SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 16–424
_________________
RODNEY CLASS, PETITIONER
v. UNITED
STATES
on writ of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the district of columbia circuit
[February 21, 2018]
Justice Alito, with whom Justice Kennedy and
Justice Thomas join, dissenting.
Roughly 95% of felony cases in the federal and
state courts are resolved by guilty pleas.[
1] Therefore it is critically important that
defendants, prosecutors, and judges understand the consequences of
these pleas. In this case, the parties have asked us to identify
the claims that a defendant can raise on appeal after entering an
unconditional guilty plea. Regrettably, the Court provides no clear
answer.
By my count, the Court identifies no fewer than
five rules for ascertaining the issues that can be raised.
According to the Court, a defendant who pleads guilty may assert on
appeal (1) a claim that “implicates ‘the very power of
the State’ to prosecute [him],”
ante, at 4, (2)
a claim that does not contradict the facts alleged in the charging
document,
ante, at 5–6, (3) a claim that
“ ‘the facts alleged and admitted do not
constitute a crime,’ ”
ante, at 5, and (4)
claims other than “case-related constitutional defects that
‘occurred prior to the entry of the guilty
plea,’ ”
ante, at 6–7 (some internal
quotation marks omitted). In addition, the Court suggests (5) that
such a defendant may not be able to assert a claim that
“contradict[s] the terms of . . . [a] written plea
agreement,”
ante, at 6, but whether this rule applies
when the claim falls into one of the prior four categories is left
unclear. How these rules fit together is anybody’s guess. And
to make matters worse, the Court also fails to make clear whether
its holding is based on the Constitution or some other ground.
I
There is no justification for the muddle left
by today’s decision. The question at issue is not
conceptually complex. In determining whether a plea of guilty
prevents a defendant in federal or state court from raising a
particular issue on appeal, the first question is whether the
Federal Constitution precludes waiver. If the Federal Constitution
permits waiver, the next question is whether some other law
nevertheless bars waiver. And if no law prevents waiver, the final
question is whether the defendant knowingly and intelligently
waived the right to raise the claim on appeal.
McMann v.
Richardson, 397 U. S. 759, 766 (1970) .
Petitioner Rodney Class was charged with
violating a federal statute that forbids the carrying of firearms
on the grounds of the United States Capitol. See 40
U. S. C. §5104(e)(1). After entering an
unconditional guilty plea, he appealed his conviction, asserting
that his conduct was protected by the Second Amendment and that the
statute he violated is unconstitutionally vague. The Court of
Appeals affirmed his conviction, holding that Class had
relinquished his right to litigate these claims when he entered his
unconditional plea.
Analyzing this case under the framework set out
above, I think the Court of Appeals was clearly correct. First, the
Federal Constitution does not prohibit the waiver of the rights
Class asserts. We have held that most personal constitutional
rights may be waived, see,
e.g., Peretz v.
United
States, 501 U. S. 923 –937 (1991), and Class
concedes that this is so with respect to the rights he is
asserting, Tr. of Oral Arg. 5, 18.
Second, no federal statute or rule bars waiver.
On the contrary, Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure
makes it clear that, with one exception that I will discuss below,
a defendant who enters an unconditional plea waives all
nonjurisdictional claims. Although the Rule does not say this
expressly, that is the unmistakable implication of subdivision
(a)(2), which allows a defendant, “[w]ith the consent of the
court and the government,” to “enter a conditional plea
of guilty or nolo contendere, reserving in writing the right to
have an appellate court review an adverse determination of a
specified pretrial motion.” “Where [a law] explicitly
enumerates certain exceptions to a general prohibition, additional
exceptions are not to be implied, in the absence of evidence of a
contrary . . . intent.”
Andrus v.
Glover
Constr. Co., 446 U. S. 608 –617 (1980). And
here, there is strong evidence confirming that other exceptions
were ruled out.
