Opinion ID: 2509094
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Calder/Carmell Claim

Text: Petitioners emphasize the fourth category under Calder, supra, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 386, 390, 1 L.Ed. 648 (opn. of Chase, J.), which concerns rules allowing less[ ] or different testimony than what was previously required to convict the offender. Petitioners complain that by easing the standards of proof and evidence in section 777 hearings over what existed when the section 602 crimes occurred, Proposition 21 makes it easier for the state to prove a probation violation and to modify disposition in punitive ways. Petitioners rely on Carmell, supra, 529 U.S. 513, 120 S.Ct. 1620, 146 L.Ed.2d 577  the lone high court case to bar use of a statute under Calder's fourth category. (See id. at p. 569, 120 S.Ct. 1620 (dis. opn. of Ginsburg, J.).) In Carmell, and as pertinent here, the defendant was charged in a Texas criminal court with sexually molesting his stepdaughter while she was between 14 and 16 years old. When the crimes occurred, state law provided that `[a] conviction [for sexual assault] . . . is supportable' either if it was corroborated by evidence independent of the victim's testimony, or if the victim informed a third person of the offense within six months of its commission. ( Carmell, supra, 529 U.S. 513, 517, 120 S.Ct. 1620, 146 L.Ed.2d 577.) The same statute recognized an exception to the corroboration and outcry requirements for victims under the age of 14, such that their testimony could sustain a conviction even in the absence of any corroboration or outcry evidence. If the statutory requirements were not met, either because corroboration or outcry was lacking, or because the victim was not under the age of 14 when the crime occurred, then the defendant could not be convicted and the trial court would be compelled to enter an acquittal. However, compliance with the statute allowed the jury to decide the case and enter a guilty verdict. ( Id. at pp. 517-518, 120 S.Ct. 1620 & fn. 2.) After the defendant committed the charged crimes, an amendment to the relevant statute expanded the child-victim exception, and allowed sexual assault convictions to rest solely on the testimony of victims under the age of 18. The amendment, which was applied in the defendant's trial, relieved the prosecution of its duty under prior law either to corroborate the stepdaughter's account or to establish that she disclosed the crime within six months. The trier of fact convicted the defendant based solely on the stepdaughter's testimony. ( Carmell, supra, 529 U.S. 513, 518-519, 120 S.Ct. 1620, 146 L.Ed.2d 577 & fn. 4.) The judgment was affirmed on appeal in state court. To reach this result, the appellate court used a principle approved in Collins, supra, 497 U.S. 37, 110 S.Ct. 2715, 111 L.Ed.2d 30, that exempted ordinary evidentiary rules from the ex post facto ban. ( Id. at p. 43, 110 S.Ct. 2715, fn. 3, citing Hopt v. Utah (1884) 110 U.S. 574, 590, 4 S.Ct. 202, 28 L.Ed. 262 [upholding retroactive statute making felons competent to testify as witnesses].) In a five-to-four decision, the United States Supreme Court rejected the intermediate court's approach in Carmell. The majority first examined the 300-year-old Fenwick's case. There, Parliament retroactively reduced the number of witnesses needed to sustain a treason conviction in order to successfully prosecute certain political enemies of the Crown. ( Carmell, supra, 529 U.S. 513, 526-530, 120 S.Ct. 1620, 146 L.Ed.2d 577.) The majority observed that Justice Chase, who studied both Fenwick's case and common law treatises on the subject, framed the fourth ex post facto category in Calder, supra, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 386, 390, 1 L.Ed. 648, to prevent such a scenario. ( Carmell, supra, 529 U.S. at pp. 522-524, 526, 120 S.Ct. 1620, & fn. 13.) The majority explained that just as the law in Fenwick's case originally required more than one witness's testimony to sustain a treason conviction, Texas law at the time of the defendant's crimes required more than the stepdaughter's testimony to support a