Opinion ID: 1375029
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Claims of Error Regarding the Voluntariness of Defendant's Confession and Discovery of Interrogators' Personnel Records

Text: Defendant's pretrial litigation strategy focused mainly on an in limine motion, brought under Evidence Code section 402, to suppress his confession because coerced by threats and inducements following invocation of his rights to counsel and to silence. Defendant testified on his own behalf for purposes of the motion to suppress. He testified that during the interrogations at the South Gate jail, Officer Carter made clear that he would get answers to his questions, pointed to the muscular Officer Greene, asked him whether he thought he could beat Officer Greene in a fight, and told him if a fight began Officer Greene literally would kill me if somebody didn't stop him. He also testified that the police showed him a depression in a wall of the interrogation room that could have been made by the impact of a human head and suggested that his head might be used to enlarge it if he failed to reveal what he knew about Carter's disappearance. In sum, he was terrified of Greene and the situation.... Moreover, he testified, the police told him that if he should be imprisoned for the murders he would be unlikely to survive. Defendant introduced (in the context of his Pitchess motion, discussed infra, at pp. 829-832) the testimony of his own counsel, Michael C. Carney, that when he was a prosecutor he learned the police had received a letter complaint that Officer Greene had used excessive force during a drunk-driving arrest. At the time, Officer Greene also told Carney that he had broken a citizen's jaw and received a restrictive-duty assignment as a result. There was also evidence that a letter complaint might be treated by the police as minor and never be placed in a personnel record for the officer later to discover. Indeed, after Carney's testimony, Officer Greene testified that his file contained no complaint. Defendant also called his counsel from the prior trial, Peter L. Williams, who testified that another client, Angelina Nasca, told him that Officer Greene forced her to confess to a trumped-up charge of burglary because he took her in the interview room in the South Gate jail and hit her, driving her tooth through her cheek, and threatened to put her head through a hole in the wall of the interview room of the South Gate jail. Williams also testified that defendant told the public defender's office about the wall on the morning after his arrest. The court considered Nasca's testimony from the prior trial, as well as that of Michael Bridges. Both claimed to have been bullied and beaten by Officer Greene while under arrest. Nasca said that Officer Greene threatened to push my head through that hole in the interrogation room wall the same way he did someone else's. Bridges also testified that Officer Greene threatened him with a shotgun. When Bridges was in the South Gate jail's interrogation room, he filled out a card indicating that he wanted a lawyer and did not want to talk. Another member of the police department tore it up and Officer Greene beat him again. Bridges denied knowing defendant. Louis Moreno testified that he was roughed up by the South Gate police in October or November of 1978 when they arrested him on a fugitive warrant for armed robbery. The court found that his description of the assertedly offending police officers did not match those who had testified in the hearing. There was testimony that for three or four years the local public defender had not received a single request to appear at the South Gate jail in response to an invocation of the right to counsel. As stated, defendant also testified that the police offered him an inducement to confess. It was my understanding that [Officer Carter] was promising that if I cooperated with him and told him whatever it was he wanted to hear that he would send me back to Atascadero ..., that there wouldn't be any charges filed.... That was in the form of a promise. Defendant further testified that he was never read his Miranda rights ( Miranda v. Arizona (1966) 384 U.S. 436 [16 L.Ed.2d 694, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 10 A.L.R.3d 974]) and that when he demanded to see a lawyer Officer Carter refused, responding did I want to talk to him or did I want to fight, something to that effect. [N]obody told me why I wasn't read my rights. I was told ... something to the effect that they had already done a number of things improperly and that he [Officer Carter] probably couldn't make a case hold up in court anyway. The prosecution produced numerous witnesses to support its assertion that his confessions were made voluntarily. Officer Sims testified that defendant was neither threatened nor offered an inducement for his statements: he responded freely and voluntarily and his demeanor was somewhat nervous, but was also relaxed.... Officer Carter, who conducted the key interrogation, also testified that defendant's demeanor was normal, maybe a little emotionally upset; neither Officer Carter nor any other member of the South Gate Police Department threatened him or offered any inducement or benefit other than coffee and cigarettes. Officer Greene was not flexing