Source: https://www.michaelrehm.com/pitchess-v-superior-court-11-cal-3d-531
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 00:07:54+00:00

Document:
John H. Larson, County Counsel, Robert C. Lynch, Frederick R. Bennett and Jeffrey H. Nelson, Deputy County Counsel, for Petitioner.
Thomas M. O'Connor, City Attorney (City and County of San Francisco), Philip S. Ward, Deputy City Attorney, Edward A. Goggin, City Attorney (Oakland), Mark B. Shragge, Deputy City Attorney, Royce A. Fincher, Jr., Frank G. Carrington, Wayne W. Schmidt, Paul Keller, Glen R. Murphy and Jeremiah F. O'Shea, Jr., as Amici Curiae on behalf of Petitioner.
Miguel F. Garcia for Real Party in Interest.
Richard S. Buckley, Public Defender, Dennis A. Fischer and Edward A. Rucker, Deputy Public Defender, Andrew K. Dolan, Leon Letwin and Richard Wasserstrom as Amici Curiae on behalf of Real Party in Interest.
Petitioner, Sheriff of Los Angeles County, seeks a writ of mandate to compel respondent superior court to quash its subpoena duces tecum requiring the production of certain documents sought by Caesar Echeveria, real party in interest and defendant in a pending trial for multiple counts of battery (Pen. Code, §§ 242, 243). Petitioner contends the discovery at issue should not have been granted because the motion to discover is procedurally defective and the requested information is not subject to discovery. We conclude the trial court did not abuse its discretion in ordering discovery and therefore deny the writ.
Defendant, together with others, was charged in March 1972 with committing battery against four deputy sheriffs. Soon thereafter one charge was dismissed, and defendant now awaits trial on the remaining three. Defendant asserts he intends at trial to establish that he acted in self-defense in response to the use of excessive force by the deputy sheriffs. (People v. Curtis (1969) 70 Cal.2d 347, 356 [74 Cal.Rptr. 713, 450 P.2d 33].) To that end, he sought to discover evidence of the complaining witnesses' propensity for violence. Specifically, he moved for the production of records of several investigations conducted by the administrative services bureau, a sheriff's department internal unit which inquires into citizen complaints of official misconduct. The investigations involved accusations by various members of the public that the deputies allegedly attacked had themselves used excessive force on previous occasions. The motion was granted by the trial court, and the prosecution was ordered to secure the records from the sheriff. The commander of the administrative services bureau, however, refused to cooperate, whereupon defendant obtained a subpoena duces tecum directing the sheriff to produce the information. The sheriff declined to do so, and unsuccessfully moved to quash the subpoena. Now he seeks mandate.
At the threshold we observe that the case comes to us by a somewhat convoluted route. The trial court ordered the prosecution to obtain the records from the sheriff. When the sheriff refused to produce the information, [11 Cal.3d 535] the prosecutor should have invoked process of the court; instead, the burden of so moving was imposed upon the defendant, here the real party in interest. Nevertheless the trial court found the burden had been met and therefore issued a subpoena duces tecum, the sheriff moved to quash, and the motion was denied. Thus the matter is now in a justiciable posture on the sheriff's request for mandate. On the motion to quash, and petition for mandate after denial of the motion, the burden shifts to the moving party, the sheriff, to demonstrate an abuse of discretion by the trial court. As will appear we find he has not met that burden.
[1a] Petitioner initially urges that the affidavits in support of the subpoena duces tecum are insufficient to justify discovery because they fail to demonstrate “good cause” with adequate specificity as required by Code of Civil Procedure sections 1985 and 2036. fn. 1 The contention is premised on the erroneous assumption that the statutory provisions governing discovery in civil actions apply to criminal proceedings.
On the face of the affidavits it is apparent that defendant could not “readily obtain the information through his own efforts.” (Traynor, Ground Lost and Found in Criminal Discovery (1964) 39 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 228, 244; see also Hill v. Superior Court (1974) supra, 10 Cal.3d 812, 819; Ballard v. Superior Court (1966) supra, 64 Cal.2d 159, 167.) Though defendant was able to determine the identity of particular individuals who lodged complaints against deputy sheriffs, he cannot be held responsible for their [11 Cal.3d 538] unavailability or lack of memory, and he has no access to the sheriff's investigative records. Furthermore, the information which defendant seeks may have considerable significance to the preparation of his defense, and the documents have been requested with adequate specificity to preclude the possibility that defendant is engaging in a “fishing expedition.” We therefore conclude that defendant demonstrated sufficient good cause under the appropriate standards of criminal procedure, as developed in case authority, to warrant the trial court in compelling discovery.
Evidence Code section 1040, therefore, represents the exclusive means by which a public entity may assert a claim of governmental privilege based on the necessity for secrecy. Evidence Code section 1042, subdivision (a), in turn, codifies the due process demand recognized by the United States Supreme Court that the prosecution cannot commence criminal proceedings “and then invoke its governmental privileges to deprive the accused of anything which might be material to his defense.” fn. 6 (United States v. Reynolds (1953) supra, 345 U.S. 1, 12; also see Jencks v. United States (1957) 353 U.S. 657, 672 [1 L.Ed.2d 1103, 1114, 77 S.Ct. 1007]; Roviaro v. United States (1957) 353 U.S. 53, 60-61 [1 L.Ed.2d 639, 644-645, 77 S.Ct. 623].) In concert, the two provisions create an orderly and fair procedure designed to safeguard the legitimate interests of both the government and criminal defendants. By purporting to rely on the superseded common law rather than the statute, petitioner attempted to avoid the potential liabilities of the statutory scheme, but in so doing waived its benefits as well.
It follows that petitioner is not entitled on the theory asserted to an order quashing the subpoena duces tecum. He may now seek to establish the applicability of the conditional privilege declared in Evidence Code section 1040, but the decision on the propriety of such a motion and its possible attendant consequences under Evidence Code section 1042, subdivision (a), will remain in the sound discretion of the trial court according to the standards hereinabove delineated.
The alternative writ of mandate is discharged and the peremptory writ denied.
I concur, but wish to emphasize that dismissal of the charges is not the price of claiming the privilege for official information in the circumstances of this case.
Evidence Code section 1042, subdivision (a), provides that if a claim of privilege is sustained in a criminal proceeding, “the presiding officer shall make such order or finding of fact adverse to the public entity bringing the proceeding as is required by law upon any issue in the proceeding to which the privileged information is material.” As the information sought here is material solely to the issue of use of excessive force on specified previous occasions, sustaining a claim of privilege should only result in a finding of fact adverse to the People on the collateral issue.
­FN 4. Section 1040 provides: “(a) As used in this section, ‘official information' means information acquired in confidence by a public employee in the course of his duty and not open, or officially disclosed, to the public prior to the time the claim of privilege is made.
­FN 5. Petitioner's rationale for not claiming the statutory privilege is ironic in view of the fact that the trial court is equally compelled to dismiss a prosecution when material evidence is withheld from a defendant on a common law claim of governmental confidentiality. This doctrine is made clear in Reynolds, Price, Honore, and McShann, among numerous other authorities.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.