Pennsylvania v. Carrasquillo (majority)
Annotate this CaseIn 2009, two girls were sexually assaulted. Sixteen-year-old C.J. escaped, but eleven-year-old N.O. was threatened and lured into an alleyway, where she was brutally raped and sustained severe injuries requiring hospitalization and surgery. Police investigated and arrested Appellee Jose Carrasquillo, who made inculpatory statements during interrogation. Charges were lodged in two separate criminal proceedings, which were later consolidated for trial. Appellee decided to enter open guilty pleas to various sexual offenses, including rape, as well as other crimes. At the plea colloquy, the Commonwealth proffered that the evidence against Appellee that included his own statements, identification testimony from both victims, video surveillance recordings apparently showing Appellee with or in the vicinity of each victim close in time to the assaults, and DNA and fingerprint evidence linking Appellee to the rape of N.O. The plea court advised Appellee of his pertinent constitutional rights and the implications of waiver. The plea court accepted appellee's pleas and entered verdicts. Appellee was also informed that he could seek to withdraw his guilty plea at any time before sentencing and that the court "would have to consider whether or not the reasons for you doing so are fair and necessary, fair and appropriate, compared to the prejudice that that might cause to the Commonwealth's case and to their witnesses, and particularly in this case to child witnesses." Three and a half months later, the court conducted a sentencing hearing. After the defense rested, Appellee explained in allocution that he had pled guilty to spare N.O. suffering, and he therefore expressed surprise at his portrayal during the sentencing hearing. Appellee also stated that he had entered his plea because, absent a polygraph examination, his account would not have been believed and he would not have received a fair trial. In this appeal, the issue this case presented for the Supreme Court's review centered on the criteria governing the disposition of a presentence motion to withdraw a guilty plea. The Court's decision turned on the conclusion that a bare assertion of innocence was not, in and of itself, a sufficient reason to require a court to grant such a request. The Court was persuaded by the approach of other jurisdictions: "the proper inquiry on consideration of such a withdrawal motion is whether the accused has made some colorable demonstration, under the circumstances, such that permitting withdrawal of the plea would promote fairness and justice. The policy of liberality remains extant but has its limits, consistent with the affordance of a degree of discretion to the common pleas courts. This case, in our view, illustrates why the existing per se approach to innocence claims is unsatisfactory." In this case, the Supreme Court found that the trial court acted within its discretion to refuse the attempted withdrawal of the plea.
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