his muscles or making threatening gestures; rather, he was very quiet that evening and seemed to be real remorseful if anything. Indeed, when Mr. Memro started telling us about picking up the boy and what he had done to the boy, ... Greene became quite emotional and appeared as though he couldn't take it and he went over and sat in the corner. After an hour of general conversation to make defendant feel comfortable, Officer Carter testified, he confessed to the Carter murder. At that time he became extremely emotionally upset and ... seemed to be very remorseful. He started crying very heavily.... Officer Carter gave him a few minutes to calm down and then invited him to unburden himself of any other criminal activity. Defendant told him that the murders of Fowler and Chavez had weighed on his mind for a long time, and he confessed to them. Officer Carter agreed that there was a slight, six- to eight-inch-wide impression in one plaster wall of the interrogation room. Anthony Cornejo, a fellow jail inmate, testified that defendant told him that he had lied about his confession being coerced. He admitted making the statements freely to the police. And he said  the quote was, `That was the only thing I had going for me on my appeal was to say that I was beat up and coerced and had the statements beat out of me.' On cross-examination, Cornejo was impeached as a notorious jailhouse informant who had repeatedly testified about fellow inmates' statements in jail for the prosecution in state and federal court. Cornejo was a convicted murderer, robber and burglar who, the cross-examination suggested, would hope for lenity from the parole board. And another informer had written Cornejo about defendant's case. Defendant also called Theodore Frank  presumably the defendant in People v. Frank (1985) 38 Cal.3d 711 [214 Cal. Rptr. 801, 700 P.2d 415], following retrial People v. Frank (1990) 51 Cal.3d 718 [274 Cal. Rptr. 372, 798 P.2d 1215]  who testified that defendant was very reticent about his case: he would never answer questions or volunteer any information about it. South Gate Police Officer Walter R. Carter drove defendant back to the police station from the site where Carter's body was recovered. He testified that Lloyd Carter told him not to bother to handcuff him, but that he (Walter Carter) insisted that he should be restrained. On the way to the station, defendant told him that he didn't understand how anyone could treat him so fairly and so nice when he had done such a terrible thing. Defendant conceded that he was never physically harmed, that he had studied karate in 1972, that he was attending judo classes before his arrest, that he was in good physical condition, and that he had wrestled in school  evidently high school  and also played football there. The court also heard evidence that while in jail defendant was fed and was allowed to make two phone calls. He called Linda Brundige, a reserve deputy sheriff who knew him because, as she testified at trial after the court had ruled the confession voluntary, he was one of my assistant instructors in a judo class I taught for the city of Huntington Park. Brundige also explained that defendant had been trained by somebody that was good with martial arts and that he was good within his skill level in a form of karate. The court denied the motion to suppress the confession. Based upon the totality of the evidence, it declared, the court finds beyond a reasonable doubt the confession was free and voluntary. It further declared that the totality of the circumstances clearly point to the credibility of the prosecution witnesses and against the credibility of the defense witnesses, and I find the statement to be free and voluntary.
(8a) Defendant contends that the court erred in finding beyond a reasonable doubt that his confession was given voluntarily and that his witnesses were not credible. He asserts that this ruling was inherently implausible and is unsupported by substantial evidence given his testimony regarding his interrogation and that of witnesses who testified that the South Gate police department behaved brutally toward arrestees, particularly while interrogating them. He is wrong: substantial evidence supported the ruling. (9) The parties agree on the applicable burden of proof regarding the claim of involuntary confession. Because the crimes charged occurred before the adoption of article I, section 28, subdivision (d) of the California Constitution in 1982, state law required the prosecution to show beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant's statements were made voluntarily. ( People v. Anderson (1990) 52 Cal.3d 453, 470 [276 Cal. Rptr. 356, 801 P.2d 1107].) Federal law requires the prosecution to make the same showing by a preponderance of the evidence. ( People v. Morris (1991) 53 Cal.3d 152, 200 [279 Cal. Rptr. 720, 807 P.2d 949].) On appeal, the determination of a trial court as to the ultimate issue of the voluntariness of a confession is reviewed independently in light of the record in its entirety, including `all the surrounding circumstances  both the characteristics of the accused and the details of the interrogation' [citations].... [¶] The trial court's determinations concerning whether coercive police activity was present, whether certain conduct