Court Opinion

ID: 9672796
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:00:33.064833+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:18.420934
License: Public Domain

Ryan, J.
I concur in the reasoning and result of part I of Justice Brickley’s opinion, holding that the search of the box in question and seizure of the contents did not violate the defendant’s state1 and federal2 constitutional protection against a warrantless search and seizure.
I do not agree, however, with my brother’s treatment of the attorney-client privilege issue in part II of the opinion. Like Justice Kavanagh, I am of the view that this issue was correctly decided by the Court of Appeals.
When the prosecuting attorney produced evidence that the revolver, wallet, ammunition, and holster, which were independently linked to the defendant, had been obtained from the defense counsel’s office, the defendant’s attorney-client privilege was violated.3
Certainly the articles seized from the defense counsel’s office were not "privileged” in any attorney-client privilege sense. However, the circumstantial evidence that the items were delivered to the attorney by the defendant was an integral part of the defendant’s confidential communications to her attorney concerning the case against her.
*227The most logical inference to be drawn from the defense counsel’s possession of the incriminating evidence, and the one the prosecutor undoubtedly intended would be drawn, was that the items were handed to the defense counsel by his client. That fact, circumstantially proved by showing that the items were obtained from the defense counsel’s office, was either privileged assertive conduct or, at the very least, was the nonverbal behavioral component of any communication from the defendant to her attorney which accompanied delivery of the items.4
As my brother Brickley observes, it was the defense attorney’s duty to turn the items over to the police, and he did so. At the same time, it was the prosecuting attorney’s duty to respect the privileged confidentiality of the fact that the most logical inference to be drawn from the defense counsel’s possession of the items was that they came to him from the defendant. The prosecutor violated that duty, by disclosing to the jury that the articles were obtained from the defense counsel’s office.
While it is quite true, as my brother observes, that respecting the attorney-client privilege in that way "would create a gap in the sequence of events that would link the gun to the accused, leaving the jury to speculate as to how the police had obtained the revolver”, it is a settled and *228accepted principle of our jurisprudence that privileged communications between lawyer and client are protected at some expense to the truth-seeking process. While it would be preferable that the jury know all of the facts of the case, including theoretically all statements made by the defendant to anyone including her lawyer, we accept in our jurisprudence a measure of interference with full disclosure of all the facts as a price worth paying to encourage free, full, and fearless communication by a client to a lawyer. In this case, the price was an absence of evidence as to the location from which the police obtained the incriminating items. A disclosure to the jury of the source of the incriminating items violated the defendant’s attorney-client privilege and denied the defendant a fair trial.
I would affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals.

 Const 1963, art 1, § 11.

 US Const, Am IV.

 As Justice Brickley notes in his opinion, ante, p 216, the defendant’s counsel did not object on attorney-client privilege grounds to the admission of the officer’s testimony that he recovered the evidence from the defendant’s attorney’s office. However, as Justice Brickley correctly notes later in his opinion, ante, p 219, the attorney’s failure to object does not preclude the defendant from asserting the privilege since the privilege is personal to the client and cannot be waived by the attorney absent the client’s permission. Schaibly v Vinton, 338 Mich 191; 61 NW2d 122 (1953).

 Needless to say, there is no record evidence of any communication from the defendant to her lawyer associated with the delivery of the items in question, nor could there be, unless the defendant wished to waive her attorney-client privilege and give evidence on the point or permit her attorney to do so.
Just as it is logical to infer from the defense counsel’s unexplained possession of the articles in question that they were delivered to him by his client, it is equally logical to infer that the delivery was accompanied by some explanatory statement associating the articles with the pending prosecution.