State v. Williams

• Decision Date: 24 July 1979
• Docket Number: No. 77-437-C,77-437-C
• Citation: 122 R.I. 32,404 A.2d 814
• Parties: STATE v. Rebecca WILLIAMS. A.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

Page 814

404 A.2d 814

122 R.I. 32

STATE v. Rebecca WILLIAMS.

No. 77-437-C.A.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

July 24, 1979.

[122 R.I. 45] Lawrence Iacoi, Asst. Atty. Gen., for plaintiff.

William G. Grande, Providence, for defendant.

OPINION

JOSLIN, Justice.

The defendant, Rebecca Williams, was indicted for robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery. At her arraignment in the Superior Court, she pleaded not guilty to both charges. Before the case was reached for trial, however, she requested leave to substitute pleas of guilty for her prior pleas. At the hearing that followed, the trial justice engaged in an extensive exchange with defendant and her counsel concerning the nature of the offenses charged and the consequences of her proposed change of pleas. Following that exchange he said that he was satisfied that there was a factual basis for the defendant's guilty pleas and that they were being offered voluntarily and intelligently. Accordingly, he granted her motion for a substitution of pleas, ordered that judgments of conviction enter, and continued the case for sentencing. Following receipt of a presentence report, he sentenced her to serve a term of 7 years at the Women's Reformatory.

Within a week after sentence was imposed, defendant filed a motion entitled, "Motion to Set Aside Guilty Plea, Vacate Sentence Imposed and Reinstate for Trial." Notwithstanding its title, nothing in the text of that motion or in defendant's arguments at the hearing thereon even remotely touched on grounds that would provide a basis for setting aside defendant's guilty pleas. Instead, both the motion and the argument focused entirely on equitable considerations that in defendant's view favored a lighter sentence than the one imposed. The absence of a relevant relation between the title of defendant's motion on the one hand, and its content and defendant's supporting argument on the other, was commented on by the trial justice in his bench decision denying the motion. He said that he "listened with care to everything that (counsel) has said hoping that he would say something that was relevant to a motion to vacate the plea of guilty," but that "(n)othing that (counsel) has said has anything whatsoever to do with a motion to vacate a plea of guilty." The case is now here on defendant's appeal from the order denying her motion.

On appeal defendant argues that the trial justice accepted her guilty pleas without fully complying with Super.R.Crim.P. 11. ¹ This argument, however, was not advanced and, consequently, was not ruled on at the hearing on the motion to vacate. Accordingly, there is apparently nothing for us to review. See State v. Correia, 106 R.I. 655, 664, 262 A.2d 619, 624 (1970).

Moreover, even if defendant had alleged the trial justice's noncompliance with Rule 11 as the basis of her motion to set aside her pleas, Super.R.Crim.P. 32(d) would have precluded favorable action thereon. That rule provides in part that "(a) motion to withdraw a plea of guilty or of nolo contendere may be made only before sentence is imposed * * *." In this case, the motion was untimely because imposition of the sentence preceded the filing of that motion.

The label defendant placed on her motion suggests that her purpose might have been to vacate the sentence because it was illegal. Such a motion would have been timely because Super.R.Crim.P. 35 permits the Superior Court to correct an illegal sentence "at any time." The motion pertains, however, only to a sentence that is imposed after a valid conviction but is not authorized under law. See United States v. Morgan, 346 U.S. 502, 506, 74 S.Ct. 247, 250, 98 L.Ed. 248, 253-54 (1954); 2 Wright, Federal Practice and Procedure § 582 at 552 (1969). See generally Frazier v. Langlois, 103 R.I. 607, 240 A.2d 152 (1968). Relief for this defendant under Rule 35 is therefore unavailable because certainly convictions of robbery and conspiracy to rob permit the imposition of a 7-year sentence.

In light of the foregoing deficiencies in defendant's motion, there are ample reasons for rejecting her appeal. To proceed on that tack, however, would not mean that defendant would be denied her opportunity to challenge the errors that she alleges the trial justice made in accepting her guilty pleas. That opportunity would be available by application to the Superior Court under the Post Conviction Relief Act and if there denied, she would then have a right to seek appellate review in this court. See G.L.1956 (1969 Reenactment) § 10-9.1-1 to -9, as amended by P.L.1974, ch. 220, § 3.

