Tollett v. Henderson

411 U.S. 258, 93 S. Ct. 1602, 36 L. Ed. 2d 235, 1973 U.S. LEXIS 83

• Court: Supreme Court of the United States
• Decided: April 17, 1973
• Docket: 72-95
• Status: Published

Opinions

Mr. Justice Rehnquist

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Twenty-five years ago respondent was indicted for the crime of first-degree murder by a grand jury in Davidson County, Tennessee. On the advice of counsel, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a term of 99 years in prison. Many years later he sought habeas corpus in both state and federal courts. In one petition in United States District Court, he contended that a confession he had given to the police had been coerced, and that he had been denied the effective assistance of counsel. The District Court considered these claims and decided them adversely to respondent, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed without opinion, and this Court denied certiorari. Henderson v. Henderson, 391 U. S. 927 (1968). Respondent then sought state habeas corpus, alleging for the first time that he was deprived of his constitutional right because Negroes had been excluded from the grand jury which indicted him in 1948. After a series of proceedings in the Tennessee trial and appellate courts, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals ultimately concluded that respondent had waived his claim by failure to raise it before pleading to the indictment, and by pleading guilty.

Respondent then filed in the United States District Court the petition for habeas corpus which commenced the present litigation, asserting the denial of his constitutional right by reason of the systematic exclusion of Negroes from grand jury service. Petitioner, in effect, conceded such systematic exclusion to have existed, and the District Court so found. The issue upon which the District Court and the Court of Appeals focused was whether respondent’s failure to object to the indictment within the time provided by Tennessee law constituted a waiver of his Fourteenth Amendment right to be indicted by a constitutionally selected grand jury.

At a state hearing, respondent testified that his lawyer did not inform him of his constitutional rights with respect to the composition of the grand jury, that he did not know how the grand jury was selected or that Negroes were systematically excluded, and that his attorney did not tell him that he could have challenged the indictment, or that failure to challenge it would preclude him from later raising that issue. An unchallenged affidavit submitted by the attorney who represented respondent in the 1948 criminal proceeding stated that counsel did not know as a matter of fact that Negroes were systematically excluded from the Davidson County grand jury, and that therefore there had been no occasion to advise respondent of any rights he had as to the composition or method of selection of that body.

On the basis of this evidence, the Court of Appeals held that the record demonstrated no such “waiver” of constitutional rights as that term was defined in Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458, 464 (1938) — “an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege.” The Court of Appeals went on to affirm the judgment of the District Court, which had ordered respondent released from custody because Negroes had been excluded from the grand jury which indicted him for the offense in question. We granted certiorari in order to decide whether a state prisoner, pleading guilty with the advice of counsel, may later obtain release through federal habeas corpus by proving only that the indictment to which he pleaded was returned by an unconstitutionally selected grand jury.¹

I

Respondent, a Negro, and two others were arrested by-Tennessee authorities for the robbery of a Nashville liquor store and the attempted murder of an employee who was shot during the episode. Three weeks later the employee died, and a Davidson County grand jury subsequently returned a murder indictment against respondent. Respondent signed a confession admitting his involvement in the robbery and shooting.

At the time of his arrest, respondent was 20 years old and his formal education had terminated at the sixth grade level. He had no attorney when he signed the confession, but subsequently his mother retained counsel to represent him. The attorney’s major effort appears to have been to arrange a form of plea bargain, whereby respondent would plead guilty to the murder charge and the sentence, although imposed by a petit jury, would be 99 years, rather than the ultimate penalty. Respondent initially expressed a desire to plead not guilty, but, apparently because of the evidence against him and the possibility that the death sentence might be imposed if he were convicted, he decided on the advice of his counsel to plead guilty. The plea was entered, and the agreed-upon sentence was imposed.