The Advisory Committee’s Notes on Rule 11
make this clear, stating that an unconditional plea (with the
previously mentioned exception) “constitutes a waiver of all
nonjurisdictional defects.” Notes on 1983 Amendments, 18
U. S. C. App., p. 911. Advisory Committee’s Notes
on a federal rule of procedure “provide a reliable source of
insight into the meaning of a rule, especially when, as here, the
rule was enacted precisely as the Advisory Committee
proposed.”
United States v.
Vonn, 535
U. S. 55 , n. 6 (2002).[
2] Subdivision (a)(2) was adopted against the backdrop of
decisions of this Court holding that a guilty plea generally
relinquishes all defenses to conviction, see,
e.g., Tollett
v.
Henderson, 411 U. S. 258, 267 (1973) , and Rule
11(a)(2) creates a limited exception to that general principle. Far
from prohibiting the waiver of nonjurisdictional claims, Rule 11
actually bars the raising of such claims (once again, with the
previously mentioned exception).
For now, I will skip over that exception and
proceed to the final question—whether Class voluntarily and
intelligently waived his right to raise his Second Amendment and
due process claims on appeal. It is not clear that he raised this
question in the Court of Appeals, and in any event, this
fact-specific inquiry is not within the scope of the question of
law on which we granted review: “Whether a guilty plea
inherently waives a defendant’s right to challenge the
constitutionality of his statute of conviction.” Pet. for
Cert. i. The Court does not decide the case on that ground. Nor
would I.
II
A
I now turn to the one exception mentioned in
the Advisory Committee’s Notes on Rule 11—what the
Notes, rather grandly, term the “
Menna-Blackledge
doctrine.” Advisory Committee’s Notes, 18
U. S. C. App., at 912. This “doctrine”
consists of
Blackledge v.
Perry, 417 U. S. 21
(1974) , a thinly reasoned decision handed down 44 years ago, and
Menna v.
New York, 423 U. S. 61 (1975) (
per
curiam), a
per curiam decision issued the next year.
These cases hold that a defendant has the right under the Due
Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to contest certain
issues on appeal even if the defendant entered an unconditional
guilty plea. Since a rule of procedure cannot abrogate a
constitutional right, the Advisory Committee’s Notes on Rule
11 specify that Rule 11(a)(2) “has no application” to
the “
Menna-Blackledge doctrine” and
“should not be interpreted as either broadening or narrowing
[that] doctrine or as establishing procedures for its
application.” Advisory Committee’s Notes, 18
U. S. C. App., at 912.
Because this doctrine is the only exception
recognized in Rule 11 and because the doctrine figures prominently
in the opinion of the Court, it is important to examine its
foundation and meaning.
B
Blackledge and
Menna represented
marked departures from our prior decisions. Before they were handed
down, our precedents were clear: When a defendant pleaded guilty to
a crime, he relinquished his right to litigate all
nonjurisdictional challenges to his conviction (except for the
claim that his plea was not voluntary and intelligent), and the
prosecution could assert this forfeiture to defeat a subsequent
appeal. The theory was easy to understand. As we explained in
Tollett, our view was that “a guilty plea represents a
break in the chain of events which has preceded it in the criminal
process.” 411 U. S., at 267. The defendant’s
decision to plead guilty extinguished his right to litigate
whatever “possible defenses” or “constitutional
plea[s] in abatement” he might have pursued at trial or on
appeal.
Id., at 267–268. Guilty pleas were understood
to have this effect because a guilty plea comprises both factual
and legal concessions. Hence, we said in
Tollett, a
defendant who pleads guilty is barred from contesting not only the
“historical facts” but also the
“
constitutional significance” of those facts,
even if he failed to “correctly apprais[e]” that
significance at the time of his plea.
Id., at 267 (emphasis
added).
When
Tollett declared that a guilty plea
encompasses all legal and factual concessions necessary to
authorize the conviction, it was simply reiterating a principle we
had enunciated many times before, most recently in the so-called
“
Brady trilogy.” See
Brady v.
