State v. Griffey

The action of the Court of Appeals in reversing the Common Pleas Court for accepting the defendant’s plea of guilty can only have had its provenance in a spin-out of the benevolent, but cautionary, spirit of Douglas, J., when he opined, in Boykin v. Alabama (1969), 395 U. S. 238, 243:

“What is at stake for an accused facing death or imprisonment demands the utmost solicitude of which courts are capable in canvassing the matter with the accused to make sure he has a full understanding of what the plea connotes and of its consequence. When the judge discharges that function, he leaves a record…