II

For nearly a hundred years it has been established that the Constitution prohibits a State from systematically excluding Negroes from serving upon grand juries that indict for crime and petit juries that try the factual issue of the guilt or innocence of the accused. Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303, 309 (1880). See also Virginia v. Rives, 100 U. S. 313, 322-323 (1880). These holdings have been reaffirmed over the years, see, e. g., Norris v. Alabama, 294 U. S. 587 (1935), and Pierre v. Louisiana, 306 U. S. 354 (1939), and are not of course questioned here. But respondent’s assertion of this claim has another dimension to it; it was made for the first time many years after he had pleaded guilty to the offense for which he was indicted by the grand jury. None of our previous decisions dealing with the constitutional prohibition against racial discrimination in the selection of grand jurors has come to us in the context of a guilty plea.²

In Brady v. United States, 397 U. S. 742, 750 (1970), McMann v. Richardson, 397 U. S. 759, 770 (1970), and Parker v. North Carolina, 397 U. S. 790 (1970), this Court dealt at some length with the effect of a plea of guilty on the later assertion of claimed violations of constitutional rights. In Brady v. United States, supra, at 750, 758, the Court said:

“The State to some degree encourages pleas of guilty at every important step in the criminal process. For some people, their breach of a State’s law is alone sufficient reason for surrendering themselves and accepting punishment. For others, apprehension and charge, both threatening acts by the Government, jar them into admitting their guilt. In still other cases, the post-indictment accumulation of evidence may convince the defendant and his counsel that a trial is not worth the agony and expense to the defendant and his family. All these pleas of guilty are valid in spite of the State’s responsibility for some of the factors motivating the pleas; the pleas are no more improperly compelled than is the decision by a defendant at the close of the State’s evidence at trial that he must take the stand or face certain conviction.

“This mode of conviction is no more foolproof than full trials to the court or to the jury. Accordingly, we take great precautions against unsound results, and we should continue to do so, whether conviction is by plea or by trial. We would have serious doubts about this case if the encouragement of guilty pleas by offers of leniency substantially increased the likelihood that defendants, advised by competent counsel, would falsely condemn themselves. But our view is to the contrary and is based on our expectations that courts will satisfy themselves that pleas of guilty are voluntarily and intelligently made by competent defendants with adequate advice of counsel and that there is nothing to question the accuracy and reliability of the defendants’ admissions that they committed the crimes with which they are charged. In the case before us, nothing in the record impeaches Brady’s plea or suggests that his admissions in open court were anything but the truth.”

In McMann v. Richardson, supra, at 770-771, the Court laid down the general rule by which federal collateral attacks on convictions based on guilty pleas rendered with the advice of counsel were to be governed:

“In our view a defendant’s plea of guilty based on reasonably competent advice is an intelligent plea not open to attack on the ground that counsel may have misjudged the admissibility of the defendant’s confession. Whether a plea of guilty is unintelligent and therefore vulnerable when motivated by a confession erroneously thought admissible in evidence depends as an initial matter, not on whether a court would retrospectively consider counsel’s advice to be right or wrong, but on whether that advice was within the range of competence demanded of attorneys in criminal cases.” (Footnote omitted.)

The Court of Appeals in its opinion in this case expressed the view that Brady, supra, and McMann, supra, were not controlling, because, in its words:

“The Brady line of cases dealt only with challenges to the guilty plea itself; no such challenge has been made here. For this reason alone we believe that Brady and its successors cannot govern our decision here.” 459 F. 2d 237, 242 n. 5 (1972).³

We think the Court of Appeals took too restrictive a view of our holdings in the Brady trilogy. In each of those cases the habeas petitioner alleged some deprivation of constitutional rights that preceded his decision to plead guilty. In McMann, supra, each of the respondents asserted that a coerced confession had been obtained by the State. In Brady, supra, the claim was that the burden placed on the exercise of the right to jury trial by the structure of the Federal Kidnaping Act, 18 U. S. C. § 1201 — a burden which was held constitutionally impermissible in United States v. Jackson, 390 U. S. 570 (1968) — had motivated petitioner’s decision to plead guilty. In Parker, supra, the claim was that a provision of that State’s laws similar to that contained in 18 U. S. C. § 1201 had likewise motivated the guilty plea.

