Having It All: Pleading Guilty Without Forfeiting the Right to Appeal

Not surprisingly, courts tend to treat a guilty plea as a waiver of all but the most serious defects. This view is quite defensible as an efficient and just allocation of scarce judicial resources. The guilty-pleading defendant can't have it both ways. She either accepts the conviction and punishment, a punishment usually negotiated before the plea, or she gets to complain about the process, but not both. On the other hand, it is terribly inefficient to force your client to put the State to trial for no reason other than preserving appeal rights on a pretrial objection. Why not accept her guilty plea subject to appeal of the suppression issue? The State avoids a meaningless trial (which it might lose); the defendant gets appellate review of the only significant legal dispute in the case; and the court saves precious time that can be better spent disposing of other matters on its crowded docket. Attempts by courts and the legislature to balance these competing interests have produced a confusing and dangerous mix of contradictory rules