Opinion ID: 1182860
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Penal Code Section 1111 Is Applicable to the Hearsay Evidence of the Accomplice's Prior Inconsistent Statements Without Considering Such Evidence as Testimony

Text: I agree with the majority's analysis that Fouse, called as a witness by the prosecution in its case in chief, was an accomplice of defendant according to the prosecution's own evidence and theory of the crime. Thus, the prosecution's own evidence relieved defendant of both the burden of producing evidence on the issue and the burden of proving Fouse's accomplice status by a preponderance of the evidence. (See People v. Tewksbury (1976) 15 Cal.3d 953 [127 Cal. Rptr. 135, 544 P.2d 1335].) Fouse, having been called as a witness by the prosecution, testified that neither he nor the defendant, his stepfather, had anything to do with the commission of the offense charged against defendant  the offense of discharging a firearm at an inhabited dwelling house in violation of Penal Code section 246. However, Fouse admitted in his testimony that he had been questioned after the date of the alleged offense by Deputy Sheriff Michael Lugos, but denied having stated to Lugos that he, Fouse, had fired a shotgun at the victim's home from a car driven by defendant. As a part of the prosecution's case in chief, Lugos was then called as a witness and testified to Fouse's extrajudicial statements asserting that both he, Fouse, and the defendant had committed the offense charged against defendant. (See Evid. Code, §§ 1235, 770.) [1] The majority focuses its analysis of Penal Code section 1111 on the question of whether the evidence of Fouse's prior hearsay statements to Lugos constituted testimony as that term is used in section 1111 to require the corroboration needed for the conviction of a defendant upon the testimony of an accomplice. The majority concedes that various sections of the Penal Code, the Civil Code, and the Code of Civil Procedure define or refer to testimony as constituting oral statements made by a person under oath in a court proceeding. The Evidence Code does not depart from this concept, since section 710 provides: Every witness before testifying shall take an oath or make an affirmation or declaration in the form provided by law. The importance of the oath or affirmation as a part of the concept of testimony is also illustrated by Evidence Code section 1290, which defines former testimony as meaning testimony given under oath in proceedings other than the current hearing or trial. [2] Both the Legislature and the courts have consistently agreed that evidence and testimony are not coterminus terms. Legislative recognition of this difference is made clear by Evidence Code section 140, which defines evidence to mean  testimony, writings material objects, or other things presented to the senses that are offered to prove the existence or nonexistence of a fact. (Italics added.) Judicial recognition of this difference is set forth, without equivocation, in Stern v. Superior Court (1947) 78 Cal. App.2d 9, 13 [177 P.2d 308], as follows: All evidence is not testimony. Testimony is limited to that sort of evidence which is given by witnesses speaking under oath or affirmation [citation].... The question before us is whether there is anything in the legislative history of Penal Code section 1111 to suggest that the Legislature, in using the word testimony in the section, intended for the term to have a meaning different from the uniform meaning set forth in the various codes and also in the decisional law. Certainly there is no principle of statutory construction that requires that, under all circumstances, words of a statute be construed according to the plain meaning of those words. On the contrary, as a guide to statutory construction, legislative intent must prevail over a literal construction. This latter basic principle was set forth many years ago in In re Haines (1925) 195 Cal. 605, 613 [234 P. 883]: `The mere literal construction of a section in a statute ought not to prevail if it is opposed to the intention of the legislature apparent by the statute; and if the words are sufficiently flexible to admit of some other construction it is to be adopted to effectuate that intention. The intent prevails over the letter, and the letter will, if possible, be so read as to conform to the spirit of the act.' I agree with the majority that, in enacting Penal Code section 1111, the legislative purpose was to preclude the danger of a defendant being convicted from the suspect, untrustworthy and unreliable evidence coming from an accomplice who is likely to have self-serving motives that affect his credibility, and that if an accomplice's in-court, under-oath testimony is suspect, untrustworthy and unreliable, evidence of his prior, unsworn, out-of-court, inconsistent statements must be considered to be even more suspect, untrustworthy and unreliable. But the majority has unjustifiably narrowed its inquiry into Penal Code section 1111 to the question of whether the out-of-court statements of Fouse, the accomplice, constituted testimony by him. The majority concludes, therefore, that to interpret evidence of an accomplice's out-of-court, unsworn hearsay statements as nontestimony would thwart the purposes of Penal Code section 1111. Applying the principle that legislative intent prevails over literal construction, Fouse's out-of-court, unsworn statements are construed by the majority to constitute testimony as that term is