United
States, 397 U. S. 742, 748 (1970) (“[T]he plea is
more than an admission of past conduct; it is the defendant’s
consent that judgment of conviction may be entered”);
McMann, 397 U. S., at 774 (a defendant who pleads
guilty “assumes the risk of ordinary error in either his or
his attorney’s assessment of the law and facts”);
Parker v.
North Carolina, 397 U. S. 790, 797
(1970) (similar). As we put it in
Boykin v.
Alabama,
395 U. S. 238, 242 (1969) , “[a] plea of guilty is more
than a confession which admits that the accused did various acts;
it is itself a conviction; nothing remains but to give judgment and
determine punishment.”
On the strength of that rule, we held that
defendants who pleaded guilty forfeited a variety of important
constitutional claims. For instance, a defendant who pleaded guilty
could not attack his conviction on the ground that the prosecution
violated the Equal Protection Clause by systematically excluding
African-Americans from grand juries in the county where he was
indicted.
Tollett,
supra, at 266. Nor could he argue
that the prosecution unlawfully coerced his confession—even
if the confession was the only evidence supporting the conviction.
McMann,
supra, at 768;
Parker,
supra,
at 796–797. Nor could he assert that his statute of
conviction employed an unconstitutional penalty provision; his
consent to be punished under the statute precluded this defense.
Brady,
supra, at 756–757. Reflecting our
general thinking, then-Judge Burger explained: “[I]f
voluntarily and understandingly made, even a layman should expect a
plea of guilty to be treated as an honest confession of guilt and a
waiver of all defenses known and unknown. And such is the
law.”
Edwards v.
United States, 256 F. 2d
707, 709 (CADC 1958) (footnote omitted); see also A. Bishop,
Waivers in Pleas of Guilty, 60 F. R. D. 513,
525–526 (1974) (summarizing the state of the law on the eve
of
Blackledge: “All the bulwarks of the fortress of
defense are abandoned by the plea of guilty. . . .
The plea of guilty surrenders all defenses whatever and all
nonjurisdictional defects” (collecting cases)).
III
Blackledge and
Menna diverged
from these prior precedents, but neither case provided a clear or
coherent explanation for the departure.
A
In
Blackledge, the Court held that a
defendant who pleaded guilty could nevertheless challenge his
conviction on the ground that his right to due process was violated
by a vindictive prosecution. 417 U. S., at 30–31. The
Court asserted that this right was “markedly different”
from the equal protection and Fifth Amendment rights at stake in
Tollett and the
Brady trilogy because it “went
to the very power of the State to bring the defendant into court to
answer the charge brought against him.” 417 U. S., at
30. The meaning of this distinction, however, is hard to grasp.
The most natural way to understand
Blackledge’s reference to “the very power of the
State” would be to say that an argument survives a guilty
plea if it attacks the court’s jurisdiction. After all, that
is usually what we mean when we refer to the power to adjudicate.
See,
e.g., Arbaugh v.
Y & H Corp., 546
U. S. 500, 514 (2006) ;
United States v.
Cotton,
535 U. S. 625, 630 (2002) ;
Steel Co. v.
Citizens
for Better Environment, 523 U. S. 83, 89 (1998) . But that
cannot be what
Blackledge meant.
First, the defendant in
Blackledge had
been tried in state court in North Carolina for a state-law
offense, and the jurisdiction of state courts to entertain such
prosecutions is purely a matter of state law (unless Congress
validly and affirmatively ousts their jurisdiction—something
that had not happened in that case).[
3] Second, a rule that jurisdictional defects alone
survive a guilty plea would not explain the result in
Blackledge itself. Arguments attacking a court’s
subject-matter jurisdiction can neither be waived nor forfeited.
See,
e.g., Wisconsin Dept. of Corrections v.
Schacht,
524 U. S. 381, 389 (1998) ;
Miller v.
