Case Name: In re ROGER G., A Person Coming Under the Juvenile Court Law. KENNETH E. KIRKPATRICK, as Chief Probation Officer, etc., Plaintiff and Respondent, v. ROGER G., Defendant and Appellant
Court: Court of Appeal of the State of California
Jurisdiction: California
Decision Date: 1975-11-24
Citations: 53 Cal. App. 3d 198
Docket Number: Crim. No. 25823
Parties: In re ROGER G., A Person Coming Under the Juvenile Court Law. KENNETH E. KIRKPATRICK, as Chief Probation Officer, etc., Plaintiff and Respondent, v. ROGER G., Defendant and Appellant.
Judges: 
Reporter: California Appellate Reports, Third Series
Volume: 53
Pages: 198–207

Head Matter:
[Crim. No. 25823.
Second Dist., Div. One.
Nov. 24, 1975.]
In re ROGER G., A Person Coming Under the Juvenile Court Law. KENNETH E. KIRKPATRICK, as Chief Probation Officer, etc., Plaintiff and Respondent, v. ROGER G., Defendant and Appellant.
Counsel
Richard S. Buckley, Public Defender, John J. Gibbons and Jo Kaplan, Deputy Public Defenders, for Defendant and Appellant.
Evelle J. Younger, Attorney General, Jack R. Winkler, Chief Assistant Attorney General, S. Clark Moore, Assistant Attorney General, Russell Iungerich and Robert R. Anderson, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

Opinion:
Opinion
THOMPSON, J.
Based upon somewhat equivocal eyewitness testimony, his possession of a .38 caliber pistol that ballistics testimony concluded had a "50-50" possibility of having fired a fatal bullet, and his confession. Roger G. was adjudicated a ward of the juvenile court by reason of having committed murder. Because uncontradictéd facts establish that Roger's confession was involuntary, we reverse the adjudication.
Grace Capistrano was shot to death in the parking lot of Centinela Community Hospital on the night of March 22, 1973. Roger was arrested for the crime and interrogated by the Inglewood'police on September 5. Included as a settled statement on appeal is a transcription of a tape recording of Roger's confession given in the course of that interrogation.
The first 15 pages of the transcript disclose Roger's effort to avoid confessing to the crime and claim an inability to remember. The interrogating officer then asked: "How old are you? Sixteen? Seventeen? Seventeen?" and then added: "You know you could be in jail until you are about twenty-five. That's a long time." Another officer interjected: "And then some, cause he might be certified to adult court.... And you can be certified adult and get a life sentence on it too." The original officer said: "So let's have it out, man. Let's get it straight now. You're still a juvenile yet. You get you certified an adult, you're not gonna be treated as juvenile; you're gonna be treated as an adult. They sure hold them tight boy
When Roger said "I've gotta see 'em [the other two accused juveniles] before I say anything," an interrogating officer replied: "You ain't gonna see nobody except the court if you want to be that way. I'd see you go to adult court uh, you ain't gonna ride Richard's raft if ah." Roger said, "Oh, yeah?" The officer stated: "You know, if Richard squeezed the trigger and you didn' man, I ain't gonna ride his rap."
The interrogating officer continued: "We ain't askin' you to do the squealing, all we want is your version of what took place. Because, uh, when you go to jail, do time, you're gonna be your own time. You're not gonna be Richard's time, you're not gonna do Jerry's time, you're gonna be your own time. It's your life, man. It's shades. It could be seven or eight or ten or life, you know, sentence out of your life; not their's. You're the guy—number one—you'd better start thinking about and talkin' about. We don't want to hear about what they did; only what you did."
Another officer entered the questioning. He said: "Say you and I went to a liquor store, and I have a gun, and you don't. . . . And we go in there and all intents and purposes of rob the liquor store. OK? . . . I'm just giving you a for instance. . . . OK? You and I go in a liquor store and you're gonna be my lookout. . . . And I'm gonna pull the job? . . . You know I'm gonna pull the job. So, we get in there and get the money and the liquor store guy reaches under the counter, so I blast him. . . . And, tell you and hey, man, let's make it. OK. I killed the guy." Roger answered: "You gonna get the shades, the shades?" The officer replied: "That's right. Exactly what I was going to tell you." Roger said: "Well, I'll get jes' as much time as he do, won't I?"
Another officer responded: "That's exactly right." The previous officer added: "But it's gonna help you out for a chance of probation or getting parole if you are honest about the thing." Roger said, "Oh, yeah?" The officer continued: "Tell your side of it, because if you go in there hard-nosed and just lie and, try to cover up, do you think we'd give you a chance at probation or parole? No way."
Roger asked: "What is parole?" The officer responded: "Well, that's getting out of jail—you know, you might be six months and get out the rest on parole. And do the rest of the time at home. You understand, well, parole's like probation. A parole, you say, well, you see, ah, I get sentenced to, for robbery. They give me a five-to-Iife sentence. OK? . I go to jail and I serve a year or to 18 months. OK, for the next five years, they're gonna put me on parole and let me out, and I'm gonna do my time outside. I'm still really technically in jail, but I'm out a . . . doing everything I do normally, but I've gotta behave myself, cause if I get involved in any more trouble, I go right back and serve that five years out. But—if I go to jail hard-nosed 'n what-have-you, do you think the Parole Board is gonna listen to me? No, man. They're make me do probably the whole damn five years, or more. You know."
