As a result, the majority said the trial judge in Scott’s case did not conduct a trial without authority to do so, so Scott’s conviction and sentence is not automatically void but rather reviewed as a procedural error.
The high court sent the case back to the Court of Appeals to determine whether the witness testimony should have been admitted at trial and if it unfairly skewed the proceedings.
Justice Clement said in her dissent that she would have applied the Washington case to find the trial judge did not have jurisdiction over the aspects of the case involved in Scott’s high court appeal, so the judge had no authority to hold the trial with the contested testimony.
As a result, Scott’s trial, conviction and sentence are void, the dissenting justice argued.
Allowing the trial to go forward while an appeal was pending before the Michigan Supreme Court “risked necessitating a retrial should our Court have granted leave to appeal and ruled that the evidence should not be admitted,” Justice Clement added.
