Opinion ID: 2633534
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Defendants Fail to Show a Due Process Violation

Text: Defendants contend the failure to disqualify the LACDA's office was a violation not only of section 1424 but also of their federal and state due process rights (U.S. Const., 5th & 14th Amends.; Cal. Const., art. I, §§ 7, 15) and that such a constitutional violation is a structural error admitting of no harmless error analysis. We conclude the error was not of constitutional dimension and therefore do not reach the question of prejudice from a constitutional violation. Defendants argue, first, that section 1424 merely provides a procedural framework for adjudicating the constitutional question, not a separate substantive standard for deciding whether a prosecutor's continued participation is impermissible. We disagree. As we have previously explained (see Eubanks, supra, 14 Cal.4th at p. 591, 59 Cal.Rptr.2d 200, 927 P.2d 310; People v. Conner, supra, 34 Cal.3d at p. 147, 193 Cal.Rptr. 148, 666 P.2d 5), section 1424 was enacted in part to refine the standard for pretrial recusal this court had articulated in People v. Superior Court ( Greer ), supra, 19 Cal.3d 255, 137 Cal.Rptr. 476, 661 P.2d 1164 ( Greer ). In Greer, we held the trial court had the statutory authority under Code of Civil Procedure section 128 to disqualify the prosecuting attorney. ( Greer, at p. 261, fn. 4, 137 Cal.Rptr. 476, 561 P.2d 1164.) The recusal standard we stated was any conflict of interest that might affect or appear to affect the prosecutor's impartiality. ( Id. at p. 269, 137 Cal.Rptr. 476, 561 P.2d 1164, italics added.) Responding to an increase in the number of recusals, which the Attorney General attributed in part to Greer's appearance standard, the Legislature made clear in Penal Code section 1424 that a conflict of interest, whether actual or apparent, required recusal under our statutory law only if it bore an actual likelihood of leading to unfair treatment. ( Eubanks, at pp. 591-592, 59 Cal.Rptr.2d 200, 927 P.2d 310.) In addition to providing for procedures by which the motion for recusal was to be made and answered, section 1424 established substantive requirements for a motion to disqualify the district attorney. ( Eubanks, at p. 591, 59 Cal.Rptr.2d 200, 927 P.2d 310.) We disagree, as well, with the suggestion that under the actual likelihood standard every erroneous denial of a recusal motion under section 1424 is also a deprivation of due process. In Greer, while considering the scope of the trial court's authority against the background of the due process implications of prosecutorial bias ( Greer, supra, 19 Cal.3d at p. 268, 137 Cal.Rptr. 476, 561 P.2d 1164), we expressly rejected the notion that before he recuses a prosecutor, the trial judge must first determine that failure to do so would permit a violation of the defendant's basic constitutional rights ( id. at p. 264, 137 Cal.Rptr. 476, 561 P.2d 1164). Rather, the goal of pretrial recusal is to avoid conflicts that might lead ultimately to due process violations and hence to reversals or mistrials. The constitutional guarantees of a fair trial, we explained in Greer, would seem better served when judges have discretion to prevent even the possibility of their violation. Individual instances of unfairness, although they may not separately achieve constitutional dimension, might well cumulate and render the entire proceeding constitutionally invalid. The trial judge need not delay until the last straw of prejudice is added, by which time it might be too late to avert a mistrial or a reversal. ( Id. at pp. 264-265, 137 Cal.Rptr. 476, 561 P.2d 1164.) Even under the somewhat narrower standard the Legislature created in section 1424, pretrial recusal still fulfills the prophylactic function we identified in Greer. Though no longer including circumstances where a conflict only appears to affect the prosecutor's impartiality, trial courts' statutory power under section 1424 continues to allow recusal whenever a conflict creates a likelihood of unfair treatment. This standard serves to prevent potential constitutional violations from occurring. Thus, the failure to recuse when required under section 1424 may lead to the denial of a fair trial or other unfair treatment, but does not necessarily do so. Neither this court nor the United