Cite as: 506 U. S. 20 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
Carthy v. United States, 394 U. S. 459, 466 (1969). "The standard was and remains whether the plea represents a voluntary and intelligent choice among the alternative courses of action open to the defendant." North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U. S. 25, 31 (1970). That is so because a guilty plea constitutes a waiver of three constitutional rights: the right to a jury trial, the right to confront one's accusers, and the privilege against self-incrimination. Boykin, 395 U. S., at 243.
In Boykin the Court found reversible error when a trial judge accepted a defendant's guilty plea without creating a record affirmatively showing that the plea was knowing and voluntary. Id., at 242. The Sixth Circuit thought rejection of Kentucky's burden-shifting scheme compelled by Boykin's statement that the waiver of rights resulting from a guilty plea cannot be "presume[d] . . . from a silent record." Id., at 243. Kentucky favors the prosecution with only an initial presumption upon proof of the existence of a prior judgment; but because a defendant may be unable to offer rebuttal evidence, the Sixth Circuit reasoned that Kentucky's procedure improperly permits the Commonwealth to carry its burden of persuasion upon a "bare record of a conviction." Simmons, 877 F. 2d, at 1278.
We see no tension between the Kentucky scheme and Boykin. Boykin involved direct review of a conviction allegedly based upon an uninformed guilty plea. Respondent, however, never appealed his earlier convictions. They became final years ago, and he now seeks to revisit the question of their validity in a separate recidivism proceeding. To import Boykin's presumption of invalidity into this very different context would, in our view, improperly ignore another presumption deeply rooted in our jurisprudence: the "presumption of regularity" that attaches to final judgments, even when the question is waiver of constitutional rights. Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458, 464, 468 (1938). Although we are perhaps most familiar with this principle in habeas corpus actions, see, e. g., Barefoot v. Estelle, 463 U. S. 880,
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