Suppose there is a situation where police officers suspect two people: John and Jim of engaging in mopery in their shared home. They get a warrant and search their house. They find irrefutable evidence in the home to convict both of them of mopery.
I represent John and take a plea deal. John gets five years in prison.
Jim, on the other hand has a good attorney like Bricker or RNATB who moves to suppress the warrant on the grounds that it was invalid. The argument wins. The evidence is suppressed and Jim walks.
Does John have any remedy? Can he retract his plea? Move for reconsideration? Anything at all?
IANAL, but what do the terms of the plea bargain say? Don’t most prohibit attempts to appeal the sentence? Also, didn’t your client testify to the relevant details during his plea elocution? I think he’s SOL, but again, IANAL.
I don’t even know if failing to suppress the the evidence found during the warrant search, meets the standard for ineffective assistance of counsel.
He might have a good chance at arguing ineffective counsel. Not a lawyer, but from what I’ve read prohibitions on appealing a verdict are not absolute, in the same way that a person can sign away some but not all of their rights in a contract.
But wait…hasn’t the Supreme Court recently decided (quite unjustly, IMO) that illegally obtained evidence can still be used at trial? Though I suppose a Johnnie Cochran-style lawyer could convince the jury to ignore it, based on the bad warrant.
I thought about ineffective assistance of counsel, but I don’t think it would fly. The Strickland test basically says that you are not entitled to a gold plated defense, just an adequate one. I don’t think failing to challenge a warrant on these grounds would rise to such a deficiency.
Plus, say my client was a 2 time prior felon, and I didn’t want to risk losing the warrant challenge because if I lost, he faces the 3 strikes law.
This talk of the 4th amendment being dead probably belongs in GQ, but let’s just say that for whatever is left of the 4th amendment, it applies to this warrant.
Let’s keep comments like this (and the similar previous posts) out of GQ and focus on the factual aspects of the topic, please.
Feel free to start another thread in GD or the Pit for these types of comments (or join some of the previous threads that probably exist on these topics).
But, it seems to me the only hope is for an “ineffective counsel” claim.
AFAIK - The law does not recognize “do-over”. If you pled guilty, you admitted to the offense. What evidence, etc. the prosecutor had is somewhat irrelevant. The crux of your case was that you got up in front of a judge and said “your honour, I did it.”
In fact, I recall reading something about several cases where if the defendant says “I didn’t really do it, but I want to plead guilty to get this thing over with” the judge will refuse to accept the plea, enter a “not guilty” plea, and send the case to trial. So in the OP case, the defendant stood up in front of a judge and confessed. Whether the convict can now claim the confession was coerced is an interesting argument, but I doubt it works.
(What constitutes “coerced”? You are offered 6 months and threatened with 3 life sentences if you refuse? 2 years instead of 10 years?)
Note too that the situation is symmetrical, in that if Jim were to lose on his motion to suppress, he probably would have no right to go back and take the plea deal that was previously offered.
This type of stuff really isn’t that new. Plenty of decisions have been made where a judge signs something that was technically not supposed to happen - a cop follows that warrant - and then the court allows it in anyway.
This is somewhat similar, but in this case it was just the cop making the mistake.
People think that one wrong word placed somewhere will get someone off on a “technicality”.
Note also this was an 8-1 decision - and the lone demented wasn’t really making a strong constitutional argument from what I gathered, but on different grounds.
Anyway - for the OP - I don’t think this would usually happen - as they would make an argument to exclude the evidence before trial, but it could. And I see no reason to think the person would get off.
I’m gonna guess md2000 is probably right that his best chance would be ineffective counsel - as you almost always give up your right to appeal with a plea bargain.
Plus part of the reason you plea - is to take insurance against the uncertain. So if there is any info whatsoever on the record that the defendant was considering trying to suppress the evidence - and took a plea - he is likely to get no sympathy - as if he lost his motion to suppress the plea offer would have likely been worse.
Well, in my hypo, the plea deal specifies that a party may appeal, but a successful appeal voids the plea bargain. It also states that the Defendant must cooperate with the State in other related matters.
He could try to goad the State into committing a breach of the plea agreement (somehow?) and ask for the right to void it. He could certainly stop complying with his terms of the bargain and tell the State that their remedy is to void the plea agreement. (Which they would have no interest in doing)
But I’m siding with the majority here. Jim is screwed. Jim took the benefit of the bargain and took a chance against the uncertainty by taking the deal. The only question that would arise would be if he was sufficiently informed by his attorney of the possibility of suppression so that his choice to take the deal was done after considering all of the possibilities.
Also, I wonder if his allocution would also be a product of the poison tree. (Invalid search warrant leads to tainted evidence which leads to arrest which leads to guilty plea).
Although I think most posters are correct, something seems unjust about allowing a conviction to stand based upon what the court acknowledges is illegal evidence.
This is known as an Alford plea. The original Alford (who gave his name to the plea) was on trial for first-degree murder in North Carolina, and the law at the time didn’t allow for the death penalty to be imposed in cases where the defendant pled guilty. While courts in most states will accept such pleas, a few (Michigan, Indiana, and New Jersey) will not.
As a general rule, a guilty plea waives all non-jurisdictional defects. So by pleading, he waives his right to complain about a defective warrant or an illegal search.
The conviction isn’t based on illegal evidence, the conviction is based on a confession, which was part of the plea bargain. The illegal evidence may have played a part in convincing the accused to confess, but it was still his choice. If he was guilty, then the conviction was based on his confessing to a crime he knew he committed, and if he was innocent, then it was based on him choosing to lie about his involvement to avoid a possible stricter sentence.