Roberts,
212 N. C. 126, 129, 193 S. E. 286, 288 (1937). But the
due process right at issue in
Blackledge was perfectly
capable of being waived or forfeited—as is just about every
other right that is personal to a criminal defendant. See,
e.g.,
Peretz, 501 U. S., at 936–937.
So if the “very power to prosecute”
theory does not refer to jurisdiction, what else might it mean? The
only other possibility that comes to mind is that it might mean
that a defendant can litigate a claim if it asserts a right not to
be tried, as opposed to a right not to be convicted. But we have
said that “virtually all rights of criminal defendants”
are “merely . . . right[s] not to be
convicted,” as distinguished from “right[s] not to be
tried.”
Flanagan v.
United States, 465
U. S. 259, 267 (1984) . Even when a constitutional violation
requires the dismissal of an indictment, that “does not mean
that [the] defendant enjoy[ed] a ‘right not to be
tried’ ” on the charges.
United States v.
Mac- Donald, 435 U. S. 850 , n. 7 (1978).
The rule could hardly be otherwise. Most
constitutional defenses (and plenty of statutory defenses), if
successfully asserted in a pretrial motion, deprive the prosecution
of the “power” to proceed to trial or secure a
conviction. If that remedial consequence converted them all into
rights not to be prosecuted,
Blackledge would have no
discernible limit. “We have, after all, acknowledged that
virtually every right that could be enforced appropriately by
pretrial dismissal might loosely be described as conferring a
‘right not to stand trial.’ ”
Digital
Equipment Corp. v.
Desktop Direct, Inc., 511 U. S.
863, 873 (1994) . Indeed, “all litigants who have a
meritorious pretrial claim for dismissal can reasonably claim a
right not to stand trial.”
Van Cauwenberghe v.
Biard, 486 U. S. 517, 524 (1988) .
It is true that we have spoken of a distinction
between a right not to be tried and a right not to be convicted in
one context: when defining the scope of the collateral order
doctrine.
E.g., Flanagan,
supra, at 265–267.
That is, we have allowed defendants in federal criminal cases to
take an immediate appeal from the denial of a pretrial motion when
the right at issue is properly understood to be a right not to be
tried. A prime example is a case in which a defendant claims that a
prosecution would violate the Double Jeopardy Clause. See
Abney v.
United States, 431 U. S. 651, 662
(1977) . Allowing an interlocutory appeal in that situation
protects against all the harms that flow from the prolongation of a
case that should never have been brought. See
id., at 661.
But that rationale cannot justify the
Menna-Blackledge
doctrine, because allowing a defendant to appeal after a guilty
plea does not cut short a prosecution that should never have been
brought. On the contrary, it prolongs the litigation. So the
distinction drawn in our collateral order cases makes no sense in
distinguishing between the claims that should and the claims that
should not survive a guilty plea.
Nor, in any event, would such a rule be
consistent with the
decision in
Blackledge, because
we have held that an unsuccessful vindictive prosecution claim may
not be appealed before trial.
United States v.
Hollywood Motor Car Co., 458 U. S. 263, 264 (1982)
(
per curiam). And none of this would do any good for
Class, for we have never permitted a defendant to appeal a pretrial
order rejecting a constitutional challenge to the statute the
defendant allegedly violated. In fact we have repudiated the very
suggestion.
Id., at 270.
The upshot is that the supposed “right not
to be prosecuted” has no intelligible meaning in this
context. And
Blackledge identified no basis for this new
right in the text of the Constitution or history or prior
precedent. What is more, it did all this without bothering to
consider the understanding of a guilty plea under the law of the
State where the
Blackledge defendant was convicted or
anything that was said to him or that he said at the time of his
plea.
B
If the thinking behind
Blackledge is
hard to follow,
Menna may be worse. In that case, the Court
held that a defendant who pleaded guilty could challenge his
conviction on double jeopardy grounds. 423 U. S., at 62. The
case was decided by a three-page
per curiam opinion, its
entire analysis confined to a single footnote. And the footnote,
rather than elucidating what was said in
Blackledge,
substituted a different rationale. Arguing that
Tollett and
the other prior related cases did not preclude appellate review of
the double jeopardy claim, the Court wrote:
“[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 is 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 guilt.”