While the claims of coerced confessions extracted prior to the guilty plea in McMann were in a somewhat different posture than had they been made in attacking a jury verdict based in part upon such confessions, the claim of impermissible burden on the right to jury trial resulting from the structure of the Kidnaping Act and the North Carolina law, respectively, were not significantly different from what they would have been had they been made following a bench trial and judgment of conviction. But the Court in Brady and Parker, as well as in McMann, refused to address the merits of the claimed constitutional deprivations that occurred prior to the guilty plea. Instead, it concluded in each case that the issue was not the merits of these constitutional claims as such, but rather whether the guilty plea had been made intelligently and voluntarily with the advice of competent counsel.

There are no doubt factual and legal differences between respondent’s present assertion of the claim of discriminatory selection of the members of a grand jury, and the assertion of the constitutional claims by the prisoners in the Brady trilogy. In the latter cases, the facts giving rise to the constitutional claims were generally known to the defendants and their attorneys prior to the entry of the guilty pleas, and the issue in this Court turned on the adequacy of the attorneys’ advice in evaluating those facts as a part of the recommendation to plead guilty. In the instant case, the facts relating to the selection of the Davidson County grand jury in 1948 were found by the District Court and the Court of Appeals to have been unknown to both respondent and his attorney. If the issue were to be cast solely in terms of “waiver,” the Court of Appeals was undoubtedly correct in concluding that there had been no such waiver here. But just as the guilty pleas in the Brady trilogy were found to foreclose direct inquiry into the merits of claimed antecedent constitutional violations there, we conclude that respondent’s guilty plea here alike forecloses independent inquiry into the claim of discrimination in the selection of the grand jury.

III

We hold that after a criminal defendant pleads guilty, on the advice of counsel, he is not automatically entitled to federal collateral relief on proof that the indicting grand jury was unconstitutionally selected. The focus of federal habeas inquiry is the nature of the advice and the voluntariness of the plea, not the existence as such of an antecedent constitutional infirmity. A state prisoner must, of course, prove that some constitutional infirmity occurred in the proceedings. But the inquiry does not end at that point, as the Court of Appeals apparently thought. If a prisoner pleads guilty on the advice of counsel, he must demonstrate that the advice was not “within the range of competence demanded of attorneys in criminal cases,” McMann v. Richardson, supra, at 771. Counsel’s failure to evaluate properly facts giving rise to a constitutional claim, or his failure properly to inform himself of facts that would have shown the existence of a constitutional claim, might in particular fact situations meet this standard of proof. Thus, while claims of prior constitutional deprivation may play a part in evaluating the advice rendered by counsel, they are not themselves independent grounds for federal collateral relief.

We thus reaffirm the principle recognized in the Brady trilogy: a guilty plea represents a break in the chain of events which has preceded it in the criminal process. When a criminal defendant has solemnly admitted in open court that he is in fact guilty of the offense with which he is charged, he may not thereafter raise independent claims relating to the deprivation of constitutional rights that occurred prior to the entry of the guilty plea. He may only attack the voluntary and intelligent character of the guilty plea by showing that the advice he received from counsel was not within the standards set forth in McMann.

A guilty plea, voluntarily and intelligently entered, may not be vacated because the defendant was not advised of every conceivable constitutional plea in abatement he might have to the charge, no matter how peripheral such a plea might be to the normal focus of counsel's inquiry. And just as it is not sufficient for the criminal defendant seeking to set aside such a plea to show that his counsel in retrospect may not have correctly appraised the constitutional significance of certain historical facts, McMann, supra, it is likewise not sufficient that he show that if counsel had pursued a certain factual inquiry such a pursuit would have uncovered a possible constitutional infirmity in the proceedings.

The principal value of counsel to the accused in a criminal prosecution often does not lie in counsel's ability to recite a list of possible defenses in the abstract, nor in his ability, if time permitted, to amass a large quantum of factual data and inform the defendant of it. Counsel’s concern is the faithful representation of the interest of his client, and such representation frequently involves highly practical considerations as well as specialized knowledge of the law. Often the interests of the accused are not advanced by challenges that would only delay the inevitable date of prosecution, see Brady v. United States, supra, at 751-752, or by contesting all guilt, see Santobello v. New York, 404 U. S. 257 (1971). A prospect of plea bargaining, the expectation or hope of a lesser sentence, or the convincing nature of the evidence against the accused are considerations that might well suggest the advisability of a guilty plea without elaborate consideration of whether pleas in abatement, such as unconstitutional grand jury selection procedures, might be factually supported.

