Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/california/supreme-court/2d/66/158.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 23:12:04+00:00

Document:
THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. TOMMY SPENCER, Defendant and Appellant.
Joseph M. Rosen, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for Defendant and Appellant.
Stanley Mosk and Thomas C. Lynch, Attorneys General, William E. James, Assistant Attorney General, and Gilbert F. Nelson, Deputy Attorney General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
The jury found defendant guilty of kidnaping for the purpose of robbery (Pen. Code, § 209) and of first degree murder (Pen. Code, §§ 187, 189), and fixed the penalty at death. The trial judge denied defendant's motion for a new trial and for a reduction of penalty. This appeal comes to us automatically under Penal Code section 1239, subdivision (b).
Defendant contends that his confession was improperly admitted at the guilt trial because he had not been informed of his rights to silence and to counsel prior to the time he confessed; he also urges that improper comments by the district attorney and an inadmissible confession infected his penalty trial with error. Since we conclude that the introduction of defendant's confession at the guilt trial constituted reversible error under Escobedo v. Illinois (1964) 378 U.S. 478 [12 L. Ed. 2d 977, 84 S. Ct. 1758], and People v. Dorado (1965) 62 Cal. 2d 338 [42 Cal. Rptr. 169, 398 P.2d 361], we need not reach the issues raised by defendant's other contentions.
The essential facts stand uncontradicted. Late in the evening of May 3, 1963, two sailors on liberty, Billy Jack and Paul Clements, were hitchhiking from San Diego to Hermosa Beach. Defendant and his codefendant, William Atlas, picked up the sailors in their automobile in Long Beach. Shortly thereafter, defendant and Atlas stopped the car and went into a liquor store to purchase some wine; upon returning, they were unable to start the car. The sailors left the car and attempted to obtain another ride, but they were soon picked up again by defendant and Atlas, who had finally managed to start their car.
When Atlas turned the car off the highway leading to Hermosa Beach, Clements said that he and Jack would leave the car. Defendant, holding a gun, replied, "No, you are going to take a little ride with us." Defendant then demanded that the two sailors give him their valuables; this they did. Shortly thereafter, defendant ordered Jack and Clements out of the car and onto the ground. After they complied, defendant fired [66 Cal. 2d 161] several shots; one struck Jack in the head, another in the back, and a third in the neck, fatally wounding him. Clements was not hit.
Defendant and Atlas drove away but soon stopped their car in order to push a woman's stalled automobile. As they pushed the automobile to a gas station, a tire on their own car went flat. The woman agreed to pay for the flat, and defendant accompanied her to her home in order to secure the money. At this point the police arrived at the intersection where the gas station was located and arrested Atlas; as soon as defendant returned, the police arrested him as well. The police found the stolen goods in the possession of defendant and Atlas; they found a gun upon defendant.
After taking defendant and Atlas to the police station in the early morning of May 4, the police subjected both suspects to a tape-recorded interrogation. Defendant related most of the above facts but insisted that he, rather than Atlas, had been the driver, and that Atlas alone had perpetrated both the robbery and the killing. Atlas, on the other hand, claimed that he was the driver; he accused defendant of the robbery and shooting.
Later the same day, during a second recorded interrogation at the police station, defendant confessed that he had committed the robbery and the shooting. He said that he had fired the shots only to induce the sailors to keep their heads down and that he had not intended to hit either of them. In another recorded statement, however, Atlas stated that defendant had told him that he intended to shoot the sailors; Atlas claimed that defendant's declaration took him by surprise and that he tried to persuade defendant to abandon any such plan.
After the court admitted into evidence all of these recorded statements, both Atlas and defendant testified. Atlas' testimony coincided in substance with his earlier statements. Defendant's testimony consisted generally of a repetition of the statements that he had given during the second interrogation. He again admitted picking up the sailors with the intention of robbing them; he said that after he had robbed them he told them to get out of the car and onto the ground; he admitted shooting one of the sailors but insisted that he had only intended to fire some shots to frighten them into keeping their heads down. He added that he had had a great deal to drink.
