Court Opinion

ID: 9466652
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:21:54.796376+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:50.962786
License: Public Domain

TATE, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in the plurality’s reversal of this conviction. I agree that the judge’s “confusing and misleading” instruction prevented the defendant from knowingly and intelligently waiving his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.
Nevertheless, for the reasons stated below as well as those extensively outlined by Judge Goldberg in his dissent from the original panel opinion, 597 F.2d 535, 544 (5th Cir. 1979), I respectfully dissent from that portion of the plurality opinion that holds that incriminating statements made by a defendant at a pre-trial bail hearing may be admitted against him at a subsequent trial on the merits of his guilt or innocence. I primarily believe that through the exercise of our supervisory powers we should accord “use immunity” against trial use of bail-hearing testimony in order to assure fair and efficient pre-trial bail proceedings. See Note, Resolving Tensions Between Constitutional Rights: Use Immunity in Concurrent or Related Proceedings, 76 Colum.L. Rev. 674 (1976). However, if we are not willing to so act at this time, then, in my belief, Judge Goldberg’s dissent from the initial panel opinion correctly states that the defendant was unconstitutionally forced to surrender Fifth Amendment rights in the proper exercise of his Eighth Amendment rights.
Aside from any constitutional objection, I believe that this case presents an opportunity for an exercise of this court’s supervisory powers, cf. United States v. Dunbar, 611 F.2d 985 (5th Cir. 1980) (en banc), to hold that bail-hearing testimony is not independently admissible at a defendant’s trial on the merits. In a somewhat analogous context — the admissibility at trial of a pre-trial guilty plea that is subsequently withdrawn — the Supreme Court had held, prior to any codification by rule, that a withdrawn plea could not be admitted into evidence at the merit-trial because this would effectively negate the decision to allow the plea to be withdrawn. Kercheval v. United States, 274 U.S. 220, 47 S.Ct. 582, 71 L.Ed. 1009 (1927). In reversing its own jurisprudence and following the lead of Kercheval, the New York Court of Appeals has additionally noted that admitting such a withdrawn plea forces a defendant, in substance *1177if not in form, to testify against himself. People v. Spitaleri, 9 N.Y.2d 168, 212 N.Y.S.2d 53, 173 N.E.2d 35 (1961). Similarly, when we allow statements made by a defendant at a bail hearing to be used against him at his merit-trial, in effect we permit the defendant to lose his right not to take the stand and his right to require the government to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt independently of his own testimony.
Under the rule expressed in today’s plurality opinion, a defendant who makes an incriminating statement at an informal bail hearing, in his attempt to be accorded his Eighth Amendment right to non-excessive bail, sacrifices his constitutional right to testify or not, as he chooses. He must either take the stand at the trial and give up his right to force the government to prove its case without his help, or he must sit mute while the government uses his own words to convict him, without any opportunity to explain his statements (if he can). Independently of constitutional requirement, I do not think that this court should sanction the placing of a defendant in such a position, by which either what should be an efficient and fair hearing to implement his constitutional right to non-excessive bail must proceed without his relevant testimony, or else, at this early stage of the prosecution, the defendant must sacrifice one constitutional right (his right not to testify at the later trial on the merits) if he elects to testify at the bail-hearing in an attempt to secure another constitutional right (non-excessive bail).
The supervisory rule of Kercheval has been codified in Rule 410 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which provides, inter alia, that no evidence of a guilty plea that is later withdrawn, or of any statements made in connection with such a plea, is admissible in any civil or criminal trial, except for the limited purposes of impeachment or proving perjury. I believe that this court, pursuant to its supervisory powers, should bar the subsequent admission of statements made by a defendant at a pre-trial bail hearing in the same way that Kercheval and Rule 410 bar the admission into evidence of the guilty plea that has subsequently been withdrawn. Such a rule, making a defendant’s statements at a bail hearing inadmissible at trial, could, if codified, essentially track the language of Rule 410.1
Forcing the defendant either to sit mute or to run the risk of imperiling his right not to take the stand at a subsequent trial inefficiently injects unnecessary formality and risk into what should be an informal pre-trial proceeding. A bail hearing is only designed to provide the judge with sufficient information to determine what steps are necessary to assure the defendant’s presence at trial. The trial judge has great discretion to evaluate the various relevant factors, and he should have the input of the defense as well as the prosecution. The judge certainly cannot attempt to come to any final decision on the merits, but he should have access to any information that the defendant deems relevant to the appropriate amount of bail. The defendant has a constitutional right to non-excessive bail, and it seems to me that this court should use its supervisory power to insure that the purpose of bail hearing is achieved with the aid of relevant information furnished by the defendant himself, who sometimes is the most available (if not the only) source of such testimony.
Since the plurality, instead of exercising this court’s supervisory power, chooses to reach the constitutional issue, I agree with Judge Goldberg, 597 F.2d 535, 544 (5th Cir. 1979), that the defendant in this case was unconstitutionally compelled to choose between two of his constitutional rights, his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and his Eighth Amendment *1178right to non-excessive bail. The plurality opinion attempts to distinguish what I consider to be the clearly controlling case, Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 88 S.Ct. 967, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247 (1968), by stating that the right to bail is guaranteed whether or not an accused testifies at the bail hearing. However, none of the guarantees in the Bill of Rights are dependent in the abstract on the testimony of an accused, although on many occasions (cf. Simmons), these guarantees cannot be implemented without the accused’s testimony.
I cannot agree that the Eighth Amendment right to non-excessive bail is entitled to less protection than the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures or the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. Further, the Eighth Amendment guarantees not just the right to bail, but the right to non-excessive bail; non-excessive bail for a big-time drug dealer may well be excessive bail for the small fish that defendant alleges himself to be. Without the testimony of the accused himself, the magistrate could not efficiently exercise the discrimination constitutionally required of him in this respect. The weight to be given to the government’s prima facie case or to a defendant’s statement is certainly within the magistrate’s discretion, but on the other hand, the defendant not unreasonably concluded that the recommended amount of bail would be determined to be appropriate for him unless he rebutted the government testimony portraying him as a big-time drug dealer. If the plurality’s holding is correct, the defendant essentially gave up his right not to testify at a subsequent trial simply because he rebutted the government testimony that might well have inclined the judge to fix a much higher bail.2
Beyond these observations, I can only rely on Judge Goldberg’s scholarly and comprehensive dissent.
For the reasons stated, I respectfully dissent from the plurality holding that, except under the peculiar circumstances here present, permits a defendant’s statements at his bail hearing to be received as admissions at his trial of guilt or innocence; otherwise, I concur in the plurality opinion and its reversal and remand for a new trial.

. A codification of the rule that I propose might read as follows:
Statements made by a defendant at a pretrial bail hearing are not admissible against said defendant at any subsequent criminal trial. This rule shall not apply to the introduction of any voluntary and reliable statements made in court on the record at such a bail hearing where offered for impeachment purposes or in a subsequent prosecution of the declarant for perjury or false statement.

. As noted in Judge Goldberg’s dissent, the judge did set the defendant’s bail at $10,000, $15,000 less than the government requested, 597 F.2d at 549, and he also apparently referred to the defendant’s incriminating remarks. Id.