constituted a promise and, if so, whether it operated as an inducement, are apparently subject to independent review as well. ( People v. Benson (1990) 52 Cal.3d 754, 779 [276 Cal. Rptr. 827, 802 P.2d 330].) However, the trial court's findings as to the circumstances surrounding the confession  including `the characteristics of the accused and the details of the interrogation' [citation]  are clearly subject to review for substantial evidence. The underlying questions are factual; such questions are examined under the deferential substantial-evidence standard [citation].... ( Ibid. ) (8b) Applying the foregoing law to the record before us, we conclude that the confession was voluntary. (10) What the Constitution permits to be admitted in evidence is the product of an essentially free and unconstrained choice ... to confess. ( Schneckloth v. Bustamonte (1973) 412 U.S. 218, 225 [36 L.Ed.2d 854, 862, 93 S.Ct. 2041] (lead opn.); accord, id. at p. 249 [36 L.Ed.2d at pp. 875-876] (conc. opn. of Blackmun, J.) and p. 250 [36 L.Ed.2d at p. 876] (conc. opn. of Powell, J.).) The question is whether defendant's choice to confess was not essentially free because his will was overborne. ( Id. at pp. 225-226 [36 L.Ed.2d at pp. 861-862].) The inquiry is essentially factual. In determining whether a defendant's will was overborne in a particular case, the Court has assessed the totality of all the surrounding circumstances  both the characteristics of the accused and the details of the interrogation. ( Id. at p. 226 [36 L.Ed.2d at p. 862].) (8c) The police testified that defendant was not threatened, was offered no inducement, and waived his rights to counsel and to remain silent. There was thus substantial evidence before the court that the interrogation was free of any taint that might make it involuntary. The court believed the testimony of the police and rejected that of defendant's witnesses. We must accept its evaluation of the facts when substantial evidence supports it, as the testimony does. ( People v. Benson, supra, 52 Cal.3d at p. 779.) Doing so, independently resolving the legal question whether the confession was voluntary is a simple task: it was.
Before trial defendant moved to exclude the testimony of Anthony Cornejo. He argued that it would be substantially more prejudicial than probative (Evid. Code, § 352) and that introducing it would violate constitutional rights he asserted to a reliable guilt and penalty determination, to due process, and to the right to counsel. Just before Cornejo testified in limine, defendant also added the ground of objection that if the court had granted him as speedy a trial as he desired he would never have encountered Cornejo and his testimony would not now be heard. To recapitulate, Cornejo testified that defendant told him his statements to the police were voluntary. On cross-examination, he was thoroughly impeached as a notorious jailhouse informant. (11a) Defendant argues that the government used Cornejo as an agent to elicit his purported statement about the circumstances surrounding his confession. (12) This, he asserts, violated his Sixth Amendment rights, because, as we stated in People v. Pensinger (1991) 52 Cal.3d 1210, 1249 [278 Cal. Rptr. 640, 805 P.2d 899], [i]t is a denial of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel to admit evidence of an indicted defendant's incriminating statements deliberately elicited from the defendant by a government agent. ( Massiah v. United States (1964) 377 U.S. 201 [12 L.Ed.2d 246, 84 S.Ct. 1199]; see also United States v. Henry (1980) 447 U.S. 264 [65 L.Ed.2d 115, 100 S.Ct. 2183].) A government agent includes a jailhouse informant whom the state has hired to obtain incriminating statements, even if they are made voluntarily and without solicitation. ( Maine v. Moulton (1985) 474 U.S. 159, 173 [88 L.Ed.2d 481, 494, 106 S.Ct. 477].) The court's ruling allowing a jailhouse informant's testimony to be introduced presents an essentially factual question, and we review it on a deferential standard. (11b) There was no abuse of discretion (Evid. Code, § 352; People v. Clair (1992) 2 Cal.4th 629, 660 [7 Cal. Rptr.2d 564, 828 P.2d 705]) in admitting Cornejo's testimony. We disagree with defendant's perception of Cornejo's role. The record does not at all compel the conclusion that Cornejo was acting at the government's behest. Pointing to Cornejo's history of testifying for the government, defendant naturally disagrees, but such a history does not automatically make an informant a state agent. (See In re Williams (1994) 7 Cal.4th 572, 597-598 [29 Cal. Rptr.2d 64, 870 P.2d 1072].) In our view, no constitutional question arises unless the informant is an agent of the state at the time he or she elicited the statements that would be the subject of later testimony. (See U.S. v. Sanchez (11th Cir.1993) 992 F.2d 1143, 1159-1160, mod. 3 F.3d 366.) It is clear that Cornejo testified to further selfish goals, and it appears that he instigated his conversation with defendant, if that is what happened, for the same ends, even though he declared that he was testifying out of a moral consciousness of the things that I believe that are involved in this. His goal may have been lenience from the parole board  he was awaiting or was on trial for murder when he first testified in this case in December 1986  but he testified that he was promised nothing except safe housing when incarcerated and there is nothing in the record to the contrary. The record supports our conclusion that this promise was made after he obtained defendant's statements against interest. In sum, the record supports the conclusion of the trial court that Cornejo was gathering information on his own initiative, not that of the state. As such, he was not a government agent. ( In re Williams, supra, 7 Cal.4th at p. 598; People v. Williams (1988) 44 Cal.3d 1127, 1141 [245 Cal. Rptr. 635, 751 P.2d 901].) We find no abuse of discretion in admitting the testimony and no constitutional violation.

