Lambert v. State

• Decision Date: 11 July 1973
• Docket Number: No. 19656,19656
• Citation: 260 S.C. 617,198 S.E.2d 118
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: Robert M. LAMBERT, III, Appellant, v. STATE of South Carolina et al., Respondents.

Page 118

198 S.E.2d 118

260 S.C. 617

Robert M. LAMBERT, III, Appellant, v. STATE of South Carolina et al., Respondents.

No. 19656.

Supreme Court of South Carolina.

July 11, 1973.

Cravens Ravenel, Columbia, for appellant.

Atty. Gen. Daniel R. McLeod and Asst. Attys. Gen. Emmet H. Clair and Robert M. Ariail, Columbia, for respondents.

LITTLEJOHN, Justice:

Appellant, represented at the time by a Public Defender, pled guilty in the Richland County Court on July 9, 1970, to one count of armed robbery and was sentenced to confinement for a period of sixteen (16) years. Subsequently, on December 3, 1971, appellant filed an application for post-conviction relief. He asked that the plea be withdrawn. Other counsel was appointed to represent him and, after an evidentiary hearing, the application was denied. This appeal followed.

Relief is sought by the appellant upon the grounds that his plea of guilty was involuntary as a result of a broken plea bargain and that the sentencing judge failed to inquire into the question of any plea bargaining prior to accepting the appellant's plea of guilty and imposing sentence.

The only factual dispute concerns the agreement made by the State in return for a plea of guilty. The State submits that it agreed to Recommend a sentence of fifteen (15) years; the appellant contends he was Assured a sentence of fifteen (15) years.

The fact that the sentencing judge did not inquire into the plea bargaining prior to accepting the plea of guilty will not of itself require an automatic vacation of the plea and sentence. Under Vickery v. State, 258 S.C. 33, 186 S.E.2d 827 (1972), the voluntariness of a guilty plea is not determined by an examination of the specific inquiry made by the sentencing judge alone, but is determined from both the record made at the time of the entry of the guilty plea and the record of the post-conviction hearing.

At the hearing on the application for post-conviction relief, the lower court found, and the testimony confirmed, that the appellant had been fully informed by his attorney as to his rights on a plea of not guilty and as to the consequences of a plea of guilty. Any requirement of Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238, 89 S.Ct. 1709, 23 L.Ed.2d 274 (1969), that an affirmative record be established showing the plea to be voluntary has been met by the extensive inquiry made at the post-conviction hearing. See Vickery v. State, Supra. The evidence adduced upon the post-conviction hearing abundantly supports the finding of fact by the lower court that appellant's plea of guilty was voluntarily and intelligently entered.

The appellant would also attack the voluntariness of the plea, upon the allegation that the State failed to keep a commitment concerning the sentence after a guilty plea. In the recent United States Supreme Court case, Santobello v. New York, 404 U.S. 257, 92 S.Ct. 495, 30 L.Ed.2d 427 (1971), that Court dealt with whether the state's failure to keep such a commitment required a new trial. In commenting on guilty pleas, the Court said:

'This phase of the process of criminal justice, and the adjudicative element inherent in accepting a plea of guilty, must be attended by safeguards to insure the defendant what is reasonably due in the circumstances. Those circumstances will vary, but a constant factor is that when a plea rests in any significant degree on a promise or agreement of the prosecutor, so that it can be said to be a part of the inducement or consideration, such promise must be fulfilled.'

The Court went on to say the relief to which a petitioner is entitled, if any, is left to the...