Opinion ID: 1170008
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Alleged improper admission of conditional sales contract obtained through unlawful interrogation

Text: [15a] The record reveals that police learned of the conditional sales contract during the interrogation of defendant that we held violated his rights to counsel and to remain silent. ( People v. Schader, supra, 62 Cal.2d 716, 727). [16] The fruits of an illegally conducted interrogation are no less inadmissible during the trial of the declarant than his statements themselves. Although they lack the element of potential unreliability inherent in the words of a confession, the physical byproducts of illegally obtained statements must be excluded for otherwise similar reasons. To protect the right of an accused `to remain silent unless he chooses to speak in the unfettered exercise of his own will[,]' ... to maintain a `fair state-individual balance,' to require the government `to shoulder the entire load,' ... to respect the inviolability of the human personality, our accusatory system of criminal justice demands that the government seeking to punish an individual produce the evidence against him by its own independent labors, rather than by the cruel, simple expedient of compelling it from his own mouth ( Miranda v. Arizona (1966) 384 U.S. 436, 460 [16 L.Ed.2d 694, 715, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 10 A.L.R.3d 974]). The exclusionary rule is applied to the fruits as well as the words of an illegally obtained confession. A contrary rule would undermine the rights to counsel and to remain silent by providing police the simple expedient of conducting illegal interrogations for the purpose of obtaining physical evidence of guilt while foregoing the use at trial of the statements of the accused. In People v. Buchanan (1966) 63 Cal.2d 880, 887 [48 Cal. Rptr. 733, 409 P.2d 957], we stated: It is obvious that, since the gun was secured by police as a result of the statement obtained in violation of the rule of People v. Dorado, supra, 62 Cal.2d 338 [42 Cal. Rptr. 169, 398 P.2d 361], it too should have been excluded as the `poisonous fruit' of the illegal statement. (Cf. People v. Bilderbach (1965) 62 Cal.2d 757, 767-768 [44 Cal. Rptr. 313, 401 P.2d 921]; People v. Ditson (1962) 57 Cal.2d 415, 439 [20 Cal. Rptr. 165, 369 P.2d 714]; Wong Sun v. United States (1963) 371 U.S. 471, 485 [83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441]; Nardone v. United States (1939) 308 U.S. 338, 340-341 [60 S.Ct. 266, 84 L.Ed.2d 307].) This conclusion inevitably follows from the rule established in Dorado . We also cited the statement of the New York Court of Appeals that under the circumstances, it is incumbent upon the District Attorney to show that the location of the guns was discovered through a source untainted by the admissions. ( People v. Robinson (1963) 13 N.Y.2d 296, 301 [246 N.Y.S.2d 623, 196 N.E.2d 261].) [15b] The prosecutor failed to show that the conditional sales contract and its contents were discovered from an independent source or that the discovery had become so attenuated as to dissipate the taint. ( Wong Sun v. United States, supra, 371 U.S. 471, 487 [9 L.Ed.2d 441, 455, 83 S.Ct. 407].) The Attorney General only speculates that the registration on defendant's car would show both a legal owner and an equitable owner, and that the police, therefore, might have been able to discover the contract if they had not learned of it through the interrogation. The purposes of Dorado and Escobedo preclude the eradication of the taint upon the illegally obtained sales contract on the basis of such sheer hypothesis. We cannot hold, however, that defendant suffered prejudice from the error in permitting cross-examination upon the sales contract. Facing an overwhelming showing of his presence at the scene of the robbery and of his killing the police officer, defendant chose the defense that he had not participated in the robbery that actually occurred although he had planned to commit a robbery, and that his shooting of the police officer was accidental. In the context of such a defense, evidence which established that defendant harbored a motive to commit a robbery in order to meet a payment due on a conditional sales contract merely confirmed defendant's admission of the same fact; it added nothing to the People's case, nor did it detract from the defense. Beyond a reasonable doubt, the error did not contribute to the verdict on the guilt trial. ( Chapman v. California (1967) 386 U.S. 18, 24 [17 L.Ed.2d 705, 710, 87 S.Ct. 824, 24 A.L.R.3d 1065]; People v. Modesto (1967) 66 Cal.2d 695, 714 [59 Cal. Rptr. 124, 427 P.2d 788].)