To aid his assertion of coercion, defendant also moved, as he did before his prior trial, to discover the personnel records of various South Gate police officers under authority of Pitchess v. Superior Court (1974) 11 Cal.3d 531, 537-538 [113 Cal. Rptr. 897, 522 P.2d 305]. We discern from the record that he renewed the motion made at his prior trial. That motion sought information regarding complaints against South Gate Police Department officers  including the four officers who had participated in [defendant's] postarrest interrogation. His motion requested the identity of individuals who had filed complaints `relating to unnecessary acts of aggressive behavior,... violence, and/or attempted violence, and ... excessive force and/or attempted excessive force' against 16 officers in the department. [Defendant] also sought discovery of investigative reports based on these complaints, including statements of witnesses interviewed, information concerning the officers' use of excessive force or violence contained in personnel files, statements of psychiatrists, psychologists, or other officers contained in such files, and findings of disciplinary actions taken against any officers as a result of their use of force and violence. The purpose of such information, it was alleged, was to enable appellant to bolster his claim that his confession had been coerced. ( Memro I, supra, 38 Cal.3d 658, 674.) In Memro I, we reversed the judgment because the court denied this motion. The court granted the motion to discover the personnel records of Officers Carter, Gluhak, Greene, and Sims  defendant's four interrogators. (Defendant later moved to discover the personnel records of four other members of the South Gate Police Department  the partners of defendant's interrogators. That motion was denied because the court found there was no showing of need and no nexus or connection between conduct complained of ... and those officers.) The prosecution informed the court and defendant that the officers' personnel files had been purged according to the terms of the department's document-destruction policy, governed by Government Code section 34090, which permits, and has permitted since 1975, that records two years old or older may be purged if no longer required.... The policy was to purge material from personnel files that was more than five years old. Defendant then asserted that the records were destroyed to conceal information relevant to his claim of coercion. He moved to dismiss the information, in essence as a proper sanction for their loss. He argued that the police knew a major issue on the appeal from the original judgment was denial of the motion to discover police personnel records and that the department destroyed the records notwithstanding the possibility of a reversal on that ground. In response, the prosecution introduced evidence of the procedure whereby the records were purged, and, to aid the court in ruling on the motion to suppress, secondary evidence of their contents. The South Gate Police Department's records custodian testified that police officers would be alerted to any citizen complaints placed in their personnel record. Each officer testified that his personnel file contained no such complaints at the times for which the information was sought, except for Officer Sims, who described one unfounded complaint in 1978 involving asserted use of excessive force during an arrest. The custodian also testified that the records were destroyed in accordance with the requirements of Government Code section 34090: he believed the police chief asked of and received from the city attorney permission to purge the ones that were at least five years old. However, records relevant to unresolved civil lawsuits were kept longer, and the department did not ask the district attorney or Attorney General to ascertain whether records might be needed for pending criminal cases. The court denied the motion for a sanction for destroying the records. It rejected the argument that the records were destroyed to conceal information relevant to defendant's assertion of coercion. It first ruled that defendant bore the burden of showing that the records were destroyed for an improper purpose. It then found that the only evidence of such a purpose was that oral argument in Memro I, supra, 38 Cal.3d 658, took place on May 7, 1984, and that permission to destroy the records was granted on July 3, 1984. It found this evidence insufficient to show that the records were destroyed in bad faith. Rather, it found that they were destroyed in good faith according to established procedure.