sex crime conviction. Postcrime changes requiring only one witness in Fenwick's case, and eliminating the corroboration and outcry requirements in the defendant's case, suffered from the same flaw in the majority's view  reducing the quantum of evidence necessary to sustain a conviction. ( Carmell, supra, 529 U.S. at p. 530, 120 S.Ct. 1620.) The Carmell majority further explained that this view of the fourth Calder category serves interests similar to other ex post facto proscriptions against laws altering the definition of crimes or the quantum of punishment. In each of these instances, the government subverts the presumption of innocence by reducing the number of elements it must prove to overcome that presumption; by threatening such severe punishment so as to induce a plea to a lesser offense or a lower sentence; or by making it easier to meet the threshold for overcoming the presumption. Reducing the quantum of evidence necessary to meet the burden of proof is simply another way of achieving the same end. . . . [T]he government refuses, after the fact, to play by its own rules, altering them in a way that is advantageous only to the State, to facilitate an easier conviction. ( Carmell, supra, 529 U.S. 513, 532-533, 120 S.Ct. 1620, 146 L.Ed.2d 577, fn. omitted.) Responding to an argument made by both the State and the dissenting justices, the Carmell majority declined to view the statute as merely a rule affecting the admissibility and competency of evidence under Hopt v. Utah, supra, 110 U.S. 574, 4 S.Ct. 202, 28 L.Ed. 262. (See Carmell, supra, 529 U.S. 513, 542-552, 120 S.Ct. 1620, 146 L.Ed.2d 577.) The majority noted that such rules do not implicate ex post facto concerns because they benefit each side in a given case. ( Carmell, supra, at pp. 533, fn. 23, 546, 120 S.Ct. 1620.) However, both before and after the Texas law changed, the victim's testimony was competent and admissible in a sexual assault prosecution. ( Id. at p. 544, 120 S.Ct. 1620.) The majority thus could only infer that the amendment altered the sufficiency of such evidence to meet the state's burden of proof. ( Id. at p. 545, 120 S.Ct. 1620.) The majority stressed that such postcrime changes always favor the prosecution, because they always make it easier to convict the accused. ( Id. at p. 546, 120 S.Ct. 1620.) Finally, Carmell, supra, 529 U.S. 513, 120 S.Ct. 1620, 146 L.Ed.2d 577, rejected any suggestion that the relevant ex post facto principles had been previously abandoned or disapproved. The majority cited many high court decisions endorsing the fourth Calder category. ( Carmell, at p. 525, 120 S.Ct. 1620.) The Carmell majority also noted ( id. at pp. 537-538, 120 S.Ct. 1620) that Collins, supra, 497 U.S. 37, 42, 110 S.Ct. 2715, 111 L.Ed.2d 30, embraced the complete four-part test in Calder, supra, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 386, 390, 1 L.Ed. 648 (opn. of Chase, J.). Concluding that retroactive application of the revised Texas law violated the fourth Calder category, the majority reversed the convictions obtained in Carmell. ( Id. at p. 553, 120 S.Ct. 1620.) It seems clear that Carmell neither concerns nor precludes amendments like those at issue here. As we have seen, the proscribed retroactive change is one affecting the criminal trial for the act subject to ex post facto protection. The fourth Calder category, as approved in Collins, supra, 497 U.S. 37, 42, 110 S.Ct. 2715, 111 L.Ed.2d 30, and applied in Carmell, supra, 529 U.S. 513, 522, 120 S.Ct. 1620, 146 L.Ed.2d 577, is limited on its face to amendments reducing the quantum of evidence or otherwise easing the burden of proof required to convict someone of a charged crime. ( Calder, supra, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 386, 390, 1 L.Ed. 648 (opn. of Chase, J.).) At numerous points, Carmell indicates that convictions in adult criminal court, and, presumably, their juvenile court counterparts, represent the sole concern of this ex post facto rule. ( Carmell, supra, 529 U.S. at pp. 530, 531, 532, 533, 534, 538, 540, 541, 543, 545, 546, 547, 548, 549, 550, 551, 552 & fn. 35, 120 S.Ct. 1620; see In re Winship (1970) 