§ 135.445 Withdrawn plea or statement not admissible

If you offer to plead guilty or no contest but the court doesn't accept it, or if you later take back that plea, prosecutors can't use it against you later in the case. This means the fact that you once agreed to plead guilty can't be brought up in front of a jury or used as evidence that you're guilty.

This protection also covers anything you or your lawyer said during the discussions about that plea. So if you or your attorney made comments while negotiating the plea deal, those statements are also off limits and can't be used against you in court later.

The point of this rule is to let people negotiate plea deals openly without fear that the negotiations themselves will be used as proof of guilt if the deal falls through. Without this protection, people might be afraid to even discuss a plea, since talking about it could hurt them later if they changed their mind or the judge rejected the deal.