Where a defendant challenges the validity of his plea on appeal without having first obtained a certificate of probable cause, the appeal must be dismissed. The defendant here filed a handwritten, four-page notice of appeal which outlined multiple challenges to his no-contest plea, as well as several unspecified sentencing issues. After the Court of Appeal requested briefing on the operability of the appeal, defendant argued that the inclusion of noncertificate grounds in the notice of appeal required the court to treat the appeal as operative. The Court of Appeal rejected this argument and dismissed the appeal. Due to the inclusion of issues requiring a certificate, the notice of appeal could not be construed as being based solely on matters occurring after the plea.
Case Summaries