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Per Curiam.
On November 7, 1968, after having been granted immunity, petitioner refused to answer questions put to him before a duly convened Kings County, N. Y., grand jury which was investigating a murder conspiracy. On March 18, 1969, petitioner refused to obey a court order to return to testify before the same grand jury in connection with the same investigation. On that date, petitioner was adjudicated in contempt of court under N. Y. Jud. Law § 750 (1968) for his failure to testify before the grand jury; and, on March 21, 1969, after declining an offer to purge his contempt, petitioner was sentenced to a flat 30-day term in civil jail. Petitioner served his sentence.
On June 10, 1970, petitioner was indicted for his refusal to answer questions before the grand jury on November 7, 1968. After asserting unsuccessfully that this indictment should be dismissed under the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, petitioner pleaded guilty to the indictment and was sentenced on his plea. Petitioner appealed, claiming that the Double Jeopardy Clause precluded the State from haling him into court on the charge to which he had pleaded guilty.1 The New York Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction, declining to address the double jeopardy claim on the merits. It held, relying, inter alia, on Tollett v. Henderson, 411 U. S. 258 (1973), that the double jeopardy claim had been “waived” by petitioner’s counseled plea of guilty.
We reverse. Where the State is precluded by the United States Constitution from haling a defendant into court on a charge, federal law requires that a conviction on that charge be set aside even if the conviction was entered pursuant to a counseled plea of guilty. Blackledge v. Perry, 417 U. S. 21, 30 (1974).2 The motion for leave to proceed in forma pawperis and the petition for certiorari are granted, and the case is remanded to the New York Court of Appeals for a determination of petitioner’s double jeopardy claim on the merits, a claim on which we express no view.
So ordered.
The State concedes that petitioner’s double jeopardy claim is a strong one on the merits. In light of the flat 30-day sentence imposed, the earlier contempt adjudication was a criminal conviction, People v. Colombo, 31 N. Y. 2d 947, 293 N. E. 2d 247 (1972), on remand from Colombo v. New York, 405 U. S. 9 (1972), and New York law supports the proposition that the earlier conviction was based, at least in part, on the failure to answer questions on November 7, 1968, and was thus for the same crime as the one charged in the instant indictment. In re Capio v. Justices of the Supreme Court, 41 App. Div. 2d 235, 342 N. Y. S. 2d 100 (1973), aff’d, 34 N. Y. 2d 603, 310 N. E. 2d 547 (1974); People v. Matra, 42 App; Div. 2d 865, 346 N. Y. S. 2d 872 (1973).
Neither Tollett v. Henderson, 411 U. S. 258 (1973), nor our earlier cases on which it relied, e. g., Brady v. United States, 397 U. S. 742 (1970), and McMann v. Richardson, 397 U. S. 759 (1970), stand for the proposition that counseled guilty pleas inevitably “waive” all antecedent constitutional violations. If they did so hold, the New York Court of Appeals might be correct. However, in Tollett we emphasized that waiver was not the basic ingredient of this line of cases, 411 U. S., at 266. The point of these cases is that a counseled plea of guilty is an admission of factual guilt so reliable that, where voluntary and intelligent, it quite validly removes the issue of factual guilt from the case. In most cases, factual guilt i's a sufficient basis for the State’s imposition of punishment. A guilty plea, therefore, simply renders irrelevant those constitutional violations not logically inconsistent with the valid establishment of factual guEt and which do not stand in the way of conviction, if factual guilt is validly established. Here, however, the claim is that the State may not convict petitioner no matter how validly his factual guEt is established. The guilty plea, therefore, does not bar the claim.
We do not hold that a double jeopardy claim may never be waived. We simply hold that a plea of guilty to a charge does not waive a claim that — judged on its face — the charge is one which the State may not constitutionally prosecute.
Mr. Justice Brennan agrees that “[w]here the State is precluded by the United States Constitution from haling a defendant into court on a charge, federal law requires that a conviction on that charge be set aside even if the conviction was entered pursuant to a counseled plea of guilty,” ante, at 62, but on his view that the Double Jeopardy Clause bars the prosecution from mounting successive prosecutions for offenses growing out of the same criminal transaction, he believes that the proper disposition of the case is not a remand but outright reversal. See Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U. S. 436, 453-454 (1970) (Brennan, J., concurring).
The Chiee Justice and Mr. Justice Rehnquist would grant the petition for a writ of certiorari and set the case for oral argument.
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State v. Johnson, 483 So. 2d 420 (Fla. 1986)…. See Hudson v. Louisiana, 450 U.S. 40, 101 S.Ct. 970, 67 L.Ed.2d 30 (1981) (double jeopardy claim not waived even though it had not been raised until federal habeas corpus proceedings were filed at the conclusion of all appeals); Menna v. New York, 423 U.S. 61, 96 S.Ct. 241, 46 L.Ed.2d 195 (1975) (double jeopardy claim upheld where defendant asserted claim after pleading guilty to the second charge); Blackledge v. Perry, 417 U.S. 21, 94 S.Ct. 2098, 40 L.Ed.2d 628 (1974) (no waiver of double jeopardy claim…
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Novaton v. State, 610 So. 2d 726 (Fla. 3d DCA 1992)…s jurisdiction over the case itself, see Solomon v. State, 341 So. 2d 537 (Fla. 2d DCA 1977), or — in the double jeopardy context — when, after an acquittal, the state has lost the power to prosecute a particular charge again. See Menna v. New York, 423 U.S. 61, 96 S.Ct. 241, 46 L.Ed.2d 195 (1975). Sentences like the present ones, which involve a violation of the rule against multiple convictions or sentences, are not "void” within the meaning of this principle. See Dermota, 895 F. 2d at 1326; United State…
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Alexander v. State, 450 So. 2d 1212 (Fla. 4th DCA 1984)…. . As to whether the principle that facial unconstitutionality may first be raised on appeal applies when there was a nolo contendere plea rather than a trial and conviction, the law is harder to pin down. Appellant analogizes to Menna v. New York, 423 U.S. 61, 96 S.Ct. 241, 46 L.Ed.2d 195 (1975). There it was held that even where the conviction resulted from a counseled plea of guilty, it must be set aside if the United States Constitution precludes the state from hauling the defendant into court on a ch…
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Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligenceAuthorities Cited
- Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742 (U.S. 1970)
- Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436 (U.S. 1970)
- McMANN v. Richardson, 397 U.S. 759 (U.S. 1970)
- Blackledge v. Perry, 417 U.S. 21 (U.S. 1974)
- Tollett v. Henderson, 411 U.S. 258 (U.S. 1973)
- Colombo v. New York, 405 U.S. 9 (U.S. 1972)