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387 Mich. 300

197 N.W.2d 25

People v. Duffield

Michigan Supreme Court

Decided May 4, 1972

Michigan Supreme Court · decided 1972-05-04

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1972-05-04

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently February 2001

8 state decisions

401972198019902000decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Black, J.

¶1(concurring). I find myself in agreement with the conclusions reached by Division 3 (20 Mich App 473, 480-481) in the last 2 paragraphs of its opinion and therefore vote to affirm.

T. Gr. Kavanagh, J.

¶2(dissenting in part). I agree with my Brother Williams that the circuit court for Cass County had jurisdiction to try the defendant for the crime of manslaughter for the reasons he so well sets forth.

¶3I do not agree however that the proffered plea of guilty should have been accepted.

¶4*354In my view, when a person cannot recall his actions constituting the commission of the offense with which he is charged, he cannot plead guilty, for there is no basis for the judgment of his own guilt.

¶5There should be no question of a guilty plea. The tenor of the statute is that doubts should be resolved against taking the plea.

¶6When the defendant here told the court he was so drunk he did not remember what he did, the court should have rejected the plea even though defendant’s intoxication would he no defense at a trial.

¶7I would remand for trial.

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