State v. Pitts

• Decision Date: 04 June 1971
• Docket Number: No. L--462,L--462
• Citation: 249 So.2d 47
• Parties: STATE of Florida, Appellant, v. Freddie Lee PITTS and Wilbert Lee, Appellees.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 47

249 So.2d 47

STATE of Florida, Appellant, v. Freddie Lee PITTS and Wilbert Lee, Appellees.

No. L--462.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.

June 4, 1971.

Robert L. Shevin, Atty. Gen., J. Frank Adams, State's Atty., and Leo C. Jones, Asst. State's Atty., for appellant.

Phillip A. Hubbart, Asst. Public Defender, Irwin J. Block, Barry N. Semet, Miami, and Maurice Rosen, North Miami Beach, for appellees.

SPECTOR, Judge.

On May 7, 1971, the Florida Supreme Court entered its mandate vacating the decision of this court in this cause, reported in 241 So.2d 399. Said mandate was entered pursuant to that court's decision rendered april 21, 1971.

The Supreme Court's decision appears to be based solely upon the 'Motion in Confession of Error' filed in that court by the incumbent Attorney General, as reflected by the entry of the decision vacating our opinion 'without any determination on the questions of law discussed therein'. Thus, the Supreme Court has ordered this court to remand this cause to the trial court with instructions to vacate the judgment and sentence and the plea of guilty so that the defendants may be rearraigned and the case set for trial. Of course, no definition of error is necessary where an appellee enters a confession of error and appellants offer no objection in a civil action. In such circumstances, a reviewing court may enter its judgment reversing the judgment forming the subject matter of the appeal since a party may waive his rights and confess his own errors, agreeing that the trial court erred, but only for the purpose of fixing the rights of the parties Inter sese. Evans v. Green, 142 Fla. 335, 195 So. 413 (1940); Clark v. Caldwell, 95 Fla. 754, 116 So. 632 (1928); Gulf Power Co. v. Illinois-Florida Land Co., 100 Fla. 1594, 132 So. 109 (1931).

The last stated principle of law is universally adhered to in a civil case because the parties have the exclusive right to manage litigation affecting only their private rights and property. However, the resolution of the issues underlying this cause is not limited in application to these defendants and this Attorney General.

The decisional law expressed in and reasonably to be inferred from our opinion, by which we duly resolved the issues raised by the defendants on the one hand, and the State through its officers on the other, is, unless reversed or receded from, applicable and binding upon all persons imprisoned pursuant to convictions based on guilty pleas entered in open court. Since the Supreme Court did not determine that the manner in which we decided the issues was incorrect or that the principles of law we applied in arriving at our decision were erroneous or not relevant to the issues we considered, our rulings on the various questions of law presented would still obtain if we took no further action with respect to such rulings.

Thus, we are confronted with a most unusual jurisdical question. We must, of course, enter a mandate which conforms in all respects to the mandate of the Supreme Court herein. Of that there is neither doubt nor hesitancy on our part for we are a court of law. But, there yet remains the troublesome question resulting from the Supreme Court's election to vacate our opinion 'without any determination on the questions of law discussed therein'. Can we permit our opinion to stand and thereby render the rules of law stated therein applicable to all other prisoners except these defendants? We think not. The equal protection clause of the state and federal constitutions requires that every person's rights be determined by application of the same rule of law. We will not apply a different principle of law to an unchampioned prisoner than is resultingly being applied to these defendants by virtue of the Attorney General's motion in confession of error and the argumentation contained in the memorandum brief submitted to the Supreme Court in support of the State's motion.

In arriving at our decision in this cause, considerable weight was given to the trilogy of guilty-plea cases emanating from the United States Supreme Court some three weeks following oral argument of this case. Those cases, Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742, 90 S.Ct. 1463, McMann v. Richardson, 397 U.S. 759, 90 S.Ct. 1441 and Parker v. North Carolina, 397 U.S. 790, 90 S.Ct. 1458, reported in 25 L.Ed.2d 747 et seq., signaled what appeared to be a determination by the Supreme Court to affirm convictions based on guilty pleas entered in open court, even when the fear of imposition of the death penalty was shown to have been a factor in the plea or where the guilty plea was motivated by the defendant's desire to accept the certainty or probability of a lesser penalty rather than face the possibility of a greater penalty after trial, as in Brady; or, whether the guilty plea rested on a coerced confession so long as the plea is intelligently made and, in determining whether intelligently made, it is not required that all advice offered by the defendant's lawyer would stand retrospective examination in a post-conviction hearing, as in McMann; or, that even assuming the defendant's confession was involuntary because of alleged misconduct of the police during interrogation, nevertheless the alleged misconduct of the police did not render involuntary the guilty plea entered over one month later after the defendant had the advice of counsel, as in Parker.

It has long been the firmly established rule of almost every jurisdiction in this country, including federal courts, that counseled guilty pleas, voluntarily made, cured all defects which were nonjurisdictional that preceded the acceptance of such guilty pleas. By our earlier decision, we held in effect that all matters going to the sufficiency of evidence and credibility of witnesses, including evidentiary matters which might tend to impeach witnesses or render their testimony less credible, were laid to rest by the voluntary guilty pleas of these defendants. All of the aforesaid matters are...