Court Opinion

ID: 9738275
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:47:39.433081+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:05.149338
License: Public Domain

FRIEDMAN, J.
I concur. Justice Regan’s opinion fully demonstrates the constitutional error which characterized petitioner’s conviction and its availability as a basis of collateral attack on that conviction. I am troubled, however, by the obtrusive demands of article VI, section 13, of the California Constitution, which prohibits reviewing courts from setting aside convictions unless error has caused a miscarriage of justice. This salutary prohibition applies in habeas corpus as well as appellate review. (In re Spencer, 63 Cal.2d 400, 404-408 [46 Cal.Rptr. 753, 406 P.2d 33]; In re Winchester, 53 Cal.2d 528, 531-532 [2 Cal.Rptr. 296, 348 P.2d 904].)
Aside from petitioner’s incriminating statements to the police, independent evidence fully demonstrated his guilt. He was caught in flagrante delicto, driven in an automobile by a plainclothes officer of the Los Angeles Police Department in company with an informer, directing the officer to the haunts of heroin peddlers and fetching the officer heroin in return for money. He was a commission man who, for each transaction, kept one balloon of heroin for his own use. At the trial the officer testified in detail. The four balloons sold the officer— one red, one blue and two yellow—were admitted in evidence. Petitioner’s plea of innocence was apparently premised on the hopeless notion that he maintained no stock-in-trade and 1 ‘ sold ’ ’ no heroin, but was only a go-between.
The case was tried before a judge sitting without a jury. Putting the confession to one side, the trial court could acquit petitioner only on the unsupported assumption that the plainclothes officer was committing elaborate perjury or an egregious error of identity. (Petitioner is a physically handicapped person.) If endowed in 1963 with a presentiment of the 1964-1965 Escobedo-Dorado development, the prosecutor would doubtless have avoided the confession as a plague. It *375was no more needed than Jack Buby’s admission that he shot Oswald.
Petitioner’s statements formed a confession of guilt, not an exculpatory claim. California decisions during 1965 and 1966 classified erroneous admission of Dorado-type confessions as prejudicial error per se, requiring reversal without regard to the presence of independent evidence of guilt.1 On February 20, 1967, the federal Supreme Court announced its decision in Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 [17 L.Ed.2d 705, 87 S.Ct. 824], That case holds in effect: (a) although some constitutional rights are so basic to a fair trial that their infraction can never be treated as harmless error,2 there are other constitutional errors which in the setting of a particular case are so unimportant and insignificant that they may, consistent with the federal Constitution, be deemed harmless, not resulting in automatic reversal; (b) before a federal constitutional error can be held harmless, the reviewing court must he able to declare a belief that it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
The Chapman case neither expressly nor implicitly insulates California courts from obedience to article VI, section 13, of the California Constitution. It means only that, in pursuing the inquiry enjoined by the state Constitution, California courts shall observe the “reasonable doubt’’ test rather than the standard California test of ‘ ‘ reasonable probability’’ where there is federal constitutional error. (See People v. Charles, 66 Cal.2d 330, 337, fn. 10 [57 Cal.Rptr. 745. 425 P.2d 545].)
The California Supreme Court has declared that the harmless error test of Chapman should be utilized in determining the reversing effect of a Dorado-type confession. (People v. Talley, filed Apr. 12, 1967, 65 Cal.2d 830, 840, fn. 5 [56 Cal.Rptr. 492, 423 P.2d 564].) In another post-Chapman decision, the court indicated that the effect of the confession, not the reason for excluding it, is the reversal-impelling *376factor. (People v. Spencer, filed Mar. 14, 1967, 66 Cal.2d 158, 163, fn. 2 [57 Cal.Rptr. 163, 424 P.2d 715].) Such statements seem to imply that the rigidities of automatic reversal will no longer be imposed upon reviewing courts in those relatively few cases where the confession is ineffective, and damning independent evidence leaves no reasonable doubt of the confession’s harmless effect upon the fact trier.
Generally, of course, a confession is so persuasive of guilt that a reviewing court cannot regard it as an inconsequential element in the trial court adjudication. (People v. Jacobson, supra, 63 Cal.2d at p. 330.) As we pointed out in People v. Janssen, 238 Cal.App.2d 106, 109-111 [47 Cal.Rptr. 453], an exceptional situation occurs when the defendant is caught red-handed and his confession becomes ‘1 a wisp of straw tossed on a mountain of incrimination” (p. 111). Such an exceptional situation would permit a reviewing court to measure the confession ’s effect upon the trial court proceedings in the light of the Chapman criterion.
To discard the rigid rule of automatic reversal in favor of the Chapman test promotes public security without encouraging violations of suspects’ constitutional rights. Trial court exclusion of illegally obtained evidence plus appellate reversal of convictions influenced by such evidence fully curb unconstitutional enforcement practices. Wise and careful appellate utilization of prejudicial error standards represents the single best means of accommodating the wholesome demands of the Bill of Rights to the realistic administration of criminal justice. The costs of the Bill of Rights will be better understood and more readily borne if they are not needlessly inflated by the drily logical extensions of court-made doctrine.
We need not indulge in the “implicit assumption that the same harmless-error rule should apply indiscriminately to all constitutional violations.” (Chapman v. California, supra, Stewart, J., concurring [17 L.Ed.2d at p. 722].) There is a great deal of difference between the nastiness of a coerced confession and the infirmity of a voluntary one which became unlawful only by subsequently developed standards and was not so heinous as to evoke unlimited retroactivity.3 The differ*377ence between these two kinds of confession reduces to pure speculation any notion that the federal Supreme Court may in the future classify both as reversible error per se.
Nevertheless, the post-Chapman decisions of the California Supreme Court offer no assurance of change in the doctrine of automatic reversal. In two eases the court has simultaneously applied the Chapman test and the rule of automatic reversal. (People v. Talley, supra, 65 Cal.2d at pp. 840-842; People v. Hines, filed Apr. 5, 1967, 66 Cal.2d 348, 354-355 [57 Cal.Rptr. 757, 425 P.2d 557].) The dual approach is workable only when both lead to the same result. At least three other decisions seem to augur continued adherence to the prejudicial error per se doctrine. (People v. Spencer, supra, 66 Cal.2d at pp. 163-165; People v. Davis, filed Mar. 14, 1967, 66 Cal.2d 175, 182 [57 Cal.Rptr. 130, 424 P.2d 682]; People v. Stout, filed Mar. 16, 1967, 66 Cal.2d 184, 195-196 [57 Cal.Rptr. 152, 424 P.2d 704].) Whatever future decisions may hold, I do not believe that California law yet permits intermediate appellate courts to apply any rule other than that of automatic reversal when Dorado-type error is present. Thus I reluctantly concur in granting the writ.