(13a) Preliminarily, we note that we review the court's decision to consider secondary evidence of the records' contents on a deferential standard. ( Mayo v. Mayo (1935) 3 Cal.2d 51, 57 [43 P.2d 535], overruled on other grounds in Stitt v. Stitt (1937) 8 Cal.2d 450, 453 [65 P.2d 1297].) There was no abuse of discretion: the court did not exceed the bounds of reason when it decided to hear testimonial evidence of the contents of the police officers' files. Defendant contends that due process was violated because evidence material to his defense was withheld. We agree with the People, however, that the question instead regards the failure to preserve evidence. Defendant also contends that the court erred in failing to impose a sanction for the records' destruction.
(14) In Arizona v. Youngblood (1988) 488 U.S. 51, 58 [102 L.Ed.2d 281, 289-290, 109 S.Ct. 333], the federal high court held that unless a criminal defendant can show bad faith on the part of the police, failure to preserve potentially useful evidence does not constitute a denial of due process of law. Moreover, a trial court's inquiry whether evidence was destroyed in good faith or bad faith is essentially factual: therefore, the proper standard of review is substantial evidence. (See U.S. v. Stevens (3d Cir.1991) 935 F.2d 1380, 1387-1388 [applying clearly erroneous standard].) (13b) Under the holdings of Youngblood and Stevens, we conclude that substantial evidence supported the court's ruling. The burden was on defendant to show bad faith, and he did not meet his burden. Even if the records were potentially useful, the failure to preserve them did not violate due process.
(15) It is settled that trial courts `enjoy a large measure of discretion in determining the appropriate sanction that should be imposed' because of the failure to preserve or destruction of material evidence. [Citations.] ( People v. Sixto (1993) 17 Cal. App.4th 374, 399 [21 Cal. Rptr.2d 264]; see also People v. Zapien (1993) 4 Cal.4th 929, 964 [17 Cal. Rptr.2d 122, 846 P.2d 704].) (13c) We find no abuse of discretion. Although defendant calls the circumstances surrounding the records' destruction suspicious because the court's denial of the motion to discover them was a major focus of his appeal from the original judgment and the records were destroyed two months after oral argument in that appeal, the court could reasonably conclude that (1) the evidence showed the records were destroyed according to the provisions of the Government Code  indeed, they were kept for three years beyond the two-year period after which Government Code section 34090, subdivision (d), permitted their destruction  and (2) the department, unschooled in the nuances of appellate procedure, did not realize that the records might be needed after the court in defendant's prior trial denied the motion to discover them. Nor, the court could reasonably conclude, was there an improper purpose behind the policy to keep personnel records relevant to civil cases while not attempting to determine whether criminal cases might still be unresolved: criminal cases rarely remain active after five years. We find no abuse of discretion and no violation of due process in the refusal to impose a sanction.
As described, the court denied defendant's motion to discover the records of four other police officers not present at his interrogation. It found no nexus or connection between those officers and his claim of involuntary confession that would justify discovering their personnel records. (16) Defendant contends that the court erred in so finding. He asserts that he showed the officers trained with his interrogators, and that in Memro I, supra, 38 Cal.3d 658, 686, we held that the records of those who trained or otherwise had substantial contacts with any of the four interrogating officers would be discoverable. Trial courts are granted wide discretion when ruling on a motion to discover such records. ( People v. Breaux (1991) 1 Cal.4th 281, 311 [3 Cal. Rptr.2d 81, 821 P.2d 585], quoting Pitchess v. Superior Court, supra, 11 Cal.3d 531, 535.) Here the court found that there was no sufficient connection between training sessions or other activities in which the officers had mutually participated and the circumstances surrounding the interrogation. There is nothing in the record to contradict that finding. Plainly the court did not abuse its discretion.