Court Opinion

ID: 9678648
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:26:47.840675+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:06.472046
License: Public Domain

Kelly, J.
(dissenting). Today, the majority fulfills the prophecy of the United States Supreme Court dissenting justices1 in United States v Mezzanatto,2 and renders illusory the protections of MRE 410.
In response to the decision in Mezzanatto,3 Justice Souter recognized the “slippery slope” the Court was creating and wrote:
The . . . consequence likely to emerge from today’s decision is the practical certainty that the waiver demanded will in time come to function as a waiver of trial itself. It is true that many (if not all) of the waiver forms now employed go only to admissibility for impeachment. But although the erosion of the Rules has begun with this trickle, the majority’s reasoning will provide no principled limit to it. The Rules draw no distinction between use of a statement for impeachment and use in the Government’s case in chief. If objection can be waived for impeachment use, it can be waived for use as affirmative evidence, and if the Government can effectively demand waiver in the former instance, there is no reason to believe it will not do so just as successfully in the latter. When it does, there is nothing this Court will legitimately be able to do about it. The Court is construing a congressional Rule on the theory that Congress meant to permit its waiver. Once that point is passed, as it is today, there is no legitimate limit on admissibility of a defendant’s plea negotiation statements beyond what the Constitution may independently impose or the traffic may bear. Just what the traffic may bear is an open question, but what cannot be denied is that the majority opinion sanc*672tions a demand for waiver of such scope that a defendant who gives it will be unable even to acknowledge his desire to negotiate a guilty plea without furnishing admissible evidence against himself then and there. In such cases, the possibility of trial if no agreement is reached will be reduced to fantasy. The only defendant who will not damage himself by even the most restrained candor will be the one so desperate that he might as well walk into court and enter a naked guilty plea. It defies reason to think that Congress intended to invite such a result, when it adopted a Rule said to promote candid discussion in the interest of encouraging compromise. [Mezzanatto, supra, pp 217-218 (Souter, J., dissenting).]
As Justice Souter had foreseen, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia recently started to slide down the slope created by the Mezzanatto decision. In United States v Burch,4 that court upheld the government’s use, in its case in chief, of a defendant’s statement made during plea negotiations. The court found that the defendant had waived his protections under FRE 410. He had entered into a plea agreement that provided, if he failed to adhere to its terms, that the prosecution could use his statements as evidence against him. Id. at 294.
The Burch court found that nothing in the Mezzanatto decision required it to limit the use of statements made in plea negotiations to impeachment only. Id. at 293. In so doing, the panel brushed aside the fact that three justices in Mezzanatto felt strongly enough to join in a separate concurring statement. The three justices agreed that a waiver provision allowing the use of statements from plea negotiations in the prosecution’s case in chief may severely inhibit *673plea bargaining and undermine a defendant’s incentive to negotiate. Mezzanatto, supra at 211 (Ginsburg, J., concurring). Here, the majority’s decision slides farther down the slope.
In fact, it goes over the edge and into the abyss. It finds, on the basis of Mezzanatto, that a waiver took place when the defendant agreed to enter into plea negotiations. It then applies Burch to hold that, because defendant waived his MRE 410 protections, the statements he made during plea negotiations can be used in the prosecution’s case in chief.
i
I find that the majority improperly extends Mezzanatto and Burch to this case. Neither Mezzanatto nor Burch supports the use of defendant’s statements made during plea negotiations as evidence in the prosecutor’s case in chief. Moreover, this Court indicated in People v Jones5 that Michigan does not allow such use.
A
Mezzanatto permitted statements made during plea negotiations to be used for impeachment purposes. Its holding does not necessarily provide a basis for this Court to grant the prosecution the use of those statements in its case in chief. Harris v New York, *674401 US 222; 91 S Ct 643; 28 L Ed 2d 1 (1971);6 Michigan v Harvey, 494 US 344; 110 S Ct 1176; 108 L Ed 2d 293 (1990).7
B
In Burch, the court allowed into evidence statements made as part of plea discussions, but it did so under different circumstances. The court indicated that it would have greater concern about a waiver executed as a condition to plea negotiations, the situation presented here. Burch, supra at 294. Burch found that the defendant waived his FRE 410 protections as a result of the plea agreement.8 However, the court continued to apply the protections of FRE 410 to the statements defendant made during plea negotiations. It allowed into evidence only the statements the defendant made after expressly waiving his FRE 410 protections. The waiver occurred at a plea hearing before a judge and was signed and acknowledged by the defendant. Burch, supra at 293-294.
Here, the majority approves use in the prosecution’s case in chief of statements defendant made during actual plea discussions. The justification for allowing the statements into evidence is the thinly *675worded Miranda-like warning defendant received before speaking to the prosecutor about a plea.9 Contrary to the majority, I find the warning insufficient to support a knowing and voluntary waiver of defendant’s MRE 410 protections and the use of his statements as evidence.10