In order to obtain his release on federal habeas under these circumstances, respondent must not only establish the unconstitutional discrimination in selection of grand jurors, he must also establish that his attorney’s advice to plead guilty without having made inquiry into the composition of the grand jury rendered that advice outside the “range of competence demanded of attorneys in criminal cases.”

Because we do not have before us all of the papers dealing with respondent’s previous federal habeas petitions, we are not in a position to say whether he is presently precluded from raising the issue of the voluntary and intelligent nature of his guilty plea, or whether that claim would be open to him on appropriate allegations in a new or amended petition. The Court of Appeals was at pains to point out that respondent’s present petition did not attack the guilty plea. In view of the reliance placed by the Court of Appeals and the District Court in their respective opinions in this case upon the statement of the concurring judge in the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals that “[n]o lawyer in this State would have ever thought of objecting to the fact that Negroes did not serve on the Grand Jury in Tennessee in 1948,” the chances of respondent's being able to carry the necessary burden of proof in challenging the guilty plea would appear slim. Nonetheless, we prefer to have this issue, if it be open to respondent under federal habeas practice, first addressed by the District Court or by the Court of Appeals. Respondent was not at any rate entitled to release from custody solely by reason of the fact that the grand jury which indicted him was unconstitutionally selected, and the judgment of the Court of Appeals holding otherwise is reversed and remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

1 In Parker v. North Carolina, 397 U. S. 790, 798 (1970), the Court said: “Whether the question of racial exclusion in the selection of the grand jury is open in a federal habeas corpus action we need not decide,” citing three decisions of the courts of appeals. All of these decisions dealt with the issue of whether grand jury exclusion might be raised on federal habeas after a plea of not guilty and trial by jury. That issue is left open by this opinion, as it was by Parker.

2 Cf. Alexander v. Louisiana, 405 U. S. 625 (1972); Sims v. Georgia, 389 U. S. 404 (1967); Jones v. Georgia, 389 U. S. 24 (1967); Whitus v. Georgia, 385 U. S. 545 (1967); Coleman v. Alabama, 377 U. S. 129 (1964); Arnold v. North Carolina, 376 U. S. 773 (1964); Eubanks v. Louisiana, 356 U. S. 584 (1958); Reece v. Georgia, 350 U. S. 85 (1955); Williams v. Georgia, 349 U. S. 375 (1955); Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U. S. 475 (1954); Avery v. Georgia, 345 U. S. 559 (1953); Cassell v. Texas, 339 U. S. 282 (1950); Patton v. Mississippi, 332 U. S. 463 (1947); Akins v. Texas, 325 U. S. 398 (1945); Hill v. Texas, 316 U. S. 400 (1942); Smith v. Texas, 311 U. S. 128 (1940); Pierre v. Louisiana, 306 U. S. 354 (1939); Hale v. Kentucky, 303 U. S. 613 (1938); Hollins v. Oklahoma, 295 U. S. 394 (1935); Norris v. Alabama, 294 u. S. 587 (1935); Martin v. Texas, 200 U. S. 316 (1906); Rogers v. Alabama, 192 U. S. 226 (1904); Torrance v. Florida, 188 U. S. 519 (1903); Carter v. Texas, 177 U. S. 442 (1900); Williams v. Mississippi, 170 U. S. 213 (1898); Gibson v. Mississippi, 162 U. S. 565 (1896); Bush v. Kentucky, 107 U. S. 110 (1883); Neal v. Delaware, 103 U. S. 370 (1881); Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303 (1880).

3 A recent decision of the Fourth Circuit, Parker v. Ross, 470 F. 2d 1092 (1972), arrived at the conclusion we now reach by extending the reasoning of the Brady trilogy to the type of claim respondent seeks to assert.

The second sentence of the quoted passage does not appear in the cited report. It is contained, however, in the official opinion as issued by the Clerk of Court for the Sixth Circuit.