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616 So. 2d 399

White v. State

Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama · decided 1993-03-26

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“`The Alabama Supreme Court and this Court "have consistently held that a defendant must be informed of the maximum and minimum possible sentences as an absolute constitutional prerequisite to the acceptance of a guilty plea.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 854 So. 2d 643 - Brooks v. State

Relies on 597 So. 2d 1308 - Ex Parte Rivers

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1993-03-26

How this case has been cited

Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently May 2014

13 state decisions

70199320002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1

¶2The appellant, Bobby Wayne White, pleaded guilty and was convicted of burglary in the second degree. He was sentenced to life imprisonment as a habitual felony offender. The appellant represents himself on this appeal.

¶3The record affirmatively shows that the appellant was not advised of the correct minimum and maximum range of punishment prior to entering his guilty plea. The range of punishment was incorrectly stated in both the "explanation of rights and plea of guilt" form and by the trial court during the guilty plea colloquy. The attorney general candidly acknowledges this error.

¶4"[A] defendant must be informed of the maximum and minimum possible sentences as an absolute constitutional prerequisite to the acceptance of a guilty plea. . . . If the defendant has prior felony convictions, he must be advised of the proper sentence to which he is subject by virtue of Alabama Code 1975, § 13A-5-9, the Habitual Felony Offender Act." Ex parte Rivers,597 So.2d 1308, 1309 (Ala. 1991). Because the appellant was not informed of the correct range of punishment, "his guilty plea was not knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently given."Rivers, 597 So.2d at 1310.

¶5The judgment of the circuit court is reversed and this cause is remanded for further proceedings.

¶6REVERSED AND REMANDED.

¶7All Judges concur. *400

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