used in Penal Code section 1111. I find difficulty in making this quantum leap with the majority. This is not true legislative intent but what the Legislature would have intended had it foreseen the enactment, effective in 1967, of Evidence Code section 1235 which created an exception to the hearsay rule for evidence of a witness' prior inconsistent statements. I fully recognize that this principle of statutory construction was created in 1975 in In re Edgar M., 14 Cal.3d 727 [122 Cal. Rptr. 574, 537 P.2d 406]. In my view, however, this is a forced, strained and unsatisfactory principle of statutory construction. It runs counter to the view expressed in In re Haines, supra , as to when legislative intent is to prevail over a literal interpretation of a statute. `[I]f the words are sufficiently flexible to admit of some other construction it is to be adopted to effectuate that intention.' ( In re Haines, supra, 195 Cal. 605, 613.) I am unable to conclude that the term testimony, as used in Penal Code section 1111, is sufficiently flexible to admit of a construction that is contrary to the universal meaning attributed to that term over the years by legislative enactments and judicial decisions. Application of the doubtful legislative would-have-been-intent principle of statutory construction to Penal Code section 1111 is not required in order to reach the majority result. An inquiry focused upon all the language of section 1111, considered in light of the admitted legislative purpose undergirding the section, leads to the same result. My reading and analysis of Penal Code section 1111 lead me to the conclusion that, even though the out-of-court statements of Fouse cannot, with any degree of logical statutory interpretation be deemed the testimony of Fouse in the instant case, the result does not follow that Penal Code section 1111 is precluded from having application to the case at bench. It is of significance that section 1111 begins by providing that [a] conviction can not be had upon the testimony of an accomplice unless it be corroborated.... (Italics added.) This is the first reference to the term testimony in the section. A second reference to the word testimony in section 1111 is made in the second paragraph, which defines an accomplice as one who is liable to prosecution for the identical offense charged against the defendant on trial in the cause in which the testimony of the accomplice is given. (Italics added.) Penal Code section 1111 does not state that the testimony of the accomplice which must be corroborated must be testimony that implicates the defendant in the offense charged or otherwise points the finger of guilt at the defendant. Can the sworn in-court testimony of an accomplice that exculpates a defendant be considered testimony of an accomplice that must be corroborated? It can be assumed that an appropriate principle of statutory construction in the case at bench would be that the plain and unambiguous words of the statute should be given effect in determining that evidence of prior statements of a witness who is an accomplice do not constitute testimony. Such assumption does not exhaust our inquiry. A conclusion that the out-of-court statements of Fouse do not constitute Fouse's testimony does not solve the problem of the appropriate construction of the remainder of the provisions of Penal Code section 1111. When using the language in Penal Code section 1111 that a conviction can not be had upon the testimony of an accomplice (italics added), without independent corroboration of defendant's guilt, the Legislature has expressed an intention that a conviction may not be based upon the testimony of an accomplice, whatever that testimony may be. This language of section 1111 postulates a relationship of cause and effect. In the case at bench, defendant's conviction is just as surely and effectively had or based upon Fouse's exculpatory testimony under oath  which formed the sole basis of admitting, pursuant to Evidence Code section 1235, evidence of Fouse's inconsistent, unsworn hearsay statements which implicated defendant  as if Fouse had testified under oath to the very same facts that implicated defendant. I can see no basis in any principle of statutory construction to define the term, testimony of an accomplice, used in Penal Code section 1111, as being limited to testimony which itself directly implicates a defendant. The Legislature has not used language in Penal Code section 1111 that requires such a limited construction of the term. The term  testimony  should be interpreted to mean the testimony of an accomplice which directly implicates a defendant, and, also, the testimony of an accomplice which, although exculpatory of a defendant's participation in the crime charged, provides the sole basis for the admission of evidence of the accomplice's prior hearsay statements which implicate the defendant. In this latter situation, defendant's conviction is had upon the testimony of the accomplice to the same extent that it is had upon the testimony of the accomplice which directly points the finger of guilt to the defendant. In my view, it is abundantly clear that the exculpatory and denial-of-guilt testimony given by Fouse in the case at bench constitutes the testimony upon which defendant's conviction is predicated, within the meaning of Penal Code section 1111, because it is this exculpatory and denial-of-guilt testimony of Fouse that brings into play Evidence Code section 1235, which makes admissible as substantive