Court Opinion

ID: 9848743
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:26:30.901041+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:41.594855
License: Public Domain

M. F. Cavanagh, J.
(concurring in part and dissenting in part). This case focuses on a sentence bargain: the prosecutor agreed to dismiss two other charges and recommend a year in jail in return for the defendant’s guilty plea. The defendant claims that he understood that the sentence was fixed by his plea; i.e., that the sentence could be none other than that reached through the plea bargain.
Where the only evidence to support an alleged bargain is a defense affidavit, and no evidence of the bargain appears on the face of the plea record, the defendant must move to withdraw the plea in the trial court before taking an appeal. People v Guerrero, 57 Mich App 316, 318; 225 NW2d 746, 747 (1975). While there is some indication in this record that the defendant anticipated a bargain other than the one which he received, he made no factual showing at the hearing upon his motion to withdraw his plea that would establish that his reliance was both actual and reasonable. Where *32the defendant elects to stand on a record which does not support a claim of reasonable reliance on more than a sentence recommendation, the proper course is to affirm the trial court’s denial of defendant’s motion to withdraw his plea.
I cannot agree with the majority’s opinion to the extent that it implies that a defendant may not withdraw his plea unless the plea bargain defect appears upon the face of the plea-taking record. It is precisely because most of these defects do not appear fully on the record, if at all, that the defendant is entitled to an evidentiary hearing on his motion to withdraw his plea. It is because defendant Serr elected to stand on the record that affirmance is proper; this defendant would have been entitled to an evidentiary hearing below, had he made the request.