Court Opinion

ID: 9861916
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 00:54:30.375021+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:29:47.878377
License: Public Domain

Black, J.
(concurring). The guilty pleas defendants belatedly attack were entered with every in-dicium of “plea agreements.”1 After the trial began *136in January of 1963 and the jurors were selected and sworn, the prosecutor moved as presently quoted for leave to amend by informing the court of murder of the second degree  rather than murder of the first degree.  Each defendant, aided by his own manifestly competent counsel, succeeded by his agreement and the aforesaid motion in avoiding the risk of a mandatory life sentence. Although such counsel unreservedly supported the prosecutor’s motion and then stood by their clients’ sides when each pleaded guilty of second-degree murder and later when each was sentenced, the two defendants (represented by new counsel) now would have us find that the circuit court erred reversibly in granting the prosecutor’s motion and in accepting such guilty pleas.
The allegation of error is wholly without merit. Besides, it was eagerly waived below. Some day, surely, this Court will put an end to such publicly expensive sport in and with the criminal courts of Michigan. But that end is now not in sight. All we can do presently is write and record our separate convictions. Mine appear below, influenced confessedly by the wholly undenied fact that both defendants joined the actual assassin (one James "Willie Armstrong) in planning the armed robbery of a small grocery store. In the course of that successful robbery the proprietress, Ann Kelush, was brutally shot and left dying in the store.
“At the present time in this country there is more danger that criminals will escape justice than that *137they will be subjected to tyranny.”4 Some immediate restraint is due of today’s most incredible juristic doctrine, that criminal justice has been set up for the benefit alone of those who, having been accused and convicted of felony according to the forms of law, may thereafter tap the courts incessantly for determination of afterwitted allegations of error, the more and more visible design of which is prece-dential erosion of society’s right to defend herself against criminal disorder.
January 9, 1963 the two defendants, represented respectively by attorneys Thomas Stipes and Robert Norgren, appeared before the trial court with the prosecuting attorney. The proceedings opened with motion of the prosecutor:
“At this time, if the court please, the people move the court for permission to file an amended information in this matter, charging respondent  Eddie Collins and Alfred Collins with the crime of murder in the second degree.
“In the event that this motion is granted, I have been informed by their respective counsels [sic] that these two defendants wish to enter pleas of guilty to the charge.”
There is no need to detail further the proceedings which then ensued. The trial judge considered the motion carefully and at length on the record. Having granted it, the pleas of both defendants were submitted, considered, and granted, similarly at length on the record. Both defense counsel were present throughout the hearing and took prominent part in the conduct thereof. To say that the record *138does not show voluntariness of pleading in each instance is to deny the fully communicated reality thereof and subvert the purpose of providing counsel for accused persons at public expense.
February 1, 1963, both defendants appeared before the court with counsel. Another careful record was made. Defendant Alfred Collins was sentenced to “not less than 23 nor more than 40 years.” Defendant Eddie Collins was sentenced to “not less than 11-1/2 nor more than 23 years.”
The next event shown in the appendices was the filing, in February of 1965, of motions by new counsel for the defendants to set aside their convictions. These reasons and no others were assigned:
“1. The plea of guilty heretofore entered in this cause was not voluntarily and understandingly made.
“2. In view of the complex issues of law and fact, the examination of the respondent at the time of such plea was not sufficient to determine whether or not the respondent was guilty of any crime.”
June 15, 1965 the trial judge filed an opinion denying both motions to set aside conviction. Following reference to and quotation of GCR 1963, 785.3(2),6 the opinion reads connectedly to conclusion as follows:
“It is to be noted the following facts in addition to others revealed by the records.
“1. Both defendants were represented by counsel at all pertinent times;
“2. That the pleas were entered only after impaneling of the jury;
*139“3. That testimony was taken as to the third respondent to determine the degree of homicide inasmuch as the third respondent had pleaded guilty to an open charge of murder;
“4. That the record indicates a thorough prer sentence inquiry by the court.
“Also to be noted is that the so-called protestations of innocence referred to by counsel as having been made by the respondents Eddie Collins and Alfred Collins were then interpreted by the court as being protestations of their innocence of holding the intent to kill Mrs. Kelush. And surely this is true. But when they participated in the fashion that they admitted in an armed robbery during which the victim was slain, lack of specific intent that such a slaying be committed is not a defense. Prom the statements of counsel made in their presence and in the inquiry and in the investigation made by the court including the presentence investigation, the protestations of innocence only had to do with their claimed innocence of intending to kill or in planning the killing of Mrs. Kelush.
“It is to be noted further that the respondent did not seek their pleas to be withdrawn and statements were made by their counsel in their presence which established not only their guilt, but that their pleas were voluntary.
“The court’s examination of the accused complied with the rule. Although it is true that a more thorough interrogation as to the facts of the events would be preferable (and if the plea were to be taken again, such would be the procedure followed by this court), still there was compliance with the rule and there is nothing in the record to establish that the pleas were not completely voluntary or' that they were not knowingly or understandingly made or that they were made as a result of undue influence, compulsion, duress, fraud or under a promise of leniency.
*140“Accordingly, tbe motions are denied. Prevailing counsel should tender an order for signature of the court forthwith.”
An order denying such motions entered in circuit June 28, 1965.
January 13, 1966 the defendants, represented by such new counsel, raised for the first time the main question sought now to be reviewed. That was done by application to the Court of Appeals for leave to take delayed appeal from the order of June 28, 1965. The question was raised in the application as follows:
“B. The lower court erroneously consented to a motion by the prosecution to amend the information and charge the appellants with the crime of murder in the second degree, when the evidence did not warrant such amendment.”
April 21, 1966, Division 1 of the Court of Appeals denied defendants’ application by summary order. "We granted defendants’ application for leave to appeal December 29, 1966.
The acts of defendants and their counsel in openly supporting the prosecutor’s motion to amend the in-formations ; defendants’ understandable readiness to plead to the reduced charges upon and with the advice of such counsel; their failure to raise the question they would now review when their motions to vacate plea and set aside conviction were presented in circuit, and their omission to raise that question at any time in circuit; all this left the Court of Appeals Avith no meritorious question for review except on motion of the Court itself. See to the point People v. Sanford, 252 Mich 240, 248, 250, 253; People v. Foley, 299 Mich 358, 360, 361; People v. Millman, 306 Mich 182, 189; In re Pardee, 327 Mich 13, 18; People v. Banning, 329 Mich 1, 7; People v. Barmore, 368 Mich 26, 31.
*141That which, the above foreshadows is not meant to leave undecided the hypertechnical question defendants raise as to applicability of the rule of People v. Treichel, 229 Mich 303; a rule which this Court followed and applied later in People v. Andrus, 331 Mich 535, 543, 545. I agree with the prosecuting attorney that Treichel authorized what everyone at the time, the trial judge, prosecutor, and defense counsel included, deemed proper as well as commendable procedure. As for the present cavil, that the rule of Treichel is operative only “if the evidence warrants” and that no evidence was received in circuit warranting the amendment and pleas thereunder, it is sufficient to say that the unreserved and fully safeguarded guilty pleas of both defendants provided all the evidence that was requisite to application of Treichel’s rule. When an accused voluntarily pleads guilty to a charge set forth in the people’s information and his plea is accepted duly by the court, he admits the charge as laid, provides all evidence requisite to sentencing,7 and thereby waives all previously available objections to the proceedings which led up to and became merged in the legal result of his plea. This is doubly true when counsel attends him throughout such proceedings.
An appropriately terminal comment upon criminal appeals like this one was written long ago by Bentham:
*142“If rogues did but know all the pains that the law has taken for their benefit, honest men would have nothing left they could call their own.”8
The rogues know now, Jeremy. And you are well assured that the honest are fast beginning to understand. Ann Kelush learned from rogues and not from on high that she could not even call her life her own.
I vote to affirm.