Clements, the surviving sailor, testified at the trial, identifying [66 Cal. 2d 162] defendant as the one who had shot his companion. Defendant offered no evidence contradicting his guilt; the jury returned verdicts finding defendant and Atlas guilty of first degree murder and kidnaping for robbery. The jury fixed defendant's penalty at death and Atlas' at life imprisonment without possibility of parole; the trial court modified Atlas' punishment to life imprisonment with possibility of parole but ordered that defendant Spencer suffer the penalty of death.
 [See fn. 1] Applying the principles established by Escobedo v. Illinois, supra, 378 U.S. 478, and People v. Dorado, supra, 62 Cal. 2d 338, fn. 1 we have concluded that the trial court committed reversible error in admitting defendant's confession in evidence.
The State contends that, since the jury in this case heard the defendant admit his guilt on the witness stand, the use of defendant's unlawfully obtained confession should be deemed harmless error on the theory that defendant's extrajudicial statement probably played little if any role in the jury's deliberation. (See Motes v. United States (1900) 178 U.S. 458, 475-476 [44 L. Ed. 1150, 20 S. Ct. 993]; People v. Combes (1961) 56 Cal. 2d 135, 148 [14 Cal. Rptr. 4, 363 P.2d 4]; cf People v. Jacobson (1965) 63 Cal. 2d 319, 330-331 [46 Cal. Rptr. 515, 405 P.2d 555]; People v. Cotter (1965) 63 Cal. 2d 386, 398 [46 Cal. Rptr. 622, 405 P.2d 862].) Even if we assume that the United States Constitution would permit the application of a harmless error rule under such circumstances, fn. 2 we could not rest affirmance of the judgment solely upon our evaluation of the minor effect of defendant's confession upon the jury; we must still weigh its impact upon defendant's trial.
[5a] In evaluating the possibility that the erroneous introduction of defendant's extrajudicial confession might have induced his subsequent testimonial confession, we must assess defendant's reaction to the use of his confession at trial on the basis of the information then available to him; as we shall see, that information might easily have misled him.
 [See fn. 6] Since the trial in this case occurred in 1963, before the date of the Escobedo or Dorado decisions, the defendant here, like the defendant in Jones, could not have known that his previous confession should have been excluded and that its introduction in evidence constituted reversible error. fn. 6 [5b] Believing his confession admissible, defendant might have taken the stand in order to explain its most daming features or to emphasize the extenuating circumstances [66 Cal. 2d 166] surrounding his crime; or he might simply have concluded that the prosecution's use of his confession had rendered further resistance futile and had made it imperative that he appear as cooperative as possible. (Cf. People v. Stockman (1965) 63 Cal. 2d 494, 502 [47 Cal. Rptr. 365, 407 P.2d 277]; People v. Clark, supra, 62 Cal. 2d 870, 881; People v. Anderson (1965) 236 Cal. App. 2d 419, 429 [46 Cal. Rptr. 1].) Because Escobedo and Dorado had not yet been decided, however, the defendant had no opportunity to probe any of these possibilities and the trial court had no occasion to consider them.
Because the trial here preceded the decisions in Escobedo and Dorado, the defendant in this case, like the petitioner in Fahy, was "unable to claim ... that [his illegally obtained confession] induced his [testimonial] admissions. ..." (375 U.S. at p. 90.) Here, as in Fahy, the precise issue which we are therefore called upon to resolve is "whether there is a reasonable possibility that the evidence complained of" (italics added) (375 U.S. at p. 86)--in this case, the extrajudicial statement--"might have contributed to the conviction" (italics added) (id., at pp. 86-87)--in this case, by inducing the defendant's judicial confession of guilt.
We conclude that the record in this case fails to dispel beyond a reasonable doubt the possibility that the defendant took the stand in an attempt to mitigate the explosive impact of a confession which had left his case in ruin. Given that possibility, we cannot sever defendant's confession in the courtroom from his confession at the police station in order to render harmless the underlying violation of Escobedo and Dorado. Defendant's two confessions, viewed together, worked such prejudice as to compel reversal.
