Title: Judicial Suicide or Constitutional Autonomy? A Capital Defendant's Right to Plead Guilty
Abstract: I. INTRODUCTION In 1995, when New York reinstituted the death penalty with much fanfare, it joined only two other states, Arkansas and Louisiana, in forbidding a criminal defendant from pleading guilty when facing the death penalty. (1) However, in reviewing the history of the capital guilty plea, Anglo-American law suggests that an across-the-board prohibition against capital guilty pleas violates the fundamental notion of due process. (2) The right of an accused, even one facing the death penalty, to plead guilty unconditionally to the charges against him was explicitly recognized at common law. (3) It has been widely and almost uniformly acknowledged and honored by state and federal courts since the Colonial period. (4) Further, this right remains protected in the statutes and court decisions of all states but Arkansas, Louisiana, and New York. (5) The protection of the right to plead guilty offers important and legitimate benefits to capital defendants. This includes autonomy in deciding whether or not to exercise their trial rights guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. (6) Moreover, the choice to plead guilty spares the capital defendant and his family from the spectacle and ordeal of protracted pretrial and trial proceedings, while focusing a judge's attention on punishment and the defendant's demonstrated acceptance of responsibility. Additionally, a truthful, formal, and public acknowledgment of guilt is a virtue in itself. (7) Conversely, it is doubtful that any governmental interest continues to legitimize Arkansas, Louisiana, and New York's prohibitions against guilty pleas when the defendant is subject to the death penalty. Procedures permitting, but not requiring, the imposition of a death sentence following a guilty plea do not violate the United States Constitution, and have been adopted by statute in thirty-five of the nation's thirty-eight death penalty jurisdictions. (8) Today there are certain privileges afforded to criminal defendant's that are universal across all state capital punishment statutes, including--defendants' entitlement to the effective assistance of counsel; the requirement that a court may accept a guilty plea only if it is done knowingly and voluntarily; and the provision that a death sentence is discretionary rather than automatic upon conviction. (9) Thus, a defendant who pleads guilty in a capital case is not committing judicial suicide. (10) Following a historical discussion of a criminal defendant's right to plead guilty to a capital offense at common law as well as during the colonial era up until the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, this article will examine the prohibition against capital guilty pleas and its current validity in New York, Arkansas, and Louisiana. (11) This article will conclude that since this prohibition is at odds with both traditional and modern practice, where the state's interest in it is modest at best, it `offends some principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental,' and thus violates due process. (12) II. A DEFENDANT'S PREROGATIVE TO PLEAD GUILTY WAS RECOGNIZED AND PROTECTED AT COMMON LAW, EVEN FOR CRIMES PUNISHABLE BY DEATH As early as the eleventh century in England, a thief caught in the act could confess, then be condemned and either pay a fine or forfeit his life. (13) Writing in 1678, Sir Matthew Hale recognized three possible pleas to a felony charge: demurrer or confession, plea in abatement, and plea of general issue or not guilty. (14) Regarding the first plea, he wrote: [i]t amounts to a Conf[ession] of the Indictment, as laid; and therefore if the Indictment [is] good, Judgment again[st] the Pri[soner], and Execution. (15) Other leading legal commentators of this period recognized the common law confession or guilty plea. (16) As one modern court observed, `[u]ndoubtedly, at common law, a defendant of competent understanding, duly enlightened, had the right to plead guilty to a capital crime instead of denying the charge. …
Publication Year: 2001
Publication Date: 2001-09-22
Language: en
Type: article
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