Williams v. Swarthout

Petitioner, convicted of one count of false imprisonment and one count of forcible sexual penetration by a foreign object, appealed the denial of federal habeas relief on the basis that the state trial court's misstatement that he had pled guilty violated his constitutional rights. The court concluded that the trial court's misstatement deprived petitioner of his Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury and his Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment due process rights to the presumption of innocence. Viewed in the context of the trial as a whole, the initial misstatement and the trial court's ineffective attempts to cure it were devastating to petitioner. Accordingly, the constitutional error was manifest and not harmless. The court reversed the denial of the petition for writ of habeas corpus and remanded with instructions to grant the writ. View "Williams v. Swarthout" on Justia Law