A Jamestown man has had three guilty pleas upheld by the Fourth Department Appellate Division.

Rocco Beardsley of Jamestown had appealed his 2017 guilty pleas to charges of third-degree attempted criminal possession of a controlled substance, third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance and third-degree unlawful manufacture of methamphetamine. The court ruled that all three judgements were affirmed.

As part of the plea agreement Beardsley reached with the county District Attorney’s office, he waived his right to an appeal, including the right to appeal the denial of his motion to withdraw his pleas.

“We reject defendant’s contention in appeal No. 1 that his waiver of the right to appeal is invalid,” the court wrote. “The record establishes that he knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily waived his right to appeal and that he understood that the right to appeal was separate and distinct from the rights automatically forfeited by pleading guilty.”

Beardsley had also challenged a suppression ruling he made in front of state Supreme Court Judge Paul Wojtaszek. The appellate judges ruled on the claim only because it raised a question of whether or not Beardsley’s plea was actually voluntary. Beardsley alleged that his defense counsel coerced him into pleading guilty.

“Nevertheless, we reject that contention,” the judges wrote. “Defendant’s claim that the pleas were involuntary due to his innocence was not supported by a sworn affidavit and was instead based on conclusory and unsubstantiated statements. Thus, we conclude that, ‘given the nature of the materials submitted in support of the motion, the court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion without conducting a fact-finding hearing.'”

Beardsley was sentenced in January 2017 to four years in state prison and two years post-release supervision. Before his guilty plea and subsequent sentencing, Beardsley had been booked into the Chautauqua County Jail 13 times over 12 years, including an incident in which he allegedly robbed and assaulted a person in a Broadhead Avenue home, a September 2015 raid at the same Broadhead Avenue home during which police found powder cocaine and crystal methamphetamine and a March 2015 arrest on West Fifth Street for possessing narcotics and manufacturing methamphetamine.