States Supreme Court has delineated the limitations due process places on prosecutorial conflicts of interest. [4] In Greer, as noted, we treated the due process problem of an interested prosecutor as background. ( Greer, supra, 19 Cal.3d at p. 268, 137 Cal.Rptr. 476, 561 P.2d 1164.) We observed that a fair and impartial trial is fundamental to due process and that the prosecutor, as well as the court, must respect this mandate by exercising his or her discretionary powers impartially ( id. at p. 266, 137 Cal.Rptr. 476, 561 P.2d 1164), but we did not define the types or severity of interestedness that would violate the constitutional mandate. Similarly, in Marshall v. Jerrico, Inc. (1980) 446 U.S. 238, 249-250, 100 S.Ct. 1610, 64 L.Ed.2d 182, the federal high court observed that [p]rosecutors are also public officials; they too must serve the public interest and that consequently [a] scheme injecting a personal interest, financial or otherwise, into the enforcement process may bring irrelevant or impermissible factors into the prosecutorial decision and in some contexts raise serious constitutional questions. In the case before it, however, the court found it unnecessary to say with precision what limits there may be on a financial or personal interest of one who performs a prosecutorial function, for here the influence alleged to impose bias [an institutional financial interest in increased enforcement] is exceptionally remote. ( Id. at p. 250, 100 S.Ct. 1610 fn. omitted.) The Supreme Court gave the problem of an interested prosecutor further attention in Young v. U.S. ex rel. Vuitton et Fils S.A. (1987) 481 U.S. 787, 790, 107 S.Ct. 2124, 95 L.Ed.2d 740 ( Vuitton ), holding improper a district court's appointment, to prosecute a criminal contempt for violations of an injunction against trademark infringement, of attorneys who also represented the trademark holder. Special criminal contempt prosecutors, like United States Attorneys, should have an undivided duty to see justice done. ( Id. at pp. 803-804, 107 S.Ct. 2124.) The interest of the government in dispassionate assessment of the propriety of criminal charges for affronts to the Judiciary is not necessarily congruent with the private client's interest in the monetary benefits of enforcing the court's injunction. ( Id. at p. 805, 107 S.Ct. 2124.) Because of the attorneys' ethical duties to their private client, moreover, the conflict was unusually manifest: while ordinarily we can only speculate whether other interests are likely to influence an enforcement officer, where a prosecutor also represents an interested private party, the ethics of the legal profession require that an interest other than the Government's be taken into account. ( Id. at p. 807, 107 S.Ct. 2124.) Defendants' reliance on Vuitton for the proposition that participation of an interested prosecutor universally or generally infringes due process suffers from a fatal flaw: Vuitton was decided not on constitutional grounds but under the United States Supreme Court's supervisory powers over the lower federal courts. ( Vuitton, supra, 481 U.S. at pp. 790, 809, 107 S.Ct. 2124.) Only Justice Blackmun, in a concurring opinion, wrote that the practicefederal or stateof appointing an interested party's counsel to prosecute for criminal contempt is a violation of due process. ( Id. at pp. 814-815, 107 S.Ct. 2124 (conc. opn. of Blackmun, J.).) Vuitton stands as an example of how external influences might affect discretionary prosecutorial decisionmaking, but does not establish a due process test for prosecutorial conflicts. Several lower federal courts and courts of our sister states have squarely addressed prosecutorial conflicts as a due process problem. The most influential decision has been Ganger v. Peyton (4th Cir.1967) 379 F.2d 709 ( Ganger ), which like Vuitton involved a prosecutor's simultaneous representation of a private party with an interest in the criminal case. The Ganger court found Ganger's Virginia assault conviction constitutionally invalid because the prosecuting attorney had simultaneously represented Ganger's wife in the prosecution of a divorce action . . . based upon the same alleged assault on Mrs. Ganger. Ganger testified that the prosecuting attorney offered to drop the assault charge if Ganger would make a favorable property settlement in the divorce action. ( Id. at