Rounsaville v. Evatt

733 S.W.2d 506, 1987 Tenn. LEXIS 1065
CourtTennessee Supreme Court
DecidedJune 29, 1987
StatusPublished
Cited by32 cases

This text of 733 S.W.2d 506 (Rounsaville v. Evatt) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Tennessee Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Rounsaville v. Evatt, 733 S.W.2d 506, 1987 Tenn. LEXIS 1065 (Tenn. 1987).

Opinion

OPINION

FONES, Justice.

The issue in this post-conviction proceeding is whether it is fatal to the validity of a guilty plea for the trial judge to fail to advise a defendant, in open court, of the constitutional right against self-incrimination.

Defendant initiated this proceeding on 7 April 1984, seeking to set aside guilty pleas to eight charges of forgery and one of receiving stolen property, entered on 23 September 1981 in the same trial court. Defendant asserted that the failure of the trial judge to advise him of his constitutional right against self-incrimination rendered the convictions on those guilty pleas void.

The transcript of the 1981 hearing reveals that, when defendant’s motion to waive jury trial and enter guilty pleas was called, defendant, although represented by a court-appointed lawyer who was present, was allowed to address the court. He stated that he wanted to hire a lawyer “to have his case looked into deeper” because “I am being convicted of something that I didn’t do.”

After a brief colloquy wherein defendant indicated dissatisfaction with his court appointed lawyer, the trial judge gave him until 12 October to get his own lawyer and informed him that, after he employed a lawyer, a trial date satisfactory to defendant and his lawyer would be selected. Court recessed; but upon its resuming the same day, the State announced that defendant wished to enter guilty pleas. The prosecuting attorney explained to the court that defendant had passed eight checks to various business establishments in Hamilton County at various times over a period of approximately thirty days. The checks had been stolen from one Gary Turbeck and were taken from an automobile. Defendant had been charged with burglary of the checks; but upon his insistence that he had found the checks, the State moved to amend that indictment to charge the offense of receiving stolen property. This motion was granted. Defendant then pled *507 guilty to eight counts of forgery and one count of receiving stolen property.

Two documents were presented to the trial judge. The first a “PETITION TO ENTER PLEA OF GUILTY,” signed by defendant Alphonso Rounsaville, acknowledged that his court-appointed attorney had advised him and that he understood the charges and the possible punishment and that defendant had been advised of the constitutional rights to counsel at all stages of the proceedings, to trial by jury, to confront the witnesses against him, and to compel the production of evidence and the attendance of witnesses. The petition, which appears to be a form, contains a number of additional recitations of the defendant, whose signature appears thereon; but it does not contain any reference whatsoever to the constitutional right against self-incrimination. Parenthetically, the form petition also does not contain any representation that defendant, who had a prior criminal record, had been warned that, upon pleading guilty, evidence of any prior convictions could be admitted for consideration by the judge in determining punishment. Defendant has not raised the issue of the omission of the warning regarding prior convictions, but that requirement was made mandatory in State v. Mackey, 553 S.W.2d 337 (Tenn.1977).

The second document submitted to the trial judge at the September 1981 hearing was entitled “CERTIFICATE OF COUNSEL.” It was signed by defendant’s court-appointed attorney. In it he represented to the court that he had fully explained to defendant the offenses with which defendant was charged, that to the best of his knowledge and belief each of the statements and representations in the petition signed by defendant were true and accurate in all respects and that defendant’s waiver of “all reading of the indictment in open court, and of all further proceedings upon arraignment is voluntarily and understandingly made.”

The trial judge then conducted a brief interrogation of defendant wherein it was revealed that defendant was twenty-three-years-old, had a twelfth grade education, was a cement mason, could read and write, and had read the petition that he had signed. The court inquired, “[You] say you want to give up a jury trial and that you are guilty and you want to plead guilty to these cases. Is that what you are now telling me?” Defendant was next asked if, notwithstanding his earlier request for another lawyer, he was “at this time” satisfied with the work of his court-appointed attorney. Defendant responded in the affirmative.

The foregoing was the entire substance of the open court proceedings between the trial judge and defendant.

The trial judge found that “the ‘Petition To Enter Plea Of Guilty’ appears to have advised petitioner of all of his constitutional rights, except the right against self-incrimination.” But in spite of that omission, the trial judge found that the questions asked by the trial judge who conducted the September 1981 hearing were sufficient to support a finding that defendant knowingly and voluntarily entered the pleas of guilty.

The Court of Criminal Appeals noted that defendant had a criminal record of some magnitude and was “no stranger to criminal proceedings.” That court was evidently implying, on a silent record, that defendant knew all about the constitutional right against self-incrimination. That court also quoted a passage from State v. Teague, 680 S.W.2d 785 (Tenn.1984), with the comment that the principle expounded in Teag-ue was applicable to the instant case. To lend any support to the intermediate court’s reliance upon Teague as justifying the result it reached, Teague would necessarily have to be construed as overruling State v. Mackey, supra, and Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238, 89 S.Ct. 1709, 23 L.Ed.2d 274 (1969).

In Teague, a first degree murder case, the State relied at the sentencing phase upon a prior conviction of a felony involving the threat of violence to the person as one of two aggravating circumstances. Defendant launched a collateral attack on that conviction, which was based upon a plea of nolo contendere, on the ground that the trial judge accepting his plea did *508 not follow exactly the mandates of Rule 11, T.R.Crim.P. Defendant had failed to raise that issue at the trial of the murder case.

Nothing said by this Court in Teague in disposing of that issue altered or modified in any respect the mandates of Mackey.

In the instant case, the trial judge failed to comply with the mandate of Mackey, in that he did not “address the defendant personally in open court and inform him of and determine that he understands” all of the significant consequences of a guilty plea and the constitutional rights that he was waiving. These were expressly set forth in Mackey as follows:

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
733 S.W.2d 506, 1987 Tenn. LEXIS 1065, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/rounsaville-v-evatt-tenn-1987.