Gayes v. State of New York

• Decision Date: 23 June 1947
• Docket Number: No. 405,405
• Citation: 91 L.Ed. 1962,332 U.S. 145,67 S.Ct. 1711
• Parties: GAYES v. STATE OF NEW YORK
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

332 U.S. 145

67 S.Ct. 1711

91 L.Ed. 1962

GAYES

v STATE OF NEW YORK.

No. 405.

Argued May 2, 1947.

Decided June 23, 1947.

Rehearing Denied Oct. 13, 1947. See 68 S.Ct. 27.

Mr. Herbert Wechsler, of New York City, for petitioner.

Mr. Harry L. Rosenthal, of Rochester, N.Y., for respondent.

Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER announced the judgment of the Court in an opinion in which the CHIEF JUSTICE, Mr. Justice REED and Mr. Justice JACKSON join.

This is another case in which release is sought from confinement under a sentence by a State court following a plea of guilty, on a claim of a denial of due process of law through want of benefit of counsel.

The circumstances are these. On July 15, 1938, Gayes, then a lad of 16, was arraigned in the County Court of Monroe County, New York, upon an indictment charging burglary in the third degree and petty larceny. According to the record of conviction, he was asked, in accordance with the requirement of § 308 of the New York Code of Criminal Procedure, whether 'he desired the aid of counsel,' and he answered 'No.'¹ Imposition of sentence was postponed to July 28. When on that day Gayes appeared for judgment, he was asked, again according to the requirements of New York law, whether 'he had any legal cause to show, why judgment should not be pronounced against him.' New York Code of Criminal Procedure, § 480. And 'No sufficient cause appearing,' the record continues, Gayes was committed to a New York State Vocational School to be dealt with there according to law. It appears from the facts before us that Gayes did not stay at this correctional institution as long as New York law would have authorized his detention. See New York Penal Law, Consol.Laws, c. 40, §§ 2184—a and 2189, in connection with § 407. For on October 14, 1941, he pleaded guilty, in the County Court of Schenectady, New York, to a new charge of burglary in the third degree. The record of this latter proceeding does not indicate whether this time he was or was not represented by counsel. But no claim is made that this plea of guilty, or the sentence under it, has any infirmity Penal Law, Consol.Laws, c. 40, §§ 2184-a is that he was sentenced as a second offender by the inclusion of the improper sentence to the vocational school in 1938.

In accordance with New York procedure, Gayes, pro se, filed in the County Court of Monroe County, New York, an application to vacate the judgment rendered against him in that court on July 28, 1938. He claimed that in the proceedings which led to that judgment he had not been informed of his 'Constitutional Rights of Assistance of Counsel,' that he 'could not have understood his rights to Counsel' and that 'youths of the age of 16 years cannot Intelligently and Competently waive their rights.' Since, according to this claim, the first sentence was void, he challenged the validity of the sentence in 1941 because the length of the second sentence was partly based upon the 1938 conviction.

Upon this record, the county court denied the motion without opinion. As New York law then stood, no re- view could there be had of this determination. See People v. Gersewitz, 294 N.Y. 163, 61 N.E.2d 427. This made the county court the highest court of the State of New York for purposes of our review. Canizio v. New York, 327 U.S. 82, 85, 66 S.Ct. 452, 453, 90 L.Ed. 545. But see Chapter 706 of the New York Laws of 1947, amending Code Cr.Proc. § 517. We brought the case here, 329 U.S. 710, 67 S.Ct. 365, as one of a series, for further consideration of the circumstances under which the requirements of due process imply a duty to supply counsel to defendants in State prosecutions.

The guiding principles bearing on the general problem have been set forth in the opinion in Foster v. Illinois, 332 U.S. 134, 67 S.Ct. 1716, just decided. Insofar as the facts of this case present a particular variant, they are controlled by our decision in Canizio v. New York, supra. We there held that whatever doubts may arise from the circumstances of a plea of guilty, if, before sentence is imposed, the opportunities required by the Constitution for meeting the legal implications of the plea are satisfied, the sentence must stand. And so, the questions that may be raised regarding the circumstances attending the imposition of Gayes' commitment to the vocational institution in 1938 are not now open. Gayes is complaining of his sentence following his plea of guilty in 1941.² What he wants is to be relieved of his imprisonment under that sentence. That sentence, to be sure, partly took into account his earlier sentence in 1938. But upon his subsequent sentence, as a second offender, in 1941, he had full opportunity, so far as appears, to contest whatever infirmity he may have claimed in the earlier sentence when the fact of that sentence was included in the sentence which he is now serving.³ Since the process leading up to the second sentence is not challenged he cannot now, so far as the United States Constitution is concerned, by a flank attack, challenge the sentence of 1938.