Traynor, C. J., Peters, J., Burke, J., Sullivan, J., and Roth, J. pro tem., fn. * concurred.
I dissent. I would affirm the judgment. Applying the "harmless error" rule (Cal. Const., art. VI, § 13; Fahy v. Connecticut, 375 U.S. 85 [11 L. Ed. 2d 171, 84 S. Ct. 229]; Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 [17 L. Ed. 2d 705, 87 S.Ct. 824]), it is my opinion that there is no reasonable possibility that the evidence complained of might have contributed to the conviction.
FN 4. People v. Smith (1966) 63 Cal. 2d 779, 803 [48 Cal. Rptr. 382, 409 P.2d 222]; People v. Gilbert (1965) 63 Cal. 2d 690, 701 [47 Cal. Rptr. 909, 408 P.2d 365]; People v. Luker (1965) 63 Cal. 2d 464, 479 [47 Cal. Rptr. 209, 407 P.2d 9]; People v. Polk (1965) 63 Cal. 2d 443, 449 [47 Cal. Rptr. 1, 406 P.2d 641]; People v. Clark (1965) 62 Cal. 2d 870, 881 [44 Cal. Rptr. 784, 402 P.2d 856]; People v. Davis (1965) 62 Cal. 2d 791, 796 [44 Cal. Rptr. 454, 402 P.2d 142].
FN 5. See McCormick, Evidence (1954) § 114, p. 237 & fn. 3; cf. Developments in the Law, Confessions (1966) 79 Harv.L.Rev. 935, 1027.
FN 7. See, e.g., People v. Gilbert, supra, 63 Cal. 2d 690, 701; People v. Stockman, supra, 63 Cal. 2d 494, 502; People v. Polk, supra, 63 Cal. 2d 443, 449; People v. Clark, supra, 62 Cal. 2d 870, 881.
FN 8. In this respect, the present case differs markedly from those cases in which the defendant himself expressly identified an independent motive for his decision to confess in court and thereby negated the possibility that his testimonial admission of guilt had been motivated by the erroneous use of his extrajudicial confession. (See, e.g., the Seiterle and Enriquez cases, discussed above in fn. 3; see also People v. Reid (1965) 233 Cal. App. 2d 163, 175 [43 Cal. Rptr. 379].) The extrajudicial statement of the defendant in Reid, for example, was only partially inculpatory, but he elected to take the witness stand and there volunteered a full confession. "Defendant Reid gave as his reason for changing his story on the stand without apparent warning even to his counsel that, 'Well, I just wanted the truth brought out, your Honor.' " (People v. Reid, supra, 233 Cal. App. 2d 163, 175.) On this evidence, the court concluded that defendant's unlawfully obtained statement "was not the motivation for the confession on the stand." (Ibid) In the present case, however, any such conclusion could rest only on unfounded speculation.
FN 10. Just as we have accorded different treatment to confessions and exculpatory statements in evaluating their probable impact upon a jury (see, e.g., People v. Hillery, supra, 62 Cal. 2d 692, 712), so too we must distinguish between inculpatory and exculpatory statements in determining whether a defendant's decision to take the stand was influenced by the erroneous use of his statements at trial.
FN 11. The prosecution, at least, believed that it could materially strengthen its chances of obtaining a conviction by introducing defendant's confession in evidence. For us to second-guess that judgment now, or to demand that defendant demonstrate that when he decided to testify he shared the prosecution's estimate of the significance of his confession, would require an unwarranted departure from precedent (e.g., Chapman v. California, supra, 386 U.S. 18 [17 L. Ed. 2d 705, 86 S. Ct. 824]; Fahy v. Connecticut, supra, 375 U.S. 85; People v. Schader, supra, 62 Cal. 2d 716; People v. Parham, supra, 60 Cal. 2d 378; People v. Jones, supra, 24 Cal.2d 601) and could only serve to encourage law enforcement authorities to employ confessions of doubtful validity in cases which seem unlikely to lead to convictions unless such confessions are introduced at trial.

References: v. 
 § 209
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 § 13
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 § 114
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.