Menna, 423 U. S., at
62–63, n. 2.
The wording of the final sentence is not easy to
parse, but I interpret the Court’s reasoning as follows: A
defendant who pleads guilty does no more than admit that he
committed the essential conduct charged in the indictment;
therefore a guilty plea allows the litigation on appeal of any
claim that is not inconsistent with the facts that the defendant
necessarily admitted. If that is the correct meaning, the sentence
would overrule many of the cases that it purported to distinguish,
including
Tollett, which involved an unconstitutional grand
jury claim. It would contradict much that the Court had previously
said about the effect of a guilty plea. See,
e.g.,
Boykin, 395 U. S., at 242 (“A plea of guilty is
more than a confession which admits that the accused did various
acts; it is itself a conviction”). And it would permit a
defendant who pleads guilty to raise on appeal a whole host of
claims, including, for example, the denial of motions to suppress
evidence allegedly obtained in violation of the Fourth, Fifth, or
Sixth Amendments. See,
e.g., Linkletter v.
Walker, 381 U. S. 618, 638 (1965) (most Fourth
Amendment claims have “no bearing on guilt”). A holding
of that scope is not what one expects to see in a footnote in a
per curiam opinion, but if the Court meant less, its meaning
is unclear.
C
When the Court returned to
Blackledge
and
Menna in
United States v.
Broce, 488
U. S. 563 (1989) , the Court essentially repudiated the
theories offered in those earlier cases. (The Court terms this a
“reaffirm[ation].”
Ante, at 6.) Like
Menna,
Broce involved a defendant (actually two
defendants) who pleaded guilty but then sought to attack their
convictions on double jeopardy grounds. 488 U. S., at 565.
This time, however, the Court held that their guilty pleas
prevented them from litigating their claims.
Ibid.
The Court began by specifically disavowing
Menna’s suggestion that a guilty plea admits only
“ ‘factual guilt,’ ” meaning
“the acts described in the indictments.”
Broce,
488 U. S., at 568–569. Instead, the Court explained, an
unconditional guilty plea admits “all of the factual
and
legal elements necessary to sustain a binding, final judgment
of guilt and a lawful sentence.”
Id., at 569 (emphasis
added). “By entering a plea of guilty, the accused is not
simply stating that he did the discrete acts described in the
indictment; he is admitting guilt of a substantive crime.”
Id., at 570. Such “admissions,”
Broce
continued, are “necessarily made upon entry of a voluntary
plea of guilty.”
Id., at 573–574. And invoking
Tollett, the Court added that it makes no difference whether
the defendant “ ‘may not have correctly appraised
the constitutional significance of certain historical
facts.’ ” 488 U. S., at 572 (quoting 411
U. S., at 267). Thus, the Court concluded, a defendant’s
decision to plead guilty necessarily extinguishes whatever
“potential defense[s]” he might have asserted in an
effort to show that it would be unlawful to hold him liable for his
conduct. 488 U. S., at 573. So much for
Menna.
As for
Blackledge, by holding that the
defendants’ double jeopardy rights were extinguished by their
pleas,
Broce necessarily rejected the idea that a right not
to be tried survives an unconditional guilty plea. See
Abney, 431 U. S., at 662 (holding for
collateral-order-doctrine purposes that the Double Jeopardy Clause
confers a right not to be tried).
While
Broce thus rejected the reasoning
in
Blackledge and
Menna, the Court was content to
distinguish those cases on the ground that they involved defendants
who could succeed on appeal without going beyond “the
existing record,” whereas the defendants in
Broce
would have to present new evidence.
