Charles Wesley Watkins v. Herman Solem, as the Duly Qualified and Acting Warden of the South Dakota State Penitentiary, or His Successor
1978 U.S. App. LEXIS 12358 · 571 F.2d 435
March 2, 1978 · Docket 77-1776
Headnotes
Generated summaries- Headnote 1
Watkins claimed the prosecutor induced his guilty plea by promising not to file habitual-criminal charges. The court rejected the argument that such a threat, standing alone, made the plea constitutionally involuntary.
- Headnote 2
Watkins claimed the threat to file additional charges was a but-for cause of his guilty plea. The court held that such causation does not establish the constitutional involuntariness of the plea.
- Headnote 3
The court stated the fundamental test for the validity of Watkins’s plea, emphasizing that the plea must reflect an intelligent choice with awareness of the circumstances and consequences.
- Headnote 4
Discussing Bordenkircher v. Hayes, the court explained that plea bargaining involves difficult choices, but the process is not retaliatory when the defendant is free to reject the prosecution’s offer and proceed to trial.
- Headnote 5
The prosecutor told Watkins that additional habitual-criminal charges would be filed unless he pleaded guilty. The court found the threat did not, standing alone, invalidate the guilty plea.
- Headnote 6
The court noted that plea bargaining inevitably encourages defendants to consider the risk of greater penalty after trial. That risk does not itself make a guilty plea unconstitutional.
- Headnote 7
Watkins challenged his burglary conviction in federal habeas corpus, claiming that a prosecutor’s threat to file habitual-criminal charges coerced his guilty plea. The state trial judge interrogated him about the plea, and the appellate court reviewed whether the plea was voluntary and intelligent.
- Headnote 8
Although Watkins argued that the prosecutor’s threat compelled his guilty plea, the court examined the full state-court record. The record reflected a careful judicial inquiry and showed that the plea was made voluntarily, supporting affirmance of the denial of habeas relief.
- Headnote 9
The prosecutor told Watkins that habitual-criminal charges would be filed unless he pleaded guilty to two third-degree burglary counts. The court held that this type of plea-bargaining threat, standing alone, did not make the resulting plea constitutionally invalid.
- Headnote 10
Discussing the permissibility of plea negotiations, the court emphasized that prosecutors may persuade defendants to forego a not-guilty plea by offering leniency or threatening to pursue charges the state can lawfully file, provided the defendant’s choice remains free.
- Headnote 11
The court recognized that Watkins might not have pleaded guilty but for the prosecutor’s threat to file additional habitual-criminal charges. Nevertheless, because the state-court record affirmatively established that his plea was voluntary and intelligent, the threat alone did not require invalidation of the conviction.
- Headnote 12
Watkins sought habeas corpus relief after the district court found that the state record supported the voluntariness of his guilty plea. The Eighth Circuit agreed, holding that the state trial judge’s careful inquiry and the record as a whole justified affirming the denial of the writ.
- Headnote 13
Watkins challenged his burglary conviction in federal habeas proceedings, arguing that a prosecutor threatened to file additional habitual criminal charges unless he pleaded guilty. The court identified the controlling test for a valid guilty plea from Supreme Court authority before reviewing the state-court record.
- Headnote 14
Watkins argued that the prosecutor's agreement not to file additional charges unless he pleaded guilty compelled his guilty plea. The court recognized that such a promise can induce the plea while still leaving the defendant free to make a voluntary, intelligent choice.
- Headnote 15
The court relied on Supreme Court precedent involving a prosecutor's threat to file an additional habitual criminal charge if the defendant did not plead guilty. That authority supports the conclusion that threatening to file lawful charges is not per se unconstitutional during plea bargaining.
- Headnote 16
The court discussed the Supreme Court's explanation that plea bargaining is a mutually beneficial process. It noted that defendants advised by competent counsel and protected by procedural safeguards are presumptively capable of making an intelligent choice in response to prosecutorial persuasion.
- Headnote 17
Petitioner claimed the prosecutor coerced his guilty plea to two burglary charges by threatening to file habitual criminal charges unless he pleaded guilty. The court found the plea valid because the defendant remained free to reject the offer.
- Headnote 18
The court held that the prosecutor's agreement not to file habitual criminal charges in exchange for a guilty plea to two third-degree burglary charges did not render the plea invalid as a matter of law.
- Headnote 19
The court emphasized that in each case where the invalidity of a guilty plea is asserted, the record must be examined to assure the plea was made voluntarily and was not the product of coercion.
- Headnote 20
The court noted that the plea may have been induced by the threat of habitual criminal charges, but that such a cause does not make the plea involuntary if the surrounding circumstances show a voluntary choice.
- Headnote 21
The court applied this standard to determine whether petitioner's guilty plea to two third-degree burglary charges was the product of a voluntary and informed choice.
- Headnote 22
The state trial judge meticulously interrogated petitioner at the time of his plea, and the record showed the plea was voluntarily made. The court affirmed the district court's denial of habeas relief.
- Headnote 23
The court recognized that by hypothesis the plea may have been induced by fear of greater penalty upon conviction after trial, but noted this difficult choice is permissible in a system that tolerates plea negotiation.
- Headnote 24
Watkins pleaded guilty to two third-degree burglary charges after the prosecutor said habitual-criminal charges would be filed unless he pleaded. The Eighth Circuit treated the threatened charge as a bargaining offer rather than per se unconstitutional conduct.
