Nash v. State

How later courts described this case

• holding that to use a prior guilty plea for recidivist sentencing, the State must prove, among other things, that the defendant had counsel “in all felony cases and those misdemeanor proceedings where imprisonment resulted”
• If the State carries its burden of proving both the existence of prior guilty pleas to offenses the State relies on for seeking recidivist punishment and that the defendant was represented by counsel in such proceedings, “the presumption of regularity is then applied and the burden shifts to the defendant to produce some affirmative evidence showing an infringement of his rights or a procedural irregularity in the taking of the plea. ... If the defendant is able to present evidence that a constitutional infirmity exists, then the burden of proving the constitutionality of the plea shifts to the State.”
• altering Pope’s distribution of burden “when the defendant seeks under Boykin v. Alabama ... to challenge the validity of a prior guilty plea used to enhance a sentence in such proceedings”
• when a defendant challenges the validity of a prior guilty plea used to enhance his sentence, the state carries the initial burden of proving the existence of the guilty plea and that the defendant was represented by counsel

Written by the judges who cited it.