p. 711.) The prosecutor's self-interest (including the possibility that the size of his fee would be determined by what could be exacted from defendant) thus made it impossible for him to exercise fairminded judgment with regard to whether and how to prosecute Ganger criminally. ( Id. at p. 713.) We think the conduct of this prosecuting attorney in attempting at once to serve two masters, the people of the Commonwealth and the wife of Ganger, violates the requirement of fundamental fairness assured by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. ( Id. at p. 714.) A number of courts have followed Ganger in holding a prosecutor's simultaneous representation of an interested private party infringes the defendant's right to a fundamentally fair trial. In Cantrell v. Commonwealth (1985) 229 Va. 387, 329 S.E.2d 22, for example, the murder victim's parents hired a private attorney to assist the public prosecutor in trying the victim's husband for her killing. Although the public prosecutor was present throughout the trial, the private attorney took the lead, examining most of the witnesses and making the closing argument. The same private attorney represented the parents in a civil proceeding in which they sought custody of the defendant and the victim's child. ( Id. at pp. 24-25.) The appellate court held the likelihood of conflict between the attorney's two interests rises to the level of an overwhelming probability, substituting private vengeance [for] impartial application of the criminal law in violation of the defendant's due process rights. ( Id. at p. 26.) More recently, the court in State v. Eldridge (Tenn.Crim.App.1997) 951 S.W.2d 775, 782, also found a due process violation in the participation of special prosecutors who represent the victim in a civil matter arising from the same incident giving rise to the criminal prosecution. The potential for influence on the prosecution by a private interest is simply too great in situations involving such simultaneous representation: Just as a special prosecutor may be tempted to bring a tenuously supported prosecution if such a reward promises financial or legal rewards for the private client, a special prosecutor may also be tempted to suggest the abandonment of a meritorious prosecution if a settlement providing benefits to the private client is conditioned on a recommendation against criminal charges. ( Id. at p. 781.) [5] In contrast to these cases involving simultaneous representation of directly conflicting interests, a number of courts have declined to find a due process violation where the prosecutor is alleged merely to have a personal interest that might add to his or her zeal. Thus, in Wright v. United States (2d Cir.1984) 732 F.2d 1048 ( Wright ), the defendant asserted the assigned Assistant United States Attorney (Puccio) had a disabling conflict of interest because his wife (whom he met and married while investigating the defendant) was a political opponent of the defendant, had urged authorities to investigate him, and had allegedly been assaulted, on another occasion, by the defendant's associates. ( Id. at p. 1055.) The Wright court found an appearance of impropriety, but no due process violation, in assignment of the case to Puccio. ( Wright, supra, 732 F.2d at pp. 1055, 1057-1058.) The court distinguished Ganger both as to the role of the interested prosecutor and the nature of his interest. First, the investigation and prosecution were initiated not by Puccio but by the United States Attorney. Second, even if we interpret the facts most adversely to Wright's prosecutors, they were not utilizing the criminal process to advance their own pecuniary interests, such as the prosecutor's interest in Ganger `that the size of his fee would be determined by what could be exacted from defendant' in the divorce case, [ Ganger, supra, 379 F.2d] at 713. . . . Mrs. Puccio's interest, unlike Mrs. Ganger's, was not a pecuniary interest in utilizing the criminal process to further her position in civil litigation but a public one in the condemnation of a man whom she thought, whether for good reasons or for bad, to have violated the public trust. [Citation.] In short, this case, with the facts taken at their worst against the Government, does not present the spectacle of a prosecutor's using the `awful instruments of the criminal law' [citation] for