Children’s best interests; Witness testimony; Procedural due process; MCR 3.920(B)(3)’s notice provisions; The Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination; In re Blakeman; Compulsion; Confrontation rights; Sufficiency of the trial court’s factual findings; MCL 712A.19b(1); Relative placement consideration; Child Protective Services (CPS)

The court rejected respondent-father’s due process, Fifth Amendment privilege, and right of confrontation claims, and held that the trial court made sufficient factual findings to support its ruling that terminating his parental rights was in the children’s best interests. One of the children’s twin, who was 35 days old, was pronounced dead after arriving at a hospital. Both twins were malnourished and the deceased child had a subdural hematoma and fractures that were “deemed ‘highly suggestive of abusive head trauma.’” Respondent pled no-contest to both jurisdictional and statutory grounds for termination based on a CPS investigation report. He argued “the trial court violated his procedural due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment by admitting witness testimony at the dispositional hearing that exceeded the factual basis underlying his no-contest plea as set forth in the” report. But the court concluded that the “notice provisions of MCR 3.920(B)(3) satisfied [his] procedural due process rights. [He] received adequate notice and availed himself of the opportunity to be heard: he appeared at the dispositional hearing before the referee, was represented by counsel who received the dispositional report and interposed no objection to its admission subject to cross-examination, and conducted thorough cross-examination of” the DHHS’s witnesses. The court found no merit to his claim that the “witness testimony rendered him ‘unable to prepare for the evidence presented after his no contest plea . . . .’” Further, even assuming the testimony was inflammatory as he claimed, “such testimony alone is insufficient to implicate the privilege against self-incrimination. Compulsion is an essential element of a Fifth Amendment violation, and” he did not establish it. In addition, the record showed “the trial court did not rely on the allegedly inflammatory witness testimony in” making its best-interest decision. It based “its analysis on two documentary sources. First, the CPS investigation report—which supplied the factual predicate for [the] father’s no-contest plea—established that his infant son died from malnourishment while in his care. Second, [the] father’s clinical interview with court-ordered evaluators” showed that he displayed “an inability to comprehend or acknowledge the cause of his son’s death and failed to articulate a concrete plan to prevent future CPS involvement.” Affirmed.