Pierce v. State, 19341
| Decision Date | 25 August 1993 |
| Docket Number | No. 19341,19341 |
| Citation | 124 Idaho 406,860 P.2d 22 |
| Parties | Michael Paul PIERCE, Petitioner-Appellant, v. STATE of Idaho, Respondent. |
| Court | Idaho Court of Appeals |
Alan E. Trimming, Ada County Public Defender and Deborah A. Whipple, Deputy Atty. Gen., Boise, for petitioner-appellant.
Larry EchoHawk, Atty. Gen. and Thomas P. Watkins, Deputy Atty. Gen., Boise, for respondent.
This is an appeal from an order dismissing an application for post-conviction relief. We affirm.
Michael Pierce pled guilty to rape and was sentenced to a unified term of twenty-five years, with ten years' minimum confinement. He took no direct appeal from the judgment and sentence, but subsequently filed a timely application for post-conviction relief. The state moved for summary dismissal of the petition, which the district court granted. Pierce then brought this appeal.
Although Pierce raised several grounds for relief in his petition, on appeal he challenges the dismissal with regard to only two of those claims. The first is an allegation that the police extracted a confession from him. The second is that he was "coerced" into pleading guilty by his counsel's assurances regarding the sentence he would receive. The district court ruled that these allegations were insufficient to serve as a basis for granting Pierce relief from his conviction.
As to the voluntariness of Pierce's confession, the district court held that because Pierce had pled guilty to the charge, the question of the voluntariness of his confession--which was never offered as evidence against him to establish his guilt--essentially was an immaterial inquiry. In this regard, the court relied on State v. Walker, 92 Idaho 517, 446 P.2d 886 (1968). In that case, our Supreme Court addressed a similar claim, also raised in a post-conviction proceeding. The Court said:
By the first sentence of this allegation [in the petition], it appears appellant is raising the question of a statement having been taken from him by use of coercion. Unfortunately, the record does not disclose the contents of the statement nor to whom the statement was given but assuming the statement had been given to police officers or other state authorities and that it did contain admissions or other incriminatory matter, it would still not entitle appellant to post-conviction relief; because his conviction and sentence were based upon a plea of guilty and the assumed incriminating evidence contained in appellant's statement was not used in obtaining his conviction.
92 Idaho at 519, 446 P.2d at 888. On appeal, Pierce attacks the district court's application of the principle stated in Walker by urging that Walker should be overruled. We decline that...
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