Opinion ID: 2520185
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Conclusive Presumptions

Text: As noted, Evidence Code section 601 classifies presumptions as either conclusive or rebuttable. Evidence Code section 620 provides that all presumptions established by this article and all other presumptions declared by law to be conclusive, are conclusive presumptions. [8] For example, Evidence Code section 622 provides that [t]he facts recited in a written instrument are conclusively presumed to be true as between the parties thereto ... but this rule does not apply to the recital of a consideration. Elections Code section 2026 provides that [t]he domicile of a Member of the Legislature or a Representative in the Congress of the United States shall be conclusively presumed to be at the residence address indicated on that person's currently filed affidavit of registration. In fact, there are over 150 California civil statutes that utilize the term conclusively presumed within the statutory definition. [9] Unlike mandatory rebuttable presumptions and permissive rebuttable presumptions, the conclusive presumptions contemplated by Evidence Code section 620 are irrebuttable by definition, prompting Witkin to say: [A] conclusive or indisputable presumption is entirely different from the ordinary rebuttable presumption: [N]o evidence may be received to contradict it. Hence, it is more accurately described as a rule of substantive law rather than of evidence. [Citations.] (1 Witkin, Cal. Evidence (4th ed. 2000) Burden of Proof and Presumptions, § 160, p. 301.) Wigmore took a dim view of the term conclusive presumption: In strictness there cannot be such a thing as a `conclusive presumption.' Wherever from one fact another is said to be conclusively presumed, in the sense the opponent is absolutely precluded from showing by any evidence that the second fact does not exist, the rule is really providing that where the first fact is shown to exist, the second fact's existence is wholly immaterial for the purpose of the proponent's case; and to provide this is to make a rule of substantive law and not a rule apportioning the burden of persuading as to certain propositions or varying the duty of coming forward with evidence. (9 Wigmore on Evid. (Chadbourn rev. ed.1981), § 2492, pp. 307-308, fn. omitted.) [10] Our court has adopted the Wigmore view. (See People v. Dillon (1983) 34 Cal.3d 441, 474, 194 Cal.Rptr. 390, 668 P.2d 697 ( Dillon ).) Moreover, our court has repeatedly rejected defendants' attempts to invoke the term conclusive presumption as a means to challenge the constitutionality of criminal law statutes. For example, in Dillon, supra, 34 Cal.3d 441, 194 Cal.Rptr. 390, 668 P.2d 697, a case decided after Ulster County, the defendant argued the felony-murder rule created an unconstitutional conclusive presumption by relieving the People of its burden to prove malice upon proof of the defendant's intent to commit the underlying felony. ( Dillon, at p. 472, 194 Cal.Rptr. 390, 668 P.2d 697.) We disagreed and stated: We are led astray if we treat the `conclusive presumption of malice' as a true [rebuttable] presumption; to do so begs the question whether malice is an element of felony murder. And to answer that question, we must look beyond labels to the underlying reality of this so-called `presumption.' [¶] Although the drafters of the Evidence Code chose to perpetuate the traditional distinction between rebuttable and `conclusive' presumptions ( id., §§ 601, 620), they apparently did so in order to emphasize that the code provisions on the topic were largely continuations of prior law. But they were not misled by their own terminology: in their accompanying note the drafters frankly acknowledged that `Conclusive presumptions are not evidentiary rules so much as they are rules of substantive law.' [Citation.] ( Dillon, supra, 34 Cal.3d at p. 474, 194 Cal.Rptr. 390, 668 P.2d 697.) We concluded: `Attempts to explain the [felony-murder] statute to the jury in terms of nonexistent conclusive presumptions tend more to confuse than to enlighten a jury unfamiliar with the inaccurate practice of stating rules of substantive law in terms of rules of evidence.' ( Id. at p. 475, 194 Cal.Rptr. 390, 668 P.2d 697.) [11] Despite the fact that we have maintained that a statute that employs the phrase shall be conclusively presumed is simply stating a rule of substantive law (see Dillon, supra, 34 Cal.3d at p. 474, 194 Cal.Rptr. 390, 668 P.2d 697), there is much confusion regarding the term conclusive presumption because it has been incorrectly utilized to describe mandatory rebuttable presumptions. [12] For example, in Carella v. California (1989) 491 U.S. 263, 109 S.Ct. 2419, 105 L.Ed.2d 218 (per curiam) ( Carella ), the high court found unconstitutional two California mandatory rebuttable presumptions: (1) the Vehicle Code section 10855 presumption that a person who intentionally fails to return a rented vehicle within five days after the rental agreement expires shall be presumed to have embezzled the vehicle; and (2) the Penal Code section 484, subdivision (b) presumption that [i]ntent to commit fraud is presumed if a person fails to return, within 20 days after a written demand, personal property rented pursuant to a written contract. The Carella trial court's instructions to the jury, because they contained no rebutting language, erroneously implied that these presumptions were conclusive as to the defendant. Perhaps for this reason, Justice Scalia's concurring opinion in Carella refers to the two presumptions as mandatory conclusive presumptions ( Carella, supra, 491 U.S. at p. 268, 109 S.Ct. 2419) and as conclusive presumption[s] ( id. at p. 269, 109 S.Ct. 2419). But under California law, these two mandatory presumptions are actually rebuttable. [13] While Justice Scalia's characterization is correct insofar as the presumptions were understood by the jury, i.e., conclusive in that particular trial, his characterization has created confusion in subsequent cases [14] because a mandatory rebuttable presumption that, due to instructional error, is presumed by the jury to be conclusive in a particular trial is analytically distinct from an Evidence Code section 620 conclusive presumption  the former is unconstitutional under Ulster County as an improper mandatory presumption, [15] and the latter simply describes a legislative enactment of substantive law.