Opinion ID: 2612406
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Discovery in the Trial Court.

Text: The superior court granted defendant's motion for discovery of the records in question. The district attorney petitioned for mandate from this court. The majority hold that mandate should issue to nullify the superior court's order. To understand the blindness which afflicts the majority's view of this proceeding, one must appreciate the extraordinary circumstances which impelled the trial court to act as it did. On October 27, 1988, a newspaper article appeared in which inmate Leslie White described how inmate-informers concocted false but convincing confessions implicating other prisoners, testified falsely against those prisoners, and in return received special benefits. As described in that article and on subsequent occasions, the inmate would arrange to be confined or transported with the suspect, so he could show he had the opportunity to hear a confession. (Sometimes the jail officials would facilitate this by deliberately housing the suspect in the portion of the facility where known informers are confined for their own protection.) The inmate informant would phone law enforcement personnel, pose as a fellow investigating officer, and learn details of the crime. Since those details were known only to law enforcement personnel (who presumably would not disclose them to a prisoner) and to the criminal himself, the informant, by including such details in a false confession, could give his story a spurious air of authenticity. The inmate would then report the false confession to the police and, if requested, testify to it in court. In some cases inmates bargained for specific benefits, but this was not an essential part of the system; the inmates knew that if they regularly came forward with useful information they would be rewarded. When this system of perjury was exposed, the district attorney began an investigation of all cases in which a jailhouse informant was used. At the district attorney's request, the deputy who tried this case submitted a memorandum in which he noted that before the Gonzalez trial Acker had testified previously once or twice in other cases, and since that trial he had testified in other cases. On November 17, 1988, the district attorney issued special directive 88-14, which said: We must also address those cases where jailhouse informants have been used in the past; the most objective way to do this is on a case by case basis before the court. This will insure an independent review on the merits of each case. Accordingly, we will begin immediately to notify the attorney of record in each case in which a jailhouse informant testified. The attorney will be advised of the information we have received and encouraged, where appropriate, to make a motion to bring the matter before the court.... Pursuant to this directive, the district attorney sent defense counsel in this case a letter which said that his office would undertake an investigation of all jailhouse informant cases, and that the information would be made available to defense counsel on individual cases and in appropriate cases ... be thoroughly aired in open court. The letter went on to state: We anticipate that review will be conducted by several judges listening to testimony elicited by the prosecution and the defense. That forum provides opportunity for the most effective method of getting at the facts: examination of witness under oath and the compulsory production through subpoena of documents.... Information revealed in the trial of this case, and subsequently, shows that Acker was an informant-witness in three cases before defendant's trial, that he was engaged in providing information to prosecutors in two other cases at the time of the trial, and thereafter continued regularly to provide testimony against fellow inmates. It also shows that Acker received benefits for providing information and testimony. But it does not show whether his testimony in this or any other case was false. In January of 1989 the Honorable Otto M. Kaus, a former justice of this court, was appointed to head a grand jury investigation. The grand jury heard testimony from six informants, and investigators talked to nineteen others. Its report is replete with detail about the informant practices in question, but omits all names. We do not know, for example, whether Acker was among the informants who testified or were interviewed. In the meantime, recognizing that trial counsel were under no duty to bring actions on behalf of defendants whose cases were on appeal, the district attorney and the defense bar requested the court to appoint counsel for that task. The trial court thereupon appointed defendant's appellate counsel to represent him in trial court proceedings to discover whether his conviction or sentence was the result of perjured informer testimony. Counsel accordingly moved for discovery of law enforcement files relating to Acker. Although the district attorney had previously offered to make such information available to defense counsel, he opposed the motion. Noting the critical importance of Acker's testimony to the finding of special circumstance and the penalty judgment, Superior Court Judge Cianchetti granted the motion in part. The district attorney then brought the present mandate petition, claiming that the trial court had no jurisdiction to grant discovery when no action was pending before that court. The majority endorse this position. In choosing to analyze this proceeding by addressing only the narrow question whether the trial court ordinarily has jurisdiction in a case pending on appeal, the majority miss the broad, extraordinary question posed by the facts of this case. That question is the authority of a trial court to inquire into charges that it has been the victim of widespread fraud, that an entire class of cases may have been tainted by a pattern of perjury, and to determine which cases have been so affected. The limiting rules cited by the majority are inadequate to this situation. They would compel the court to fragment its inquiry, depending upon whether