evidence the prior statements of Fouse which implicated defendant in the offense in question. Evidence of the prior unsworn statements of the witness-accomplice Fouse, which is the only damaging evidence against defendant in the prosecution's case in chief, becomes admissible and usable only because Fouse, as a witness for the prosecution, gave exculpatory testimony that neither he nor defendant was involved in the charged offense. It is my view that logic and legislative intent lead inexorably to the conclusion that defendant's conviction in the case at bench was had upon the denial-of-guilt and exculpatory testimony of Fouse. It is an irrelevant consideration that Fouse's testimony did not expressly point the finger of guilt at defendant. The logic of this conclusion is fortified by an analysis of the case of People v. Sam (1969) 71 Cal.2d 194 [77 Cal. Rptr. 804, 454 P.2d 700]. The Sam case indicates the importance of the nature of the testimony of a witness which makes admissible evidence of a prior inconsistent statement of that witness pursuant to the provisions of Evidence Code section 1235. Thus, in the case at bench, if Fouse, instead of testifying in denial of his own and defendant's participation in the crime charged, had answered every question put to him by the prosecutor by saying, I don't remember, such answers would not have been deemed the kind of testimony to make admissible evidence of the out-of-court statements made by Fouse to Lugos. This result is emphasized in Sam, in which the court stated: `The right of impeachment does not exist where the witness states he has no recollection of the fact concerning which he is examined.' ... In enacting section 1235 of the Evidence Code, the Legislature has retained the fundamental requirement that the witness' prior statement in fact be ` inconsistent with his testimony at the hearing' before it can be admitted. ( Sam, supra, 71 Cal.2d 194, 210; italics in original.) In Clifton v. Ulis (1976) 17 Cal.3d 99 [130 Cal. Rptr. 155, 549 P.2d 1251], the court, in reliance upon Sam, reaches the same result in a civil case in which a witness' initial testimony consisted wholly of a lack of recollection. This lack-of-recollection testimony precluded application of Evidence Code section 1235 to the evidence of the witness' prior out-of-court statements and, hence, prevented such evidence from being admitted. In the case at bench, therefore, it is only because Fouse gave a crucial type of testimony, namely, denying his personal guilt and denying that defendant was a participant in the charged offense that Evidence Code section 1235 became applicable to permit the prosecutor to introduce the testimony of Lugos to prove Fouse's prior statements implicating defendant as a participant in the offense in question. Prior to 1967, when the Evidence Code became effective, with its inclusion of section 1235, evidence that a witness had made a prior out-of-court statement that was inconsistent with his in-court testimony was admissible only for the purpose of attacking the witness' credibility and not to establish the truth of the matter stated in the statement. ( Albert v. McKay & Co. (1917) 174 Cal. 451 [163 P. 666].) If the case at bench had arisen prior to 1967, evidence that Fouse had made prior statements incriminating defendant as a participant in the crime charged against defendant would have been admissible solely to impeach the denial-of-guilt and exculpatory testimony of Fouse. This, however, would not have presented any evidence for the prosecution capable of sustaining the conviction of defendant. It is clear, therefore, that in enacting Penal Code section 1111, the Legislature did not envision the admissibility of evidence of an accomplice's out-of-court statement for any purpose other than to attack the credibility of the accomplice as a witness. Since the Legislature could not have intended that an accomplice's out-of-court statement, whatever the nature of its content, be introduced in evidence against a defendant to prove the truth of the matter stated, an interpretation of the term testimony of an accomplice in Penal Code section 1111 as meaning an accomplice's testimony that exculpates the defendant but triggers the admissibility of evidence of prior inconsistent statements, as well as an accomplice's testimony that implicates the defendant directly, produces a result that is consistent with the legislative premise that undergirds section 1111. It is to be noted that Penal Code section 1111 requires that the testimony of an accomplice be corroborated by such other evidence as shall tend to connect the defendant with the commission of the offense. (Italics added.) I think it is crystal clear that the Legislature intended that such other evidence  regardless of its nature such as testimony, writings or material objects (Evid. Code, § 140)  which must be the corroborating evidence, must be from a source other than the accomplice. This interpretation is consistent with the rule that one accomplice's testimony cannot be used to corroborate that of another accomplice. ( People v. Creegan (1898) 121 Cal. 554 [53 P. 1082]; People v. Scofield (1971) 17 Cal. App.3d 1018 [95 Cal. Rptr. 405].) Thus, the exculpatory testimony of Fouse which made admissible evidence of Fouse's prior out-of-court statements inculpating defendant, required corroboration by evidence from a source other than from Fouse. As a part of the case in chief, the People produced no such corroborating evidence in the case at bench.