Something more than a Miranda warning is necessary for a court to find that a defendant waived his right to exclude from evidence statements made during plea negotiations. See Barnett v State, 725 So 2d 797 (Miss, 1998).11 A waiver must be supported by a showing that the accused was aware of the rights being relinquished and the consequences that could result from relinquishing them. United States v Young, 73 F Supp 2d 1014 (ND Iowa, 1999).12
In Young, the defendant entered into a plea agreement that included this provision:
If the defendant does breach this agreement, he faces the following consequences: (1) all testimony and other information he has provided at any time to attorneys, employees *676or law enforcement officers of the government, to the court, or to the federal grand jury, may and will be used against him in any prosecution or proceeding .... [Id. at 1016.]
The defendant breached the terms of the agreement, but the court ruled that his statements, made during plea negotiations, were nonetheless inadmissible as evidence at trial. Id. at 1025. The court found that the defendant had not made a knowing and voluntary waiver of rights. The record contained no evidence showing that either his attorney or the prosecution had explained the nature of the rights at issue or the consequences of waiving them. Id. The language used in the plea agreement did not sufficiently advise the defendant of the rights being waived. Id. at 1024.
Under the facts of this case, it is clear that, when defendant entered into plea discussions, he was not aware what he was waiving. At the May 7, 1997, meeting, the assistant prosecutor made introductory remarks in which he blanketly advised defendant that anything he said could be used against him in a legal proceeding. That statement is too general to support a finding that defendant voluntarily waived his protections under MRE 410. Young, supra at 1023-1024; cf. Burch, supra at 295.13
Defendant was not specifically advised of the protections offered by MRE 410. He was not expressly advised that, by entering into plea negotiations, he would waive those protections. Therefore, in accord with Young, supra, I find that defendant’s waiver was *677made involuntarily. An involuntary waiver renders statements obtained pursuant to it inadmissible. Mezzanatto, supra at 210. Accordingly, here, it is improper for the Court to overturn the judgments of the lower courts and allow into evidence defendant’s statements made during plea negotiations.
c
This Court’s decision in Jones, supra, indicates that statements made during plea negotiations are not admissible as evidence at trial. In Jones, the defendant made an incriminating statement while attempting to enter into a plea agreement. The trial court admitted the confession because it found the statement voluntary.
The vote in this Court split evenly. Both the lead opinion and the concurrence voted to reverse on the basis that the trial court should have suppressed the defendant’s statement. The lead opinion took the view that the statement was involuntary because it was induced by a promise of leniency. The concurrence took the view that a totality of the circumstances test should be employed to determine whether the statement was voluntary. Ultimately, it decided that the statement was inadmissible under MRE 410.
Regardless of the view adopted, Jones indicates that, in Michigan, statements made during plea negotiations are not admissible as evidence.14 The majority *678criticizes my mention of Jones because, it states, no waiver analysis was made there. Ante at 662, n 7. However, in Jones, the defendant voluntarily waived his Miranda rights. Jones, supra at 357-358. In essence, it was the same waiver that defendant gave here. Despite that waiver, each of the justices in Jones found that the defendant’s statements could not be admitted as evidence in the prosecution’s case in chief. Either the statements were made involuntarily or MRE 410 disallowed them. Thus, it can be inferred that a waiver is not sufficient to overcome a finding that a defendant’s statement was made involuntarily or that MRE 410 precludes its use. It follows that the majority’s opinion represents an unwarranted extension of Mezzanatto and Burch that is inconsistent with the manner in which this Court has indicated it would apply Michigan law.
n
The majority’s extension of Mezzanatto and Burch to this case circumvents our rationale in adopting MRE 410. While it is true that this Court adopts the Michigan Rules of Evidence, whereas Congress enacts the Federal Rules of Evidence, the rationale behind MRE 410 and FRE 410 is the same. Jones, supra. It is “to promote the disposition of criminal cases by compromise and to permit the unrestrained candor which produces effective plea discussions.” Id. at 364.
As foreseen by the Mezzanatto dissent, the majority’s decision here works against the purposes underlying MRE 410 by restraining a defendant’s freedom to negotiate a plea without further implicating himself. In reliance on the majority’s decision, a prosecutor now may require a waiver as a condition to enter*679ing into plea negotiations. It may negotiate, then back out of the negotiations once the defendant makes inculpatory statements, and use the statements against the defendant in its case in chief at trial. The threat of such an occurrence will, at the least, cause persons accused of a crime to restrain their candor in an effort to protect themselves. Thus, the majority’s decision renders the protections of MRE 410 illusory and circumvents our purposes in adopting the rule.
I prefer the view taken by Justice Ryan in his concurrence in Jones, supra at 367. Justice Ryan stated that MRE 410 precluded statements made during plea negotiations from being admitted into evidence. There is no requirement that this Court adhere to federal precedent on this issue.15 Other states that have considered the matter and applied their equivalents to MRE 41016 have found such statements inadmissible. Their approach avoids the ramifications foreseen by Justice Souter, is consistent with the plain meaning of MRE 410, and fulfills our purpose in adopting MRE 410. I would affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals and hold that statements made during plea negotiations are not admissible as evidence in the prosecution’s case in chief.
Cavanagh, J., concurred with Kelly, J.

