United States v. Mezzanatto

In United States v. Mezzanatto, 513 U.S. 196, 200-01, 115 S. Ct. 797, 130 L. Ed. 2d 697 (1995), the Supreme Court held that a defendant can waive the protections afforded by Rule 410, Fed. R. Evid., and Rule 11(e)(6), Fed. R. Crim. P., rejecting the Ninth Circuit's approach, which "deemed waiver of these rights presumptively unavailable absent some sort of express enabling clause," and engaging instead in the "opposite presumption." The defendant in Mezzanatto agreed to a "free talk" as a condition to the government's consideration of whether to offer him a plea agreement. Id. at 198. The defendant agreed that, if no agreement were reached, the government could use the statements he had made during the "free talk" for impeachment purposes. Id. No agreement was ever reached. Id. at 198-99. Reversing the Ninth Circuit, which had found the rights under the rule could not be waived, the Supreme Court reasoned that, "absent some affirmative indication of Congress' intent to preclude waiver, we have presumed that statutory provisions are subject to waiver by voluntary agreement of the parties." Id. at 201, 211. The Court added, "The presumption of waivability has found specific application in the context of evidentiary rules." Id. at 202. The Court recognized that evidentiary stipulations are a valuable and integral part of everyday trial practice. Prior to trial, parties often agree in writing to the admission of otherwise objectionable evidence, either in exchange for stipulations from opposing counsel or for other strategic purposes. Both the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure appear to contemplate that the parties will enter into evidentiary agreements during a pretrial conference. Id. at 203. The Supreme Court in Mezzanatto rejected the defendant's suggestion that stipulations implicating plea-statement rules are somehow distinguishable, finding the distinction to be one without a difference. Id. at 203, n.3. Thus, the Court concluded, a defendant can voluntarily waive the protections of federal Rules 410 and 11(e)(6), and the defendant had done so in that case. Id. at 210-11.