Something that came to mind. Say I am charged with several crimes. I plea bargain, and plead guilty to one offence in “exchange” for Her Majesty dropping the other charges. Can I then appeal (or something like that, if it is not technically an appeal), challenging the (constitutional) validity of the crime I was convicted of?
It seems to me consistent with my guilty plea, which is like an admission of the fact that my acts (and mens rea) fit into the statutory description of the crime.
I figure that the above would not justify re-charging me with the other crimes that were dropped.
Feel free to answer wrt the jurisdiction of your choice.
Usually, No. My understanding of U.S. plea bargain practice (and I don’t usually practice criminal law) is that in most instances you give up your right to appeal when you plead guilty under a plea bargain.
However, I believe that there are some instances where a defendant will enter into a plea bargain with the specific right to appeal a particular issue. For instance, if there is an issue as to whether the central evidence upon which the whole case turns is admissable, the defendant can plead guilty, subject to his or her right to appeal the particular evidentiary point. In this case, the prosecution would have to agree to entering a plea on these terms.
A guilty plea waives all non-jurisdictional defects and possible challenges.
You generally cannot raise an issue on appeal if you’ve not argued it below – that is, you cannot challenge the Constitutionality of a law on appeal unless you challenged it at trial. This allows both sides to brief and develop the issue, and the trial judge to rule on it first. The appeals court thus gets the benefit of adversarial argument and one judge’s opinion (even though they review question of law de novo - that is, anew, without deference to a lower court’s opinion)
You can appeal if you’ve pled guilty to a non-existent crime, because that appeal challenges the jurisdiction of the court to convict you. You cannot challenge the Constitutionality of the law, unless you preserve that issue by raising it and arguing it below. You may do that in much the same way as a guilty plea, proceeding to trial on stipulated facts and, if found guilty, a joint sentencing recommendation.
As to the specter of being re-charged with charges that were dropped if you challenge… the agreement with the Commonwealth will spell out exactly what both sides may do. A plea agreement usually carries with it the caveat that the accused gives up his right to appeal. If a matter of law is at stake, the agreement will say that the accused reserves his right to appeal a specific issue.
For example, let us say that you are stopped for a red light violation. Acting on a hunch, the rookie police officer searches your trunk, and finds a collection of nude pictures of Ernest Borgnine. You are immediately arrested and charged with possession of obscene material.
You submit a motion in limine to suppress the photos as the product of an illegal search. Inexpliably, the judge denies your motion. Having no other defense, you plead guilty to the charge, reserving your right to appeal the search issue.
If you breach your plea agreement (for example, by successfully seeking to withdraw your guilty plea when you get a sentence you don’t like), the Commonwealth is entitled return you to the position you were before the plea agreement was made. This may mean re-instating the charges that were dropped in consideration of your plea.
In general, these sorts of negotiations are governed by the principles of contract law. Once the plea agreement is executed, and you have relied upon it, the Commonwealth can be held to its terms.
One point about Bill’s answer: the government never “has” to accept a plea, except to the indictment. That is, the accused may want to plead to a lesser charge, or to one charge with the others dropped, and reserve the right to appeal some point of law, but the government doesn’t have to accept that plea.
So, what’s a non-existent crime? How does it differ from an unconstitutional crime?
I realize that “[y]ou generally cannot raise an issue on appeal if you’ve not argued it below.” That is why I posted this question. I’m looking for a way (purely out of interest) to overturn a conviction without appealing it.
I assume that if after my conviction, if another case results in my statute struck down, I would have some means of having my conviction overturned? If I am successful, then, looking at my plea bargain in contract terms, would it be fair to say that the contract has been frustrated? More importantly, could the dropped charges be reinstated?
A non-existent crime is… well… a crime that doesn’t exist.
For example, “attempted reckless endangerment”. Normally, an inchoate crime, such as attempt, is having the intent to commit and taking action in an effort to commit a crime, but failing or being prevented.
But you generally cannot have an attempt to commit a crime like reckless endangerment, because the mens rea of the crime is recklessness, not specific intent.
So, a plea bargain that purported to dismiss a charge of reckless endangerment in return for your plea of “attempted reckless endangerment” would likely not survive an appeal.
The short answer is… I don’t know. I have some meandering thoughts, though, amd mayne someone smarter than I can help out here.
Constitutional challenges vary. You may claim that a law is void for vagueness, which is essentialy a due process challenge. You may claim that the law is overbreadth, or that it infringes on, let us say, your First Amendment rights.
These challenges are different. You cannot vicariously assert another’s Constitutional rights. So even if a law is unconstitutional because of vagueness, and it may proscribe innocent conduct, you may not have standing to challenge if your conduct was so clearly inside the ambit of prohibited behavior it left no doubt as to you.
For example, let us say a law prohibits inciting a riot, and the specific language says, “Any person who, in a public place, engages in conduct having a direct tendency to cause acts of violence by the person or persons at whom such conduct is directed, is guilty of incitinig a riot.”
I might mount a successful First Amendment challenge to that law, if I were convicted for standing on a soapbox and urging that we go to war against Canada. You might not, if you stood on that same soapbox and urged a furious crowd to follow you to loot the merchants on the corner.
So just because a law may be struck down on a constitutional challenge as to one case does not always mean the law itself is invalid.
But – let’s say that it does. Lets say that the law in question is found to be utterly without support in the Constitution, such as a federal law made outside of Congress’ authority.
Does such a determination have only prospective or retroactive effect?
The seminal case for retroactivity is Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989). Teague stands for the general proposition that a petitioner is entitled, on direct review, to retroactive application of all changes in constitutional application. However, once direct review is exhausted - that is, after all the appeals are final, a petitioner is not entitled on collateral review to the benefit of new constitutional interpretations.
There are two exceptions. A interpretation should be applied retroactively on collateral review:
(1) if it places “certain kinds of primary, private individual conduct beyond the power of the criminal law-making authority to proscribe,” Mackey v. United States, 401 U.S. 667 (1971) or
(2) If it requires the observance of “those procedures that… are ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.’” ibid.
I would say that a law being found to be completely outside the bounds of Congress to make, for example, would clearly be applied retroactively.
So - whew! - to answer your question simply, if you’re convicted of a crime that’s later found to be completely unconstitutional, you may attack that conviction, regardless of whether it was obtained by plea or trial. You may attack in on direct appeal, or collaterally if your direct appeals are exhausted.
Whther the government could then turn around and charge you with the original crimes… it depends. They might be time-barred, for example. Some specifics would make the question easier to answer.