a case was awaiting trial, on appeal, or already final, and in many instances bar inquiry at the threshold because the defendant does not already know the facts the inquiry might reveal. I firmly believe that it is within the inherent power of any court to conduct an inquiry into well-founded charges that its proceedings in a large number of cases have been tainted by a pattern of perjury, and, to facilitate that inquiry, to order the prosecutor to disclose material information to likely victims of the perjury. A court set up by the [California] Constitution has within it the power of self-preservation, indeed, the power to remove all obstructions to its successful and convenient operation. This arises from the fact that it is part of and belongs to one of the three independent departments set up by the Constitution. ( Millholen v. Riley (1930) 211 Cal. 29, 33-34 [293 P. 69].) That power includes the power to cure abuses or overreaching involving confidential information.... ( Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. v. Superior Court (1988) 200 Cal. App.3d 272, 286-287 [245 Cal. Rptr. 873].) It includes the power to prevent abuse of its process, and to create a remedy for a wrong even in the absence of specific statutory remedies. ( Western Steel & Ship Repair, Inc. v. RMI, Inc. (1986) 176 Cal. App.3d 1108, 1116 [222 Cal. Rptr. 556].) The decision of the Tenth Circuit in Hopkinson v. Shillinger (10th Cir.1989) 866 F.2d 1185, 1220-1221, demonstrates the power of a court in somewhat similar circumstances to grant discovery despite the absence of a pending action. In that case the defendant had been convicted of murder; his conviction had been affirmed by the Wyoming Supreme Court, and was final. A grand jury, however, had continued to investigate the murder. The defendant asserted that it had heard evidence tending to exonerate him, but he could not point to any specific evidence. The circuit court ruled that since the defendant had shown a particularized need for the grand jury transcript (see Dennis v. United States (1966) 384 U.S. 855, 870 [16 L.Ed.2d 973, 984, 86 S.Ct. 1840]), he was entitled to an order directing the federal district court judge to review the transcript in camera and to reveal any exculpatory evidence  even though the defendant had no independent proceeding pending. [9] This holding indicates that defendant Gonzalez is entitled to discover the evidence presented to the grand jury  which may be of some use  but it goes further: it suggests that if a defendant is entitled to discovery of evidence in the hands of the state, he can bring an independent action to enforce that right even if no appeal or habeas corpus proceeding is pending. People v. Ainsworth (1990) 217 Cal. App.3d 247 [266 Cal. Rptr. 175], the case on which the majority rely, actually supports only the proposition that the trial court loses its jurisdiction to entertain a postjudgment discovery motion when remittitur has issued following an unsuccessful appeal and the defendant has not filed a petition for habeas corpus, so there is no pending proceeding which could result in a new trial. The majority approve of the Ainsworth court's reasoning that a discovery motion is not an independent right or remedy. It is ancillary to an ongoing action or proceeding. After the judgment has become final, there is nothing pending in the trial court to which discovery may attach. (217 Cal. App.3d at p. 251.) But what the majority overlook is that the Ainsworth court stressed that it was the finality of the judgment and the lack of any pending collateral attack which robbed the trial court of its jurisdiction to entertain the discovery motion at issue. Here, no remittitur had issued; defendant's appeal and habeas corpus petition were both pending at the time he made his discovery request. As the court held in Wisely v. Superior Court (1985) 175 Cal. App.3d 267, 269 [220 Cal. Rptr 893], the fact that his appeal was pending in this court at the time defendant filed his discovery request would not deprive the trial court of its jurisdiction to hear the merits of the request. Under California Code of Civil Procedure section 916, subdivision (a), the perfecting of an appeal stays proceedings in the trial court upon the judgment or order appealed from or upon the matters embraced therein or affected thereby, including enforcement of the judgment or order, but the trial court may proceed upon any other matter embraced in the action and not affected by the judgment or order. (Italics added.) The purpose of section 916 is to protect the jurisdiction of the appellate court; the rule prevents the trial court from rendering the appeal futile by changing the judgment into something different. Accordingly, whether a matter is `embraced' in or `affected' by a judgment ... depends on whether postjudgment proceedings on the matter would have any effect on the `effectiveness' of the appeal.  ( In re Marriage of Horowitz (1984) 159 Cal. App.3d 377, 381 [205 Cal. Rptr. 880], italics added and citations omitted; see also 9 Witkin, Cal. Procedure (3d ed. 1985) Appeal, § 9, p. 40.) The granting or denial of a discovery request in itself will have no impact on the effectiveness of the appeal. The best that can be said for the majority's position is that the granting of the request might lead to the discovery of evidence which might lead to the amending of a habeas corpus petition pending in this court, which in turn might lead to a hearing on the habeas corpus petition which might moot all or part of the appeal. This is far too remote a danger to divest the trial court of jurisdiction under Code of Civil Procedure section 916, subdivision (a). Thus the trial court's order should be sustained under Code of Civil Procedure section 916, subdivision (a). But I would not rest our decision on so narrow a basis. Even if defendant's appeal were final, and no collateral action were pending, the court should still have jurisdiction to inquire into well-founded charges that its decisions have been tainted by a pattern of inmate perjury and government complicity, and to grant discovery orders incident to that inquiry.