This approach was the one we took in the recent case of Johnson v. Mullen, R.I., 390 A.2d 909 (1978). In that case we held that we would require that the postconviction route be followed "absent the most pressing circumstances." Id. 390 A.2d at 911-12. In our judgment, this case possesses such circumstances and therefore falls within that limited exception. The issue raised here is one of constitutional proportions, the necessary record is before us, defendant has been imprisoned since 1977, and if we do not act now, relief, if it is to come to her at all, will probably not arrive until after she has become eligible for parole. Moreover, it seems to us that to dismiss defendant's appeal at this point on procedural grounds and to require her to resort to postconviction procedures would elevate form above substance, result in a waste of valuable judicial time, and needlessly prolong this matter. Accordingly, we treat this appeal as if it were from the denial of an application for postconviction relief. See State v. Lanoue, 117 R.I. 342, 345, 366 A.2d 1158, 1160 (1976). See generally Walker v. Langlois, 104 R.I. 274, 275, 243 A.2d 733, 734 (1968).

We turn, then, to the crux of defendant's complaint which is that her convictions must be vacated and her earlier not guilty pleas reinstated because the trial justice allegedly accepted her guilty pleas without having first complied with the mandate of Super.R.Crim.P. 11. That rule is substantially like its federal counterpart in that it requires that the court shall not accept a plea of guilty or nolo contendere "without first addressing the defendant personally and determining that the plea is made voluntarily with understanding of the nature of the charge and the consequences of the plea." Our rule further provides that "(t)he court shall not enter a judgment upon a plea of guilty or nolo contendere unless it is satisfied that there is a factual basis for the plea."

Even before that rule was adopted in this state, however, we said that in Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238, 89 S.Ct. 1709, 23 L.Ed.2d 274 (1969), "the Supreme Court of the United States, at least by implication, makes the procedure set out in (Fed.R.Crim.P. 11) applicable to the states through the fourteenth amendment when federal constitutional rights are involved in the entry of the plea." Bishop v. Langlois, 106 R.I. 56, 65, 256 A.2d 20, 24 (1969). Elaborating on that pronouncement, and also on the Supreme Court's holding in McCarthy v. United States, 394 U.S. 459, 89 S.Ct. 1166, 22 L.Ed.2d 418 (1969), we announced as our rule

"that in accepting the plea of guilty or nolo contendere after the date of this decision, the trial justice ' * * * shall not accept such plea or a plea of Nolo contendere without first addressing the defendant personally and determining that the plea is made voluntarily with understanding of the nature of the charge and the consequences of the plea.' Such trial justice shall further cause the record to show affirmatively that such inquiry was made and that the accused did by his responses thereto demonstrate clearly that he was aware of the nature of the charge to which he pleaded and that he was aware that such a plea constitutes a waiver of his pertinent constitutional rights. Absent such an affirmative disclosure in the record of compliance with this mandate, the trial court, upon an appropriate petition, shall vacate the plea entered and order that the accused be permitted to plead over in proper course." 106 R.I. at 66-67, 256 A.2d at 25.

Any doubts that might have been entertained on whether Bishop required a dialogue between the sentencing justice and the accused were dispelled in Flint v. Sharkey, 107 R.I. 530, 268 A.2d 714 (1970), where we said that a post-Bishop or Boykin nolo or guilty plea

"will be vacated unless the record shows that the court has conducted an on-the-record examination of the defendant before accepting his plea to determine if the plea is being made voluntarily with an understanding of the nature of the charge and the consequence of the plea." Id. at 537, 268 A.2d at 719; See, e. g., Johnson v. Mullen, R.I., 390 A.2d at 913 n. 3; Bishop v. Sharkey, 108 R.I. 564, 568, 277 A.2d 747, 749 (1971).

In this case defendant does not now contend that she was not fully advised by the trial justice, or that she did not fully understand, that by pleading guilty she was waiving her rights to a trial by jury, the presumption of innocence, the privilege against self incrimination, and the rights to confront and cross-examine her accusers, to testify and to call witnesses in her own defense, to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and to appeal a conviction to this court. She argues, however, that under the rule in Bishop, and also pursuant to Super.R.Crim.P. 11, the trial justice, in addition to ascertaining that she was aware of those rights, should also have addressed her personally to make certain that she understood the nature of the charges against her and the consequences of her pleas. She also asserts that the trial justice neglected to determine whether there was a factual basis for her pleas. She concludes that these alleged failures mandate that her judgments of conviction be vacated and that her not guilty pleas be reinstated.

The issues she raises were considered in their constitutional context by the Supreme Court in Henderson v. Morgan, 426...