Judgment affirmed.

Mr. Justice BURTON concurs in the result.

Mr. Justice RUTLEDGE, with whom Mr. Justice BLACK, Mr. Justice DOUGLAS, and Mr. Justice MURPHY concur, dissenting.

A 16 year old boy, indigent and alone, without relatives, friends, money or counsel to aid him and, according to the undenied allegations of the petition, with- out knowledge of his constitutional rights,¹ pleaded guilty in 1938, under an indictment specifying two highly technical and distinct charges,² to the crime of burglary in the third degree.³ The property he was charged with intending to steal⁴ consisted of cigarettes of the value of 75 cents, two flashlights worth $1.00, and $3.00 in currency. The sentence imposed on that plea has been served.⁵ He is now confined as a second offender under sentence for another offense of similar character imposed in 1941,⁶ when he was 19 and also without relatives, friends or counsel so far as appears.⁷

One part of the opinion announced in this case, as I understand, takes the view that because Gayes did not attack the 1938 sentence in 1941, when he was sentenced as a second offender, he is forever foreclosed from doing so on the facts and issues presented on this record, although as a second offender he is now suffering the consequences of the 1938 sentence.⁸ For this conclusion reliance is placed upon no New York authorities; indeed, as I read the state cases, the Court's decision is made in the face of their rulings that the procedure petitioner has followed is the appropriate one for raising the issues he presents.⁹

I am unwilling to subscribe to such a doctrine of forfeitures concerning constitutional rights, which in the extreme circumstances of this case seems to me shocking.

Under all of the New York decisions which have passed upon the question,¹⁰ the proper and apparently the necessary procedure, see People v. Keller, Gen.Sess.N.Y. County, 37 N.Y.S.2d 61, 62, for attacking a sentence as second offender, upon the ground that the former conviction was invalid, is first by motion in the court imposing the initial sentence to vacate it, after which if the motion is successful the sentence for the second offense may be attacked and vacated.¹¹ In other words, the second offender, situated as is petitioner, must first overturn his first conviction in the court where it was obtained, before he can attack the second sentence founded in part upon that conviction.

This procedure in my opinion is a reasonable one within the power of a state to require, at least where both offenses have taken place within its jurisdiction. And I know of no reason why this Court should disregard or override it. Much less is it within our province to invert the state procedure, if that is the effect of the dubious suggestion that petitioner's rights perhaps may be saved upon some other record 'that discloses circumstances other than those before us,' presumably if at all by motion before the court which imposed the 1941 sentence to vacate it.¹²

No state decisions are cited or, it would seem in view of the contrary authorities cited above,¹³ can be cited to support such a view. Nor is it required by anything said or done in Canizio v. New York, 327 U.S. 82, 66 S.Ct. 452, 90 L.Ed. 545, if indeed such a matter could ever be within our function. The Canizio decision has no relevance to this case, either for prescribing the state procedure or for the constitutional issue. It held only that where a defendant had counsel at the time of his sentence and could then have moved to withdraw his prior plea of guilty, he was not prejudiced by the convicting court's previous failure to inform him of his right to counsel.

That case had nothing to do with the state procedure open to one convicted as a second offender for challenging his sentence on the ground that the first conviction was invalid for federal constitutional reasons. And the facts, on the merits, were very different from those presented here. Whereas, among other things, in that case the petitioner did have counsel before his sentence was imposed, here not only was Gayes denied counsel altogether in the first trial, but so far as the record discloses he had none in the trial for the second offense. I do not think the Canizio decision can be held to cover such a wholly different situation as this. It did not rule that, if a convicted person has never had counsel, the fact that in a later proceeding he conceivably might have had such aid if he had applied for it cures the denial, more particularly when so far as appears he was treated no better during his trial for the second offense than during the first, and when moreover his present attack is made as a preliminary one required by state law to showing the second sentence invalid.

In my judgment it is for the state, not this Court, to say whether the attack upon the first sentence as increasing the second shall be made on the flank or...