Roger answered: "You think I can get parole, I mean, ah, whatcha call it?" The officer responded: "Not promising it. There's a possibility. But if you go in there with, if, if I was sittin' here and shuckin' with you, and he and I pulled a caper, and he's tellin' me the straight poop, then you're surely gonna listen to him and try to help him more than you are me."
Roger then confessed to aiding and abetting the murder while denying that he fired the fatal shots.
A confession is deemed involuntary and hence inadmissible if procured by an express or implied promise of benefit beyond that naturally flowing from a truthful statement (People v. Johnson, 70 Cal.2d 469, 479 [74 Cal.Rptr. 889, 450 P.2d 265]), or by an express or implied threat that the failure to make a statement will result in consequences adverse to the suspect. (People v. Brommel, 56 Cal.2d 629, 633-634 [15 Cal.Rptr. 909, 364 P.2d 845].) Conversely, a confession is deemed voluntary and hence admissible if obtained in response to exhortation to tell the truth unaccompanied by express or implied promises or threats. (People v. Hill, 66 Cal.2d 536, 549 [58 Cal.Rptr. 340, 426 P.2d 908], cert. den., 389 U.S. 993 [19 L.Ed.2d 487, 88 S.Ct. 492]; 390 U.S. 911 [19 L.Ed.2d 884, 88 S.Ct. 838].) "The line to be drawn between permissible police conduct and conduct deemed to induce or tend to induce an involuntary statement does not depend upon the bare language of inducement but rather upon the nature of the benefit to be derived by a defendant if he speaks the truth, as represented by the police." (People v. Hill, supra, 66 Cal.2d at p. 549.) It is our duty as a reviewing court "to examine the uncontradicted facts in order to determine independently whether a confession was voluntary." (People v. Trout, 54 Cal.2d 576, 583 [6 Cal.Rptr. 759, 354 P.2d 231, 80 A.L.R.2d 1418].)
Here the uncontroverted facts establish that Roger's confession was involuntary as "involuntary" is defined in the controlling Supreme Court cases. It establishes an implied, if not express, threat of harsher punishment if Roger did not confess, and an implied, if not express, promise of the possibility of more lenient treatment if he did.
Faced with Roger's persistent refusal to confess to the crime or to admit he remembered what happened, the interrogating officer pointed out to Roger that he might be incarcerated until he was 25, while another chimed in that Roger might be certified as an adult defendant and receive a life sentence. The first interrogator added his emphasis that "They sure hold them tight boy." When Roger responded to the statement of his exposure to punishment by asking to talk to the two other suspects, the interrogator responded that if he was going to be that way, "I'd see you go to adult court."
Having first shaken the stick, the interrogators produced the carrot, stating after a discussion of the criminal liability of an aider and abettor, "But it's going to help you out for a chance of probation or getting parole if you are honest about the thing." To emphasize the matter, they said that "no way" would Roger have a chance of probation or parole if "he [went] in there hard-nosed." They extolled the advantages of parole. They held out its possibility while saying they could not<promise it. Having held out the possibility, the interrogators told Roger that they would try to help him more if he told them "the straight poop" than if he did not. Only then did Roger confess.
In sum, the uncontradicted facts establish that the interrogating police officers threatened Roger with certification to the adult court if he did not talk and promised him that they would help him to secure parole if he did. The threat and promise go beyond the bounds of police conduct permissible in securing a confession. Compelling authority of our Supreme Court mandates that the confession be held involuntary.
The prosecution argument to the contrary is untenable. It argues "that since [Roger's] confession did not immediately follow the allegedly improper statements regarding probation or parole made to him by the police officers, but was given only after the police officers' explanation of the nature of parole and their statement that they could not promise parole, it is clear that the allegedly improper statements were not the motivating force behind [Roger's] confession." The prosecution extends its argument with the contention that the interrogating officers did no more than explain a "benefit which flows naturally from a truthful and honest course of conduct" to obtain the confession.
The prosecution ignores the record as well as the mandate of People v. Hill, supra, 66 Cal.2d 536, 549, that the voluntary or involuntary nature of the statement "does not depend upon the bare language of the inducement but rather upon the nature of the benefit to be derived by a defendant if he speaks the truth, as represented by the police."
While the interrogating officers used bare language informing Roger that they could not promise probation or. parole, they made it crystal clear to him that he had no hope of anything other than incarceration if he did not confess. Worse, the interrogators sought to convey to the juvenile that as police, they had the power to determine whether he would be tried as an adult and possibly sentenced to state prison for life, and that they would exercise the power if he did not admit his part in the crime.
The dissent would affirm the adjudication by reason of statistics showing an alarming nation-wide increase in violent crime. There is absolutely no hard evidence that abandonment of the constitutional prohibition upon the use of coerced confessions will reduce the impact of violent crime more than ritual offering will prevent the eruption of a volcano. The Constitution must not be sacrificed to appease the evil spirit. We are judges, not shamans.
We thus conclude that uncontradicted evidence in the record that Roger's confession was involuntary. That conclusion compels reversal of the adjudication of the juvenile court, irrespective of the weight of other evidence of guilt. (Payne v. Arkansas, 356 U.S. 560 [2 L.Ed.2d 975, 78 S.Ct. 844]; People v. Matteson, 61 Cal.2d 466, 470 [39 Cal.Rptr. 1, 393 P.2d 161].)
The judgment (order) is reversed.
Lillie, Acting P. J., concurred.