Hall v. United States

489 F.2d 427, 1974 U.S. App. LEXIS 10149
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
DecidedFebruary 8, 1974
DocketNo. 73-1792
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 489 F.2d 427 (Hall v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hall v. United States, 489 F.2d 427, 1974 U.S. App. LEXIS 10149 (5th Cir. 1974).

Opinion

GOLDBERG, Circuit Judge:

Ralph Hall appeals the denial of his motion to vacate sentence, filed pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255 (1970). On appeal he repeats the claims made in the original motion that in the proceedings leading to his conviction, he was denied effective assistance of counsel in violation of the Sixth Amendment, and that the trial judge who accepted his plea of guilty failed to comply with the requirements of Fed.R.Crim.Proc. 11. In addition, he now claims that in the Section 2255 evidentiary hearing conducted below, the district judge improperly placed on Hall, the petitioner, the burden of proof on the issue of the voluntariness of his guilty plea.

We begin with Appellant’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim. Initially Hall indicated a desire to retain private counsel, but subsequently requested and received a court-appointed attorney. Appellant’s complaints against his court-appointed counsel were quite specific, and if true might have established a violation of the Sixth Amendment. Both Appellant and the attorney testified at the Section 2255 hearing, and the attorney answered Hall’s charges in some detail. The district judge thus had an opportunity to evaluate the credibility of the witnesses first hand. His was the responsibility for weighing the conflicting testimony, and he resolved the conflicts against Hall. That decision is not clearly erroneous.

Appellant was indicted in August 1966 for interstate transportation of a stolen vehicle, 18 U.S.C. § 2312 (1970), and kidnapping, 18 U.S.C. § 1201 (1970). He pleaded guilty to both charges on September 28, 1966, and thereafter was sentenced to concurrent terms of five years on the Dyer Act charge and twenty years on the kidnapping charge. He took no direct appeal.

The date of the guilty plea — September 28, 1966 — is extremely important in resolving Hall’s second allegation of error, for several significant amendments to Fed.R.Crim.Proc. 11 became effective on July 1, 1966. See generally 8 Moore's Federal Practice, Cites — Rules of Criminal Procedure |f|f 11.01, 1103 [429]*429(2d ed. 1973); 1 Wright, Federal Practice and Procedure §§ 171-75 (1969). Previously Rule 11 required that before accepting a plea of guilty, the court should determine that the plea was made voluntarily and with understanding of the nature of the charge. Since July 1, 1966, however, Rule 11 has mandated that before accepting a guilty plea the court must “address the defendant personally” in order to determine “that the plea is made voluntarily with understanding of the nature of the charge and the consequences of the plea.” In addition, “[t]he court shall not enter a judgment upon a plea of guilty unless it is satisfied that there is a factual basis for the plea.” The goal of the amended rule remains essentially what it was before —to ensure that guilty pleas be truly voluntary and to allow expeditious disposition of post-conviction attacks on guilty pleas. McCarthy v. United States, 1969, 394 U.S. 459, 465-466, 89 S.Ct. 1166, 22 L.Ed.2d 418, 425. Nevertheless, the degree to which the amendments required modification of the eus-tomary methods followed in accepting a plea in order to enhance the reliability of the voluntariness determination must not be overlooked.

Appellant Hall, accompanied by counsel, pleaded guilty nearly three months after the 1966 amendments became effective. We have not been provided with a complete transcript of the proceedings, but the portion cited by Appellant in his brief, set out in the margin, 1 clearly reveals that Rule ll’s literal requirements were not satisfied. Indeed, the Government seems to concede the absence of exact adherence to the revised Rule 11 procedure, and the court below noted the failure of the Rule 11 trial court to “make a specific investigation of the voluntariness of the petitioner’s plea . . . . ” [Record at 179]

In McCarthy v. United States, supra, the Supreme Court held that Rule 11 must be strictly construed and that courts must strictly comply with its requirements. The Court also held that a defendant must be allowed to replead if the record of the original pleading process does not reflect scrupulous compliance with the requirements of the rule. In Halliday v. United States, 1969, 394 U.S. 831, 89 S.Ct. 1498, 23 L.Ed.2d 16, [430]*430the Court declined to apply the “automatic prejudice,” repleading aspect of McCarthy retroactively, expressly limiting that portion of McCarthy to defendants whose guilty pleas were accepted after April 2, 1969. The Court based its decision in Halliday in part on the facts, previously noted in McCarthy, that the repleading practice had theretofore been followed in only one circuit and that prior to the 1966 amendments it was common for district judges not to interrogate defendants personally before accepting guilty pleas. Halliday v. United States, supra, 394 U.S. at 833, 89 S.Ct. at 1499, 23 L.Ed.2d at 20. See Fed.R. Crim.Proc. 11, Notes of Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules. Indeed, prior to the 1966 amendments the practice of trial judges not interrogating defendants personally was common in this Circuit. E. g., Meeks v. United States, 5 Cir. 1962, 298 F.2d 204.

Halliday thus makes it clear that literal noncompliance with the requirements of Rule 11 does not end the analysis when defendants, such as Hall, who pleaded guilty between July 1, 1966, and April 2, 1969, launch post-conviction attacks on guilty pleas. If the record does not demonstrate literal compliance with Rule 11, a hearing must be held in which the Government bears the burden of proving that the guilty plea was in fact entered voluntarily and understanding^. Monroe v. United States, 5 Cir. 1972, 463 F.2d 1032; Barton v. United States, 5 Cir. 1972, 458 F.2d 537. See Diggs v. United States, 5 Cir. 1971, 447 F.2d 460, cert. denied, 1972, 409 U.S. 882, 93 S.Ct. 170, 34 L.Ed.2d 138; Lane v. United States, 5 Cir. 1967, 373 F.2d 570; Rimanich v. United States, 5 Cir. 1966, 357 F.2d 537.

Appellant cites a portion of the transcript from the Section 2255 hearing below to support his argument that the court improperly placed the burden on the voluntariness issue on petitioner.2 Although the quoted language is admittedly ambiguous, we disagree with Appellant’s interpretation of what happened. A review of the entire transcript reveals that throughout the proceeding all concerned placed primary emphasis on Hall’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim.

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489 F.2d 427, 1974 U.S. App. LEXIS 10149, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hall-v-united-states-ca5-1974.