purpose of private gain and, although we consider the choice of Puccio as prosecutor to have been ill advised, we do not regard it as having deprived Wright of due process of law. ( Wright, at pp. 1057-1058.) [6] That personal influences on a prosecutor are not always regarded as creating so substantial a conflict as to deprive the defendant of fundamental fairness is not surprising. District attorneys, as people, inevitably hold individual personal values and allegiances and feel varying emotions relating to their work. As public officeholders, they may also have political ambitions or apprehensions. But that a public prosecutor might feel unusually strongly about a particular prosecution or, inversely, might hesitate to commit to a prosecution for personal or political reasons does not inevitably indicate an actual conflict of interest, much less a constitutional bar to prosecution. (See Schumer v. Holtzman (1983) 60 N.Y.2d 46, 56, 454 N.E.2d 522, 467 N.Y.S.2d 182 [district attorney's anxiety over an appearance of impropriety, arising from her past political differences with the defendant, not grounds for disqualification]; People v. Nelson (N.Y.Crim.Ct.1995) 167 Misc.2d 665, 672-674, 647 N.Y.S.2d 438, 443 [neither district attorney's actions in urging federal prosecution after earlier state acquittal in high profile case, nor effect of prior acquittal on his possible political ambitions, shows existence of a conflict that would disqualify district attorney from prosecuting the defendant on new, unrelated charges].) Even as regards judicial disqualification, the United States Supreme Court has distinguished between matters of kinship [and] personal bias, which seem generally to be matters merely of legislative discretion, and a judge's direct, personal, substantial pecuniary interest in reaching a conclusion against a defendant, which deprives the defendant of due process. ( Tumey v. Ohio (1927) 273 U.S. 510, 523, 47 S.Ct. 437, 71 L.Ed. 749; accord, Haas v. County of San Bernardino (2002) 27 Cal.4th 1017, 1025, 119 Cal.Rptr.2d 341, 45 P.3d 280.) In Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Lavoie (1986) 475 U.S. 813, 820, 106 S.Ct. 1580, 89 L.Ed.2d 823, for example, the federal high court held a state supreme court justice's general hostility towards insurance companies that were dilatory in paying claims, arising out of the justice's personal experience, did not, as a constitutional matter, preclude the justice from sitting in a case involving bad faith failure to pay claims. Such general frustration did not reveal a disqualifying bias, as it is likely that many claimants have developed hostile feelings from the frustration in awaiting settlement of insurance claims. ( Id. at p. 821, 106 S.Ct. 1580.) In contrast, the justice's simultaneous participation as a plaintiff in a different bad faith suit gave him a `direct, personal, substantial, [and] pecuniary' stake in the outcome of the case before the state supreme court ( id. at p. 824, 106 S.Ct. 1580), violating the insurer litigant's due process rights ( id. at p. 825, 106 S.Ct. 1580). The Supreme Court's postulate that pecuniary conflicts of interest on a judge's or prosecutor's part pose a constitutionally more significant threat to a fair trial than do personal conflicts of interest may be somewhat counterintuitive, for common experience tells us that personal influences are often the strongest. But according matters of kinship [and] personal bias ( Tumey v. Ohio, supra, 273 U.S. at p. 523, 47 S.Ct. 437) dispositive constitutional importance in this context would import into constitutional law a set of difficult line-drawing problems. As neither judges nor prosecutors can completely avoid personal influences on their decisions, to constitutionalize the myriad distinctions and judgments involved in identifying those personal connections that require a judge's or prosecutor's recusal might be unwise, if not impossible. The high court's approach to judicial conflicts generally leaves that line-drawing process to state disqualification and disciplinary law, with only the most extreme of cases being recognized as constitutional violations. ( Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Lavoie, supra, 475 U.S. at p. 821, 106 S.Ct. 1580.) To show a due process violation arising from a prosecutor's conflicting interest should be more