An El Paso County judge was not constitutionally obligated to accept a defendant’s guilty plea, Colorado’s second-highest court concluded last week.

Appealing his convictions, Timothy Ray Scott Jr. argued his trial judge violated his constitutional right to “autonomy” by not letting him plead guilty. The U.S. Supreme Court has previously interpreted the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of assistance of counsel to include a defendant’s right to decide the “objective of the defense.”

Prosecutors charged Scott in two cases: a domestic violence dispute in February 2020 and, one month later, for killing his wife and her mother. The cases were tried jointly and jurors convicted Scott on most charges, including murder. He is serving life in prison.

Prior to trial, Scott attempted to enter a guilty plea in the domestic violence case and prevent it from being combined with the murder case. Then-District Court Judge G. David Miller said it was up to the prosecution to decide whether to agree to a guilty plea, and warned he did not not have to accept it.

Scott reiterated his desire to plead guilty on the first day of trial, but District Court Judge Diana May, who inherited the case from Miller, refused to accept the plea and proceeded to try the combined case.

A three-judge panel for the Court of Appeals agreed May was not obligated to accept a guilty plea under Colorado’s procedural rules, and the Sixth Amendment’s right to autonomy did not require her to, either.

“While there’s no federal constitutional right to plead guilty, we recognize that some federal courts have concluded that a trial court has no discretion to reject an unconditional plea,” wrote Judge Stephanie Dunn in the Feb. 22 opinion. Still, she added, the Supreme Court has not recognized a “broad, unfettered Sixth Amendment right to plead guilty.”

Timothy R. Bussey, a criminal defense attorney in Colorado Springs, said Scott’s case was unusual because there was seemingly no plea agreement between the prosecution and defense. Instead, Scott apparently wanted to plead guilty to one set of charges for “tactical reasons,” by taking the allegations off the table for jurors.

“One understands the theory that the accused should be able to make an unconditional guilty plea whenever he wants,” Bussey said. “The courts commonly approve plea agreements, but they have always exercised discretion in both directions to be sure that neither the people of Colorado nor the accused are being manifestly screwed.”

In arguing that his right to autonomy was violated with the rejection of his guilty plea, Scott leaned on a 2018 Supreme Court decision, McCoy v. Louisiana. A defense attorney told jurors, over his client’s objection, that the defendant killed the victims. The lawyer did so in an attempt to save his client from receiving the death penalty.

The Supreme Court ordered a new trial, finding the decision to admit guilt or maintain one’s innocence is the defendant’s alone to make.

Similarly, Scott argued the trial judge’s refusal to accept his decision to plead guilty infringed on his Sixth Amendment right to autonomy.

Dunn, in the appellate panel’s opinion, conceded courts “have struggled” to understand the scope of McCoy. However, she noted McCoy most clearly addressed whether a decision to plead guilty belongs to a lawyer or to the accused person — with no mention of a trial judge’s obligation when faced with a guilty plea.

“All this said, we’re unpersuaded that the Sixth Amendment autonomy right includes the right to force a trial court to accept an unconditional plea,” Dunn wrote.

Aya Gruber, a professor at the USC Gould School of Law, said there are multiple reasons judges may decline to accept guilty pleas. They might find the defendant did not make the plea voluntarily and with an understanding of the consequences, or the underlying details are problematic — as when a federal judge rejected a plea deal reached with President Joe Biden’s son last summer.

“What makes me queasy about this case is that the judge denied the plea just so the government could (combine) a case that, in my mind, was pretty prejudicial,” Gruber said of Scott’s prosecution.

Bussey, the defense attorney, said judges’ discretion is lessened when the prosecution and defense reach a plea deal.

However, “since the judiciary has ultimate say on whether to enter judgment on a charge, or even to dismiss a charge,” he continued, “we’ve long known that the judge has power over whether to accept a plea agreement and judicially enforce it.”

The case is People v. Scott.