Should Alford Pleas be Admissible at Subsequent Civil Trials?

When a defendant enters a traditional guilty plea, that plea is usually admissible against her at a subsequent civil action. So, for instance, if Dana pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in connection with a fatal car accident, that plea would usually be admissible against her at a subsequent civil wrongful death lawsuit brought by the victim’s family. Conversely, a nolo contendere plea (I’m not going to to contest the charges) is usually inadmissible against her at a subsequent civil action pursuant to Federal Rule of Evidence 410(a)(2) and state counterparts. So, if Dana pleaded nolo contendere to involuntary manslaughter in connection with a fatal car accident, that plea would usually be inadmissible against her at a subsequent civil wrongful death lawsuit brought by the victim’s family. So, what’s the rule with regard to Alford pleas?

An Alford plea, based on the Supreme Court’s opinion in North Carolina v. Alford, is a plea in which the defendant maintains her innocence but pleads guilty while acknowledging that the State has sufficient evidence to prove her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. There’s no federal (and, in most states, no state) rule of evidence governing the (in)admissibility of Alford pleas. So, what should courts do?

As the recent opinion of the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota in State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Havemeier, 2021 WL 838768 (D.Minn. 2021),

The collateral consequences of an Alford plea in a civil trial was a matter of first impression for the Minnesota Supreme Court in Doe 136 v. Liebsch, 872 N.W.2d 875 (Minn. 2015). The Minnesota Supreme Court’s analysis focused on the balance between the probative value of the Alford plea and the prejudicial risk in terms of its admission into evidence at trial….Whereas a “conventional guilty plea, by contrast, requires a defendant to admit the conduct to which he or she is accused of committing,” the underlying trial court in Liebs[c]h concluded “that the only real admission by Liebsch is that a jury might find him guilty if it chose to find credible the testimony of witnesses which was never presented to it.” …The Minnesota Supreme Court held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by excluding the Alford plea from evidence. …The court reasoned that “Liebs[c]h’s Alford plea included no admission of facts establishing guilt, and therefore it lacked the probative value typically found in a conventional guilty plea.”…Thus, the Minnesota Supreme Court would not always view nor treat an Alford plea as it would a conventional guilty plea. Other courts from outside Minnesota have held similarly with respect to the effect of an Alford plea. See, e.g., Barker v. Ameriprise Auto & Home Ins. Agency, Inc., 905 F. Supp. 2d 1214, 1219 (W.D. Wash. 2012) (“Acknowledgement of the existence of evidence is not an admission as to the truth of that evidence.”); Fleck v. State Farm Ins. Cos., No. 89-L-14-070,1990 WL 124648 at *2 (Ohio Ct. App. Aug. 24, 1990) (“Such a plea does not constitute an admission of guilty, but rather that the accused is willing to waive a trial and accept the consequences of the plea. It, however, does not act as an admission of the plea…[t]herefore, appellant’s guilty plea, by way of a qualified Alford plea, operates in the same fashion as a nolo contendere plea for the purposes in a subsequent civil action.”).

Frankly, I don’t know where I stand on this. On the one hand, an Alford plea is functionally a guilty plea, so why shouldn’t it be admissible to the same extent as a guilty plea? On the other hand, there’s a disturbing trend of prosecutors forcing wrongfully convicted defendants to enter Alford pleas rather than risking retrials. On balance, I have too much discomfort with Alford pleas to think they should be admissible at trial. Frankly, I’m not even sure that the Alford plea should exist.

-CM