difficult than from a judge's, for the rigid requirements of adjudicative neutrality ( Marshall v. Jerrico, Inc., supra, 446 U.S. at p. 248, 100 S.Ct. 1610), articulated in Tumey v. Ohio, supra, 273 U.S. 510, 47 S.Ct. 437, 71 L.Ed. 749, and other cases, do not apply to prosecutors. [T]he strict requirements of neutrality cannot be the same for administrative prosecutors as for judges, whose duty it is to make the final decision and whose impartiality serves as the ultimate guarantee of a fair and meaningful proceeding in our constitutional regime. ( Marshall v. Jerrico, Inc ., at p. 250, 100 S.Ct. 1610.) In this light, we are not persuaded that in the case at bench the prosecutor's desire to avoid an appearance of favoritism presented by an indirect personal link between the prosecutor and defendant Vasquez deprived these defendants of fundamental fairness in the proceedings. Neither Deputy District Attorney Wilkinson nor her supervisors had a direct, substantial interest in the outcome or conduct of the case separate from their proper interest in seeing justice done. They did have an interest in avoiding an appearance of favoritism by the LACDA, but we do not believe this conflict was so severe as to deprive [defendants] of fundamental fairness in a manner `shocking to the universal sense of justice.' ( Villalpando v. Reagan, supra, 121 P.3d at p. 175.) Given that matters of kinship do not necessarily create a constitutional bar even to a judge's participation ( Tumey v. Ohio, supra, 273 U.S. at p. 523, 47 S.Ct. 437), we are unable to conclude the family relationship between a defendant and two employees out of hundreds in a public prosecutor's office (see fn. 2, ante ) constitutionally bars that entire office from participating in the prosecution. The indirect family link here, and the potential it created that the LACDA would bend over backwards to make sure no favoritism appeared, are closer to the district attorney's anxiety over an appearance of impropriety in Schumer v. Holtzman, supra, 467 N.Y.S.2d 182, 454 N.E.2d at page 527, or the advocacy interest of the prosecutor's wife in Wright, supra, 732 F.2d at pages 1057-1058, than to the prosecutors' simultaneous representation of directly conflicting interests in Ganger, supra, 379 F.2d at pages 713-714, State v. Eldridge, supra, 951 S.W.2d at page 781, or Cantrell v. Commonwealth, supra, 329 S.E.2d at page 26. Nor can defendants point to any specific prosecutorial actions taken as a result of the conflict that deprived them of a fundamentally fair proceeding. Although Wilkinson's fear of seeming to favor Vasquez influenced her decision to decline a bench trial before Judge Shapiro, the result of that decision was only that defendants received a jury trialwhich, in any event, led to a mistrial rather than convictions. As discussed above (see fn. 3, ante ), the evidence does not support a finding that Vasquez's family relationship to LACDA employees influenced Wilkinson or her office in their decision not to accept pleas to voluntary manslaughter rather than murder. As to the prosecutor's conduct at the second trial, Vasquez points to two pieces of evidence he contends the prosecutor improperly introduced and one instance in which the prosecutor did not timely inform defense counsel of potential inculpatory evidence. Vasquez does not argue these incidents constituted unconstitutional misconduct in themselves, but rather that they demonstrate the prosecutor's extraordinary zeal and lack of impartiality. Evidentiary issues and discovery disputes of this type are fairly common in serious criminal trials, however, and absent more we cannot conclude they either showed or resulted from a fundamentally unfair conflict of prosecutorial interest. Zealous advocacy in pursuit of convictions forms an essential part of the prosecutor's proper duties and does not show the prosecutor's participation was improper. ( Hambarian v. Superior Court, supra, 27 Cal.4th at p. 843, 118 Cal.Rptr.2d 725, 44 P.3d 102.) Because the failure to recuse the LACDA did not infringe upon defendants' state or federal constitutional rights to due process of law, the Court of Appeal did not, as defendants contend, err in failing to consider the error to be a structural violation of fundamental constitutional rights or to apply the harmless error standard for constitutional trial error.