Issue before the Court: When can an error in failing to suppress evidence be considered harmless in a plea case?

Held: Rarely. The trial court’s error in failing to suppress a defendant’s statement required vacature of the plea because “we cannot say with certainty that the erroneous ruling played no part in that decision [to plead guilty].” The Court “concluded that this is not one of the rare situations where the record leaves no question regarding the defendant’s independent motivation to plead guilty’” (quotation cleaned up).

Discussion: The facts of the case were straightforward: Cops responding to shots fired, found a gun on Mr. Robles and then, without Miranda warnings, got Mr. Robles to admit that the cops “saw what I had.” After suppression was denied, Mr. Robles pled to attempted CPW2 to cover the various charges in the indictment. At the plea, Mr. Robles noted his plan to appeal the suppression ruling but was pleading guilty “because it’s a good deal.” On appeal, the admission of the gun was upheld and the failure to suppressed the statement was found harmless. The Appellate Division’s harmless error finding was before the Court.

The Court noted that harmless error analysis is “challenging” (Grant (1978)) to apply to pleas because the record does not normally show why the plea was taken. Thus, pleas “generally are not amenable to harmless error” (Wells (2013)), and will not be upheld if there is any “reasonable possibility that the error contributed to the plea” (Grant; Wells). Mr. Robles’ motivation for pleading guilty was “ambiguous at best,” so the error in failing to suppress the statement could not be considered harmless.

CAL observes: Authored by Garcia (!!!) for a unanimous Court this case would seemingly all but end the Appellate Division’s practice of finding harmless error in suppression rulings in plea cases, as the standard is virtually impossible to meet: The record must show “there is no reasonable possibility that the error contributed to the defendant’s decision to plead guilty.” Yet, the AD1 has already incorporated Robles into its harmless error template and found such issues harmless. Troubling, too, was Garcia’s suggestion that the absence of an appeal waiver supported his conclusion. Yet, a valid appeal waiver would have foreclosed review of the claim and no one should assume that an appellant would not have recognized the invalidity of a defective appeal waiver. In other words, a defective appeal waiver should not be an invitation to find an error harmless.