Broce,
supra, at
575.[
4]
IV
A
This is where the
Menna-Blackledge
doctrine stood when we heard this case. Now, instead of clarifying
the law, the Court sows new confusion by reiterating with seeming
approval a string of catchphrases. The Court repeats the line that
an argument survives if it “implicates ‘the very power
of the State’ to prosecute the defendant,”
ante,
at 4 (quoting
Blackledge, 417 U. S., at 30), but this
shibboleth is no more intelligible now than it was when first
incanted in
Blackledge. The Court also parrots the rule set
out in the
Menna footnote—that the only arguments
waived by a guilty plea are those that contradict the facts alleged
in the charging document, see
ante, at 5–6, even
though that rule is inconsistent with
Tollett, the
Brady trilogy, and
Broce—and even though this
reading would permit a defendant who pleads guilty to raise an
uncertain assortment of claims never before thought to survive a
guilty plea.
For example, would this rule permit a defendant
to argue that his prosecution is barred by a statute of limitations
or by the Speedy Trial Act? Presumably the answer is yes. By
admitting commission of the acts alleged in an indictment or
complaint, a defendant would not concede that the charge was
timely. What about the argument that a defendant’s alleged
conduct does not violate the statute of conviction? Here again, the
rule barring only those claims inconsistent with the facts alleged
in the indictment or complaint would appear to permit the issue to
be raised on appeal, but the Court says that a defendant who pleads
guilty “has admitted the charges against him.”
Ante, at 7. What does this mean, exactly? The majority is
coy, but “admit[ing] the charges against him” would
appear to mean admitting that his conduct satisfies each element of
the statute he is charged with violating. It must mean that because
we have held that if a defendant does
not understand that he
is admitting his conduct satisfies each element of the crime, his
guilty plea is involuntary and unintelligent and therefore invalid.
Henderson v.
Morgan, 426 U. S. 637 –645
(1976). So if a defendant who pleads guilty “admit[s] the
charges against him,” and if he does not claim that his plea
was involuntary or unintelligent, his plea must be taken as an
admission that he did everything the statute forbids.
But if that is so, then what about the rule
suggested by the old Massachusetts opinion the Court touts? There,
Justice Ames wrote that a guilty plea does not waive the right to
argue that “ ‘the facts alleged and admitted do
not constitute a crime against the laws of the
Commonwealth.’ ”
Ante, at 5 (quoting
Commonwealth v.
Hinds, 101 Mass. 209, 210 (1869)).
Does the Court agree with Justice Ames, or not?
Approaching the question from the opposite
direction, the Court says that a guilty plea precludes a defendant
from litigating “the constitutionality of case-related
government conduct that takes place before the plea is
entered.”
Ante, at 8. This category is most
mysterious. I thought Class was arguing that the Government
violated the Constitution at the moment when it initiated his
prosecution. That sounds like he is trying to attack “the
constitutionality of case-related government conduct that [took]
place before the plea [was] entered.” Yet the Court holds
that he may proceed. Why?
Finally, the majority instructs that “a
valid guilty plea relinquishes any claim that would contradict the
‘admissions necessarily made upon entry of a voluntary plea
of guilty.’ ”
Ibid. (quoting
Broce,
488 U. S., at 573–574). I agree with that statement of
the rule, but what the Court fails to acknowledge is that the scope
of this rule depends on the law of the particular jurisdiction in
question. If a defendant in federal court is told that under Rule
11 an unconditional guilty plea waives all nonjurisdictional claims
(or as
Broce put it, admits “all of the factual and
legal elements necessary to sustain a binding, final judgment of
guilt and a lawful sentence,”
id., at 569), then that
is the scope of the admissions implicit in the plea.
B
Perhaps sensing the incoherence of its effort,
the majority seeks refuge in history, asserting that today’s
holding “flows directly from this Court’s prior
decisions.”
Ante, at 3. But this history cannot prop
up the Court’s decision. Start with
Haynes v.
United States, 390 U. S. 85 , n. 2 (1968), in
which the Court reached the merits of a defendant’s
constitutional challenge to his conviction despite the fact that he
had pleaded guilty.
