Criminal Law Newsletter

• Publication year: 1981
• Pages: 783

10 Colo.Law. 783 Colorado Lawyer 1981.

1981, April, Pg. 783. Criminal Law Newsletter

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Vol. 10, No. 4, Pg. 783

Criminal Law Newsletter

Column Ed: Ann McEntire

Constitutional Standards and Guilty Pleas to Minor Offenses

So you got a traffic ticket. For most readers of this publication, this generally means that the ticket is delivered to the desk of a young associate and the defendant can continue about his business, confident that a plea to a lesser charge will be arranged, entered and finalized. For the general public, a ticket is usually handled by signing off on a form and mailing in a fine. In either case, the result is the same: a plea of guilty to an offense is recorded and a penalty assessed.

Are these pleas valid? For many years, nobody cared. However, with the enactment of Colorado's Habitual Traffic Offender Law,(fn1) which, through a miraculous feat of legislative alchemy, converts a traffic offender into a felon facing a mandatory sentence, the validity of previously entered pleas to traffic offenses became a serious question.(fn2)

Since the offense of driving after judgment prohibited is not difficult to prove,(fn3) defending against the charge has focused upon the validity of the guilty pleas which formed the underlying basis for the finding that the defendant was an habitual offender. This in turn has spawned some important recent litigation which confronts the question of the constitutional prerequisites for the taking of guilty pleas in misdemeanors and minor offenses.(fn4)

The law in this state has developed to the point where nearly every misdemeanor, petty offense or traffic offense may some day be used to enhance the offender's punishment if future violations are accumulated. A guilty plea at the violations desk at the county court clerk's office may be valid for purposes of paying a fine, but if the conviction is to be used to support a deprivation of a person's liberty, then the full panoply of constitutional standards must be present if the conviction is to be deemed valid.

The Guilty Plea

A plea of guilty to a criminal charge is an awesome event.(fn5) In order to insure that a guilty plea is not entered without a full and absolute understanding of the defendant's rights and the implications of what he is doing, the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized

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that certain constitutional standards must be met whenever a plea of guilty is entered.(fn6) In a nutshell, the Constitution requires that a court may not accept a plea of guilty from a defendant unless the court is satisfied that the defendant is personally aware of all of his rights, that he voluntarily waives these rights and that he understands every element of the charge to which he is pleading guilty.(fn7)

In Colorado, these constitutional requirements are codified in Rule 11 of the Colorado Rules of Criminal Procedure (C.R.Crim.P.).(fn8) Strict compliance with the requirements of Rule 11 in the taking of any guilty plea is mandated by case law.(fn9) If the requirements of Rule 11 are not strictly complied with by the trial court, a...