced by the State to impeach his credibility as a witness in his own behalf, was based upon his plea of guilty, and (2) in imposing sentence. (1) Turner does not contest the admissibility of his prior conviction for the purpose of impeaching his credibility. See Ricketts v. State, 291 Md. 701, 702-714 , 436 A.2d 906 (1981).

On re-direct examination, however, his counsel asked him whether he had “pled guilty to that robbery or [had] a trial.” The trial judge sustained an objection by the prosecutor. At a bench conference defense counsel said that a certified copy of the docket entries showed that Turner had pleaded guilty. The judge asserted: “The only question, it’s a conviction. Doesn’t make a difference whether it’s a guilty plea.” Defense counsel replied, “It [the guilty plea] bears on his credibility.

He did wrong and he admitted it.” The prosecutor insisted that “[y]ou can’t go beyond the conviction.” We said in Ricketts v. State, supra, 291 Md. at 703 , 436 A.2d 906 , that ¹⁸⁴ in our system of criminal justice every defendant has the right to testify in his own defense. Equally fundamental to the system is the right of the State to cross-examine such defendant and impeach him, if it can, as to the truthfulness of his testimony. The evidentiary tool the State customarily uses, to attack the defendant’s credibility is evidence of his prior convictions. The only details ordinarily allowed to be presented to the jury are the nature of the charge and the fact of conviction.

(Emphasis supplied.) The fact of a properly admissible prior conviction is introduced for the limited purpose of impeachment. “The purpose in admitting such evidence is to assist the factfinder in measuring the credibility of the defendant,” id., that is, to evaluate his truthfulness. The relevant point in time is the time of trial. The issue is whether the defendant is truthful as to the testimony he is then giving, and his truthfulness vel non relates only to that time. See E. Imwinkelried, P. Gianelli, F. Gilligan & F. Lederer, Criminal Evidence, 43-47 and 101 (1979).

There are a number of reasons which may properly influence a defendant to plead guilty. For example, the plea may be a product of negotiation in which other more serious charges are not prosecuted. Or it may be the result of the defendant being faced with overwhelming evidence of guilt of such a nature that detailed proof at trial would be disadvantageous to him. Or the defendant may hope for leniency in sentencing by reason of the plea. 1 Or the defendant may seek other concessions from the prosecution or the court properly to be granted in exchange for a plea of guilty.

Thus, the fact that Turner pleaded guilty at a prior trial to robbery is simply not relevant or material to ¹⁸⁵ the question of whether he told the truth in his testimony-giving his version of the facts and circumstances surrounding the offenses charged in the instant case. 2 For evidence, otherwise competent, to be admissible, it must be relevant and material. Huffington v. State, 295 Md. 1, 14 , 452 A.2d 1211 (1982), quoting Hepple v. State, 31 Md.App. 525, 534 , 358 A.2d 283 (1976), aff'd, State v. Hepple, 279 Md. 265 , 368 A.2d 445 (1977). It is the conviction which is relevant to the jury’s determination of credibility, not the manner in which that conviction was reached. We agree with the court in Commonwealth v. Washington, 274 Pa.Super, 560, 566, 418 A.2d 548 (1980) that [t]he reception of plea evidence would introduce a collateral issue which could only confuse a jury.

The relevance is the former adjudiciation of guilt upon the acceptance of the plea, and not the reasons for making a plea in the first instance. United States v. Bray, 445 F.2d 178 , 181 (5th Cir.1971), quoted in State v. Lee, 536 S.W.2d 198, 199-200 (Mo.App. 1976) as “particularly felicitous,” put it this way: The probative fact is not whether [the defendant] denied or admitted committing the offense for which he was convicted, but whether he committed the offense at all.... That [the defendant] pled guilty to the prior offenses, of course, does not change the fact that he was found guilty of committing those offenses. Moreover, a guilty plea is often as much a result of an accused’s ¹⁸⁶ realistic assessment of his chances to be acquitted should he go to trial as it is a result of any altruistic motive to “come clean.” We conclude that the Court of Special Appeals correctly determined that the trial judge did not err in refusing to admit evidence that the impeaching conviction was upon a plea of guilty.

(2) As earlier observed, the case went to the jury on the charges of assault with intent to maim and simple assault. Turner was found not guilty of committing the greater offense, assault with intent to maim, but guilty of the lesser included offense, simple assault, for which a ten-year sentence was imposed. Turner claims that the sentence actually imposed upon him was for the offense of assault with intent to maim and that he “cannot properly be sentenced for a crime of which he was acquitted.” Of course, if Turner’s premise is sound, his conclusion is correct. 3 The maximum sentence