Alice has been charged with first degree murder, although the evidence is mostly circumstantial, and there is no body.
Alice’s attorney offers a plea bargain that Alice will disclose the location of the body in exchange for a lesser charge.
Can the prosecutor use the plea offer as evidence of guilt, since Alice is sort of admitting that she is involved and knows there is a body?
1. If she brings it up first
in any proceeding in which another statement made during the same plea or plea discussions has been introduced, if in fairness the statements ought to be considered together
This means that if Alice makes any testimony in trial about what she said during a plea bargain, then the prosecution is able to disclose additional details that are normally protected to prevent the defendant from misrepresenting the conversation out of context. For example, if Alice testifies, "The prosecution would not give me a plea bargain unless I could tell them where the body is." then the prosecution could clarify that Alice indicated that she knew where the body was as part of the plea bargain discussion. This prevents her from abusing Rule 410 protection to defame the prosecution.
2. If her court testimony is different than what she said during a plea agreement
in a criminal proceeding for perjury or false statement, if the defendant made the statement under oath, on the record, and with counsel present.
This means that if Alice says that she knows where the body is during a plea bargain, and then says in court that she does not know where the body is, then she can be charged with perjury, and the details of the plea bargain case can be discussed in the perjury case, but this does not extend to the original murder court case. In that case, she is still protected.
In practice this very rarely applies because perjury charges generally cannot or will not be pursued. You can only really make perjury charges stick when you have two conflicting statements that were both made under oath since lying unto itself is not a crime. Since plea agreement discussions are generally not under oath, saying you lied during one rarely leads anywhere. At most they could accuse her of obstruction of justice, but then they would have no evidence because the the conversation where she lied is protected.
3. If she waives her rights to Rule 410
This is generally a non-issue if Alice decides to reject the plea offer, but plea offers sometimes include Rule 410 waivers. So, if she were to for example enter into a no contest plea with a Rule 410 waiver, the prosecution could bring up the fact that she indicated that she knew where the body was, but it is a moot point because this means she has already come to a settlement agreement and will be charged for the crime as per the terms of the agreement.
Plea bargain negotiations are confidential and inadmissible. Even the fact that they did or did not happen is inadmissible.
