Court Opinion

ID: 9850330
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:55:31.262398+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:35.486897
License: Public Domain

D. C. Riley, P.J.
(concurring in part and dissenting in part). I concur in the result reached because of defendant’s abandonment of his previous motion to suppress. However, I write separately to express my disagreement with the majority’s application of the plea-waiver doctrine to situations involving 4th Amendment claims of illegally seized evidence, and its statement that "a guilty plea waives all defects that go to whether the government can actually prove its case”. I would hold, consistent with the "complete defense” rationale of People v Alvin Johnson, 396 Mich 424, 444; 240 NW2d 729 (1976), that defendant’s nolo plea in the present case did not waive his right to challenge the legality of the search and seizure. I am not persuaded that a proper balance between the competing interests of the state and individual should necessarily entail the need of a roulette-type determination by defendant regarding the preservation of his claim for appeal. As in the instant case, where the state can readily establish its proofs through the admission of constitutionally defective evidence, the majority’s holding, in effect, forces defendant to pursue an expensive and futile course of litigation solely to preserve for our review an issue based upon denial of his pretrial motion to suppress. The trial itself resolves no genuinely contested disputes, but only results in a wasted procedure, with the real question to be decided upon the subsequent appeal. See People v Ricky Smith, 85 Mich App 32, 50; 270 NW2d 697 (1978) (Cavanagh, P.J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). In my opinion, a rule which compels the defendant to go to trial where he might otherwise have pled guilty subject to limited review of only the constitutional issue (as all other issues *733are waived) results in judicial inefficiency and unfairly burdens defendant’s ability to challenge the power of the state to prove its case against him.
A contrary result, of course, would produce a judicial trade-off in workload, with the additional appellate work balanced against the decrease of improvident proceedings at the trial level. However, I find an approach which concerns itself with substantive issues as opposed to the useless process of an additional trial a more preferable alternative.
In conclusion I would note that the policy questions at issue here are similar to those involving the use of qualified quilty pleas where the bargain struck between defendant and prosecutor expressly reserves defendant’s right to appeal the constitutional claim. The use of these pleas has recently been sanctioned in Michigan, People v Ricky Smith, supra, and also recommended by the American Bar Association, ABA Project on Standards for Criminal Justice, Standards Relating to Criminal Appeals, § 1.3(a)(iii), Comment c, (Approved Draft, 1970).