 Justice Souter authored the dissent and was joined by Justice Stevens.

 513 US 196; 115 S Ct 797; 130 L Ed 2d 697 (1995).

 Mezzanatto held that the defendant waived the procedural protections of PRE 410 by agreeing that the government could use the statements he made during plea negotiations to impeach him at trial.

 332 US App DC 287; 156 F3d 1315 (1998).

 416 Mich 354; 331 NW2d 406 (1982). Four justices did not sign one opinion in Jones. Hence, it is not binding as precedent. However, all six justices participating agreed that Michigan law precludes statements made during plea negotiations from being used in the prosecution’s case in chief. The lead opinion and the concurring opinion both reached that conclusion, although they applied different rationales.

 The Court in Harris held that Miranda violations preclude use of a defendant’s statements in the government’s case in chief, but do not prevent their use to impeach the defendant’s testimony. Miranda v Arizona, 384 US 436; 86 S Ct 1602; 16 L Ed 2d 694 (1966).

 Harvey held that statements solicited by the police after a defendant invoked his Sixth Amendment right to counsel were inadmissible in the government’s case in chief but could be admitted for impeachment purposes.

 The defendant entered into a plea agreement with the prosecution. He appeared before a judge who accepted his plea Before sentencing, he moved that the court withdraw his guilty plea. The court granted the motion, and the case moved to trial. Id. at 291.

 Defendant was advised “[a]nything that you do say may be used against you by State prosecutor’s [sic] in a subsequent legal proceeding.”

 The majority observes that no issue exists concerning whether defendant’s waiver was knowing and voluntary, because defendant has not appealed from the voluntariness finding of the Court of Appeals. I disagree. The reason the majority uses for allowing defendant’s statements into evidence is that defendant knowingly and voluntarily waived his right to keep the statements out of evidence. Thus, it is inherent in making a determination whether the Court should allow the statements into evidence to examine the underlying waiver to ensure it specifically waived defendant’s MRE 410 protections.

 In Barnett, the Mississippi Supreme Court applied its version of an evidentiary rule that is essentially the same as MRE 410. It held that statements made during plea negotiations after Miranda warnings had been given are not admissible at trial.

 In Young, the court found instructive Burch, supra, and United States v Krilich, 159 F3d 1020 (CA 7, 1998). There was no issue in Mezzanatto whether the waiver was entered into voluntarily.

 The waiver in Burch took place during a plea hearing before a judge. At it, the defendant explicitly acknowledged that he waived his rights under FEE 410 as part of his plea agreement with the government.

 The Court also considered this issue in People v Conte, 421 Mich 704; 365 NW2d 648 (1984). It ruled on five consolidated cases there. No clear majority emerged, as the Court split 3-2-1-1. The application of MRE 410 was not directly at issue. In one case, the Court enacted the rule after the statements had been made and, in others, the requirements for invoking the rule’s protections were not met.

 See, e.g., Sitz v Dep’t of State Police, 443 Mich 744; 506 NW2d 209 (1993).

 Barnett, supra; State v Jackson, 325 NW2d 819 (Minn, 1982) (holding that statements made during plea negotiations are inadmissible for all purposes); People v Crow, 28 Cal App 4th 440; 33 Cal Rptr 2d 624 (1994) (holding that statements made during plea negotiations are admissible only for impeachment); People v Connery, 296 Ill App 3d 384; 694 NE2d 658 (1998) (holding that statements made after a plea agreement has been made are admissible. The court would have pursued a different analysis had the statements been made before the agreement was reached).