People v. Dorado, 62 Cal.2d 338, 356 [42 Cal.Rptr. 169, 398 P.2d 361]; People v. Schader, 62 Cal.2d 716, 728 [44 Cal.Rptr. 193, 401 P.2d 665], The rule of automatic reversal was subject to a narrowly defined exception where a valid confession was followed by an invalid confession. In that narrow situation inquiry into prejudice was permissible. (People v. Jacobson, 63 Cal.2d 319, 330-331 [46 Cal.Rptr. 515, 405 P.2d 555]; People v. Cotter, 63 Cal.2d 386, 398 [46 Cal.Rptr. 622, 405 P.2d 862].)

 At this point, the Chapman v. California opinion furnishes three examples—coerced confessions, right to counsel and right to an impartial judge.

Thus, In re Lopez, 62 Cal.2d 368, 377 [42 Cal.Rptr. 188, 398 P.2d 380], characterizes the Escobedo case in these terms: “The [federal Supreme] court sought to discourage oppressive police practices; it did not seek to undo the procedures of yesterday, which despite their undesirability did not necessarily cause the conviction of the innocent. ’ ’ The quoted statement aptly characterizes the case at hand. The relationship between retroactivity and reversibility becomes evident at this point. *377Perhaps the criteria of complete retroactivity should be the measuring stick of automatic reversibility. (See In re Lopez, supra, 62 Cal.2d at pp. 376-377.)