- Headnote 25
The court emphasized that legitimate plea systems require defendants to make difficult choices, including the choice between accepting a plea and facing the possibility of more severe punishment if convicted after trial.
- Headnote 26
The court rejected the idea that a plea becomes constitutionally invalid simply because the prosecutor's promise was a necessary condition of the defendant's decision to plead guilty.
- Headnote 27
The court required case-by-case review of the plea record, cautioning that a prosecutor's lawful authority to threaten additional charges does not give the prosecutor permission to unduly threaten or coerce a defendant.
- Headnote 28
In applying this standard, the court looked at the state-court record, including the trial judge's questioning of Watkins and the prosecutor's threatened but lawful additional charges.
- Headnote 29
The court described this as the fundamental test for the constitutional validity of a guilty plea and then reviewed the state-court record to determine whether Watkins's plea met that standard.
Opinion
Petitioner seeks a writ of habeas corpus on the ground that his conviction for burglary was invalid because his plea of guilty was coerced. Petitioner claims that the prosecutor wrongfully induced him to enter a guilty plea by agreeing not to file habitual criminal charges against petitioner in exchange for his plea. The district court denied the writ. Watkins v. Solem, 437 F.Supp. 824824 (D.S.D. (D.S.D.1977). This appeal followed. We affirm.
We have examined the record and find that the state trial judge meticulously interrogated petitioner at the time of his plea of guilty. The record shows that the plea was voluntarily made. Petitioner challenges this finding on the ground that the state prosecutor “threatened” to file habitual criminal charges unless petitioner agreed to plead guilty to two charges of third degree burglary.
The government urges on appeal that the issue is disposed of by Bordenkircher v. Hayes, - U.S. -, 98 S.Ct. 663, 54 L.Ed.2d 604 (1978), recently decided by the Supreme Court. There the prosecutor told petitioner during plea bargaining that if he did not plead guilty to a charge of uttering a forged instrument an additional charge under Kentucky’s habitual criminal statute would be filed. Petitioner Hayes refused to enter a guilty plea and the prosecutor did, in fact, file the habitual criminal charge. Petitioner claimed that his subsequent conviction was void in that the habitual criminal charge was based upon “prosecutorial vindictiveness” and was a result of retaliation for his exercise of the right to trial. In upholding the conviction and denying the writ the Court observed:
To punish a person because he has done what the law plainly allows him to do is a due process violation of the most basic sort, and for an agent of the State to pursue a course of action whose objective is to penalize a person’s reliance on his legal rights is “patently unconstitutional.” But in the “give-and-take” of plea bargaining, there is no such element of punishment or retaliation so long as the accused is free to accept or reject the prosecution’s offer.
Plea bargaining flows from “the mutuality of advantage” to defendants and prosecutors, each with his own reasons for wanting to avoid trial. Defendants advised by competent counsel and protected by other procedural safeguards are presumptively capable of intelligent choice in response to prosecutorial persuasion, and unlikely to be driven to false self-condemnation. Indeed, acceptance of the basic legitimacy of plea bargaining necessarily implies rejection of any notion that a guilty plea is involuntary in a constitutional sense simply because it is the end result of the bargaining process. By hypothesis, the plea may have been induced by promises of a recommendation of a lenient sentence or a reduction of charges, and thus by fear of the possibility of a greater penalty upon conviction after a trial.
While confronting a defendant with the risk of more severe punishment clearly may have a “discouraging effect on the defendant’s assertion of his trial rights, the imposition of these difficult choices [is] an inevitable” — and permissible — “attribute of any legitimate system which tolerates and encourages the negotiation of pleas.” Chaffin v. Stynchcombe, supra, 412 U.S. 17 at 31, 93 S.Ct. 1977, 36 L.Ed.2d 714. It follows that, by tolerating and encouraging the negotiation of pleas, this Court has necessarily accepted as constitutionally legitimate the simple reality that the prosecutor’s interest at the bargaining table is to persuade the defendant to forego his right to plead not guilty.
- U.S. at --, 98 S.Ct. at 668 (citations omitted).
Hayes serves as strong support for denial of habeas corpus relief in the present case. However, we feel its holding, that it is not retaliatory for the state to file charges that it at all times had the right to file, is very narrow. The case cannot be read as a grant of carte blanche authority for a prosecutor to unduly threaten and coerce a criminal defendant into making a guilty plea. It would appear that a prosecutor’s offer to refrain from filing more serious charges in exchange for the defendant’s guilty plea to a lesser charge is not unconstitutional per se. However, prosecutors should not view Hayes as giving them the right to abuse their prosecutorial powers.
In each case where the invalidity of a guilty plea is asserted the record must be examined to assure that the plea was made voluntarily and was not the product of coercion. The voluntariness of a guilty plea must be determined by considering the relevant circumstances surrounding it, and the prosecutor’s promise may serve as a “but for” cause of the guilty plea without rendering the plea involuntary. Cf. Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742, 750, 90 S.Ct. 1463, 25 L.Ed.2d 747 (1970). The fundamental test is whether the plea of guilty was “an intelligent act ‘done with sufficient awareness of the relevant circumstances and likely consequences.’ ” McMann v. Richardson, 397 U.S. 759, 766, 90 S.Ct. 1441, 1446, 25 L.Ed.2d 763 (1970), quoting Brady v. United States, supra at 397 U.S. 748, 90 S.Ct. 1463.
The state court record fully justifies the denial of the writ of habeas corpus here.
Judgment affirmed.