Court Opinion

ID: 9568991
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:09:23.004954+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:18:03.430074
License: Public Domain

Chief Justice TOAL:
I respectfully dissent, as I find that neither of the two exceptions to the misprision of a felony statute, which are grounded in the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, applies in this case. Therefore, I would affirm the Court of Appeals’ decision to uphold petitioner’s conviction of misprision of a felony.
When reviewing the trial judge’s denial of a directed verdict, this Court must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the State. State v. McHoney, 344 S.C. 85, 544 S.E.2d 30 (2001).
This Court has described the offense of misprision of a felony as the criminal neglect to either prevent the commission of a felony or to bring a felon to justice. A person commits misprision of a felony only if he makes some positive act of concealment. Therefore, the offense does not contemplate mere silence or a failure to come forward. A person bannot be convicted of misprision of a felony if his act of concealment makes him an accessory before or after the fact. State v. Carson, 274 S.C. 316, 318, 262 S.E.2d 918, 920 (1980) (citation omitted).
This Court explained how the privilege against self-incrimination protects the concealer from being convicted of misprision of a felony:
[w]hile it is true the privilege sometimes works to bar prosecution for misprision, this is only when the statements concealed would incriminate the defendant as an accessory or principal in the protected felony.
Carson, 274 S.C. at 319, 262 S.E.2d at 920 (emphasis added). Therefore, in order for this Court to find that the Fifth Amendment protects petitioner’s statements to the SLED *189agent, we also must conclude that one of the exceptions applies: petitioner must either have been an accessory after the fact or the principal actor of the offense.
The trial judge correctly ruled that petitioner could not be convicted of accessory after the fact because on the date of her offense, December 30, 1996, South Carolina law required that a person could only be convicted of accessory after the fact if she was absent from the crime scene. See State v. Collins, 329 S.C. 23, 495 S.E.2d 202 (1998).3
In her statement made to a SLED agent, petitioner admitted she heard a gunshot inside the store and saw her husband get into the car with a cash register and “an object with a long strap.” This statement implicates only petitioner’s husband as the principal actor of the crime.
Therefore, in my opinion, the Fifth Amendment privilege does not protect petitioner’s statement to the SLED agent because she could not have been prosecuted as an accessory after the fact or a principal actor in the crime.
In my view, the majority inappropriately injects a subjective test into the misprision-Fifth Amendment analysis. The majority holds that the Fifth Amendment protects the concealer if “the individual sought to be charged had a reasonable belief at the time the concealment occurred that revealing the information could lead to her criminal prosecution.” The majority bases this subjective analysis on Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S. 441, 92 S.Ct. 1653, 32 L.Ed.2d 212 (1972), where a witness affirmatively invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.
In the case at hand, petitioner never invoked her Fifth Amendment right; rather, she affirmatively concealed information from the investigator. She elected to speak to the investigator, and from the moment she elected to speak to the investigator, she no longer was afforded Fifth Amendment protection unless she was an accessory after the fact or the *190principal actor of the crime.4 As the United States Supreme Court has duly noted, there is no constitutional right to lie. United States v. Apfelbaum, 445 U.S. 115, 117, 100 S.Ct. 948, 950, 63 L.Ed.2d 250 (1980) (proper invocation of the Fifth Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination allows a witness to remain silent, but not to swear falsely).
In my opinion, this Court cannot employ a subjective test that essentially condones a suspect lying to the police if she “reasonably believes” that if she told the truth, she might be subjected to criminal prosecution. This test extends well beyond our Carson test for misprision of a felony and is inconsistent with the analysis we employ for inculpatory statements.5
In my view, the majoritys decision inappropriately cloaks the Carson analysis with a new subjective test that exceeds the boundaries of our jurisprudence in this area of the law. In effect, the majority opinion encourages a suspect to lie to the police, thoroughly impeding a police investigation, and then hide behind a subjective “reasonableness” standard.
Based on the reasoning above, especially considering that we must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the State, I would hold that petitioner’s attempt to conceal her husband’s involvement in the robbery and murder of the convenience store clerk is not protected by the Fifth Amendment according to our Carson test.

. From 1981 until the date of the Collins opinion, January 5, 1998, a defendant could not be prosecuted for accessory after the fact if she was present at the crime scene. The Court refused to retroactively apply the new rule that an actor's presence at the crime scene did not preclude an accessory after the fact conviction to crimes committed during this seventeen-year period.

. I respectfully disagree with the manner in which the majority stretches its new, subjective test, in conjunction with its presumptuous inference that petitioner may have been a principal actor of the crime, to conclude that petitioner is not guilty of misprision of a felony.

. For example, we employ an objective analysis in determining whether the suspect is in police custody when she elects to give an inculpatory statement. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966); see Bradley v. State, 316 S.C. 255, 257, 449 S.E.2d 492, 493-494 (1994) (the custodial determination is an objective analysis based on whether a reasonable person would have concluded that he was in police custody).