In Sentence Enhancement Cases Is The Burden On The State To Prove That Prior Guilty Pleas Of The Defendant Were Informed And Voluntary ? In Nash v. State, 271 Ga. 281 (519 S.E.2d 893) (1999) the Supreme Court revised the scheme regarding the allocation of burdens of proof in hearings to determine the voluntariness of guilty pleas used in sentence enhancement in a nondeath penalty case: The burden is on the State to prove both the existence of the prior guilty pleas and that the defendant was represented by counsel in all felony cases and those misdemeanor proceedings where imprisonment resulted. Upon such a showing, the presumption of regularity is then applied and the burden shifts to the defendant to produce some affirmative evidence showing an infringement of his rights or a procedural irregularity in the taking of the plea. Defendant can attempt to meet his burden of production with a transcript, with testimony regarding the taking of the plea, or with other affirmative evidence. A silent record or the mere naked assertion by an accused that his prior counseled plea was not made knowingly and intelligently is insufficient. If the defendant is able to present evidence that a constitutional infirmity exists, then the burden of proving the constitutionality of the plea shifts to the State. The State will meet its burden of proof if it introduces a "perfect" transcript of the taking of the guilty plea. . . . If the State introduces anything less than a "perfect" transcript, the judge then must weigh the evidence submitted by the defendant and by the State to determine whether the State has met its burden of proving that defendant's prior guilty plea was informed and voluntary, and made with an articulated waiver of the three Boykin v. Alabama 395 U.S. 238 (89 S. Ct. 1709, 23 L. Ed. 2d 274) (1969) rights. The State sought to use a prior conviction in aggravation of punishment. Testimony was presented concerning the custom of the trial court of informing "defendants of all the rights they were waiving and the consequences of their pleas and to ensure that the pleas were knowingly and voluntarily entered." Id. at 76 (2). Nash appealed the trial court's ruling that his earlier plea had been knowingly and voluntarily entered. The Court relied on Parke v. Raley, 506 U.S. 20 (113 S. Ct. 517, 121 L. Ed. 2d 391) (1992), to affirm, concluding that the guilty plea, attacked by Nash in a collateral proceeding, as opposed to an appeal from a conviction entered on a guilty plea, was to be given the longstanding "presumption of regularity." Nash, supra, 233 Ga. App. at 79.