Ante, at 3–4. A moment’s
glance reveals that this decision is irrelevant for present
purposes (which presumably explains why it was not even cited in
Blackledge,
Menna,
Tollett, the
Brady
trilogy, or
Broce).
In
Haynes, the Government did not argue
that the defendant’s guilty plea barred him from pressing his
constitutional challenge on appeal. In fact, the Government
conceded that he would be entitled to relief if his argument had
merit. 390 U. S., at 100–101. No one has suggested that
a defendant’s guilty plea strips an appellate court of
jurisdiction to entertain a constitutional challenge to his
conviction, so of course a reviewing court need not dismiss an
appeal
sua sponte if the Government does not assert the
plea as a bar. But that tells us nothing about what ought to happen
when, as in this case, the Government
does argue that the
defendant relinquished his right to litigate his constitutional
argument when he opted to plead guilty.
One must squint even harder to figure out why
the majority has dusted off
Commonwealth v.
Hinds, an
1869 decision of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.
Ante, at 5.
Hinds involved a state-law motion
(“arrest of judgment”) to set aside a conviction for a
state-law crime (common law forgery), in a state-court proceeding
after the defendant pleaded guilty. 101 Mass., at 210. One might
already be wondering what relevance the effect of a guilty plea in
state court, under state law, could have with respect to the effect
of a guilty plea in federal court, under federal law. But in any
event, what
Hinds says about guilty pleas is not helpful to
Class at all. In Massachusetts at that time, motions to arrest a
judgment could be maintained only on the ground that the court that
rendered the judgment lacked jurisdiction. Mass. Gen. Stat.
§79 (1860);
Commonwealth v.
Eagan, 103 Mass. 71,
72 (1860); 3 F. Wharton, Criminal Law §3202, p. 177 (7th
rev. ed. 1874). And Massachusetts, like all the other States, can
define the jurisdiction of its courts as it pleases (except insofar
as federal law validly prevents).
Thus, to the extent
Hinds
“reflect[s] an understanding of the nature of guilty
pleas,”
ante, at 5, it reflects nothing more than the
idea that a defendant can assert jurisdictional defects even after
pleading guilty. That rule is utterly unremarkable and of no help
to Class. Today—as well as at the time of the
founding—federal courts have jurisdiction over cases charging
federal crimes. See 18 U. S. C. §3231; §9,
1Stat. 76–77. And as early as 1830, the Court rejected the
suggestion that a federal court is deprived of jurisdiction if
“the indictment charges an offence not punishable criminally
according to the law of the land.”
Ex parte Watkins, 3
Pet. 193, 203. We have repeatedly reaffirmed that proposition. See,
e.g., Lamar v.
United States, 240 U. S. 60, 64
(1916) (court not deprived of jurisdiction even if “the
indictment does not charge a crime against the United
States”);
United States v.
Williams, 341
U. S. 58 –69 (1951) (same, even if “the statute is
wholly unconstitutional, or . . . the facts stated in the
indictment do not constitute a crime”);
Cotton, 535
U. S., at 630–631. And although a handful of our
“post–1867 cases” suggested that a criminal court
lacked jurisdiction if “the statute under which [the
defendant] had been convicted was unconstitutional,” those
suggestions “reflected a ‘softening’ of the
concept of jurisdiction” rather than that concept’s
originally understood—and modern—meaning.
Danforth v.
Minnesota, 552 U. S. 264 , n. 6
(2008).
* * *
In sum, the governing law in the present case
is Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Under that
Rule, an unconditional guilty plea waives all nonjurisdictional
claims with the possible exception of the
“
Menna-Blackledge doctrine” created years ago by
this Court. That doctrine is vacuous, has no sound foundation, and
produces nothing but confusion. At a minimum, I would limit the
doctrine to the particular types of claims involved in those cases.
I certainly would not expand its reach.
I fear that today’s decision will bedevil
the lower courts. I respectfully dissent.