Cite as: 523 U. S. 614 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
this contention proved, petitioner's plea would be, contrary to the view expressed by the Court of Appeals, constitutionally invalid.
Our decisions in Brady v. United States, supra, McMann v. Richardson, 397 U. S. 759 (1970), and Parker v. North Carolina, 397 U. S. 790 (1970), relied upon by amicus, are not to the contrary. Each of those cases involved a criminal defendant who pleaded guilty after being correctly informed as to the essential nature of the charge against him. See Brady, supra, at 756; McMann, supra, at 767; Parker, supra, at 792. Those defendants later attempted to challenge their guilty pleas when it became evident that they had misjudged the strength of the Government's case or the penalties to which they were subject. For example, Brady, who pleaded guilty to kidnaping, maintained that his plea was neither voluntary nor intelligent because it was induced by a death penalty provision later held unconstitutional. 397 U. S., at 744. We rejected Brady's voluntariness argument, explaining that a "plea of guilty entered by one fully aware of the direct consequences" of the plea is voluntary in a constitutional sense "unless induced by threats . . . , misrepresentation . . . , or perhaps by promises that are by their nature improper as having no proper relationship to the prosecutor's business." Id., at 755 (internal quotation marks omitted). We further held that Brady's plea was intelligent because, although later judicial decisions indicated that at the time of his plea he "did not correctly assess every relevant factor entering into his decision," id., at 757, he was advised by competent counsel, was in control of his mental faculties, and "was made aware of the nature of the charge against him," id., at 756. In this case, by contrast, petitioner asserts that he was misinformed as to the true nature of the charge against him.
Amicus urges us to apply the rule of Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989), to petitioner's claim that his plea was not knowing and intelligent. In Teague, we held that "new constitutional rules of criminal procedure will not be applicable
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