Court Opinion

ID: 9499415
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:48:06.829909+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:29.790601
License: Public Domain

COOK, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
The dissent considers whether prejudice results from counsel’s absence at a consolidation hearing at a very high level of generality. I respectfully suggest that this distant perspective elides the crucial feature of this case — the impact of Michigan Court Rules.
In the abstract, consolidation surely could expose a defendant to a risk of prejudice. The classic example is consolidation with a more-serious offender, which risks the jury visiting the sins of one on the other. But I take the Chief Judge’s point here to be that under Michigan law, Van could not have avoided consolidation because his conduct was at least legally related to Ket’s and his alleged offenses were more serious than those of the other defendants. See MCR 6.121. That being the state of Michigan law, there actually existed no “potential [for] substantial prejudice to [Van’s] rights,” see dissent para. 6 (quoting United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 227, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967)), and the presence of counsel could not have affected the decision to consolidate. Van’s consolidation hearing thus fails to qualify as a critical stage.