Court Opinion

ID: 9499510
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:50:32.586098+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:33.684329
License: Public Domain

BAUER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting. I respectfully dissent.
Stripped of all unnecessary verbiage, the majority takes the position that it was plain error (because its admission was not objected to at trial — in fact, not at either trial) for the agent of the FBI to relate the statement of the defendant, delivered voluntarily after he received the Miranda warning. As the majority agree, the statement was based on an exchange between the defendant and the agent essentially as follows: The defendant asked what the charge against him was. The agent told him. The agent then testified that: The defendant “told us ... although he didn’t remember delivering this 2-1/4 ounce of crack ... it was possible because he had done similar types of transactions” around the time and place of the charged crime. And, said the defendant, he had been a crack cocaine dealer for three or four years.
Quibbling over this statement, obviously against interest, penal and otherwise, as to whether it was a full confession or not misses the point; the admission of the statement was not only not plain error, it was admissible even in the face of an objection. The defense trial tactic was to deny that the statement was made, not that it wasn’t admissible evidence.
In the beginning of the trial, the government agreed that evidence of prior crimes — meaning, of course, the convictions for armed robbery and aggravated battery with a firearm — would not be referenced by the government unless the defendant testified. The defendant’s voluntary statement, which virtually amounted to a confession in the true sense of the word, was not in contention. It was discussed without objection in the opening statement, referred to by the defense attorney acknowledging the proposed testi*506mony but pooh-poohing its existence in his opening statements and was considered, together with the other evidence such as the tape recording of the defendant negotiating a sale with a confidential witness, and other evidence, by the jury. The defendant’s statement that he “might have committed the crime” was certainly relevant and his reason for the memory fog was explained by the fact that the transaction was just one of many similar transactions, all distributing crack, and saying that, a year later, an exact recollection of every sale was more that he could muster.
I know of no reason why the defendant’s statement was inadmissible, nor do I know how it could have been used without using it entirely. The defendant not only did not deny the crime, he acknowledged the possibility was undeniable; he was in the business, in the area, and in the time span. To rule the statement inadmissible is to defy logic.
I would affirm.