397 U.S. 358, 365-368, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 ( Winship ) [drawing due process analogy between adjudicatory stage of juvenile delinquency proceeding and adult criminal prosecution, and applying reasonable doubt standard to any juvenile crime triggering conviction if committed by adult].) Here, petitioners cannot show any impermissible procedural change affecting the criminal acts at the heart of their ex post facto claim. Consistent with statutory and due process requirements, the original section 602 adjudications were obtained by [p]roof beyond a reasonable doubt supported by evidence[ ] legally admissible in the trial of criminal cases. (§ 701; see Winship, supra, 397 U.S. 358, 368, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368; Eddie M., supra, 31 Cal.4th 480, 487, 3 Cal.Rptr.3d 119, 73 P.3d 1115.) Indeed, no section 602 adjudication is `supportable' unless this standard is met, whether pre- or post-Proposition 21 law otherwise applies. ( Carmell, supra, 529 U.S. 513, 517, 120 S.Ct. 1620, 146 L.Ed.2d 577.) There has been no reduction in the sufficiency of evidence or standard of proof needed to find petitioners or any other juvenile guilty of a section 602 offense. Proposition 21 simply altered the rules for determining whether persons who are probationers as the result of prior section 602 adjudications violated the terms of their probation under section 777(a)(2). We further reject any attempt to extend Carmell, and to apply the fourth Calder category here. As discussed further below, section 777 proceedings do not produce the equivalent of criminal conviction[s] under Carmell, supra, 529 U.S. at page 530, 120 S.Ct. 1620. When Proposition 21 added the preponderance and evidentiary standards in section 777(c), it also limited section 777(a)(2) to alleged probation violations not amounting to . . . crime[s]. ( Eddie M., supra, 31 Cal.4th 480, 491, 3 Cal.Rptr.3d 119, 73 P.3d 1115; see id. at pp. 501-502, 3 Cal.Rptr.3d 119, 73 P.3d 1115 [Prop. 21 followed adult probation revocation procedures in Pen.Code, § 1203.2].) Whatever the nature of the acts, section 777 cannot be used to plead substantive crimes as such, to obtain new criminal adjudications, or to increase sanctions imposed for the original section 602 offense. ( Eddie M., supra, 31 Cal.4th at pp. 486, 501, 506-507, 3 Cal.Rptr.3d 119, 73 P.3d 1115; see id. at pp. 489-490, 3 Cal.Rptr.3d 119, 73 P.3d 1115 [before Prop. 21, § 777 operated much like § 602's new crime procedure].) Hence, the challenged amendments do not implicate Carmell, supra, 529 U.S. 513, 120 S.Ct. 1620, 146 L.Ed.2d 577, insofar as that case preserves the state's duty to prove a charged crime beyond a reasonable doubt by the evidence required when the act occurred. (Cf. Eddie M., supra, 31 Cal.4th at pp. 502-508, 3 Cal.Rptr.3d 119, 73 P.3d 1115 [juvenile probation violations need not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and § 777(c)'s preponderance standard survives due process scrutiny]; People v. Rodriguez (1990) 51 Cal.3d 437, 441-442, 272 Cal.Rptr. 613, 795 P.2d 783 [same as to adult probation violations].) Moreover, petitioners' insistence on evaluating the present proceedings under Carmell, supra, 529 U.S. 513, 120 S.Ct. 1620, 146 L.Ed.2d 577, seems inconsistent with their retroactivity claim under Johnson, supra, 529 U.S. 694, 120 S.Ct. 1795, 146 L.Ed.2d 727. Petitioners allegedly violated probation after voters amended section 777 to include the procedural rules challenged here. By complaining under Carmell, about the manner in which their probation violations are litigated, petitioners arguably make such post-Proposition 21 misconduct the reference point of their ex post facto claim. However, as implied by their reliance on Johnson, petitioners suffer no ex post facto violation absent an impermissible retroactive change with respect to the section 602 crimes committed before Proposition 21 took effect. It seems illogical for petitioners to invoke Carmell, supra, 529 U.S. 513, 120 S.Ct. 1620, 146 L.Ed.2d 577, while claiming to satisfy the retroactivity component of an alleged constitutional violation. [7]