 See part III, “Plea Discussions and Plea Agreements,” set forth starting on page 60 of the tentative draft of the American Bar As*136sociation Project on Minimum Standards for Criminal Justice, issued February 1967 from the Offiee of Criminal Justice Project, Institute of Judicial Administration, 33 Washington Square West, New York, New York; also pages 1, 2 and 3 of the December 1967 supplemental pamphlet, setting forth amendments recommended by the so-ealled Lumbard Committee.

 This passage was written 60 odd years ago by Mr. Justiee Holmes, dissenting in Kepner v. United States (1904), 195 US 100, 134 (24 S Ct 797, 806, 49 L ed 114, 126). Today, in America, reutteranee thereof as here is so much tragic understatement.

 If, after the defendants through counsel advised the judge that they wished to plead to the amended information, the procedure followed by Judge Newblatt failed in some finical respeet to comply with rule 785.3 as that rule stood in January of 1963, the case clearly is one for application both of GCR 529.1 and GCR 785.3(4). The latter read then and reads now: “This rule is mandatory but failure to comply therewith shall not be considered jurisdictional.”

 “A plea of guilty differs in purpose and effeet from a mere admission or an extra-judicial confession; it is itself a conviction. Like a verdict of a jury it is conclusive. More is not required; the court has nothing to do hut give judgment and sentence. Out of just consideration for persons accused of crime, courts are careful that a plea of guilty shall not he accepted unless made voluntarily after proper advice and with full understanding of the consequences. When one so pleads he may he held hound. United States v. Bayaud (CC), 23 Fed 721.” Kercheval v. United States, 274 US 220, 223, 224 (47 S Ct 582, 583, 71 L ed 1009, 1012).

 “The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the superintendence of his executor John Bowring, Edinburgh 1843” (Vol. 6, page 205).