Court Opinion

ID: 9746193
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 14:08:13.368034+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:10.774456
License: Public Domain

*1249WOODS (Fred), J., Concurring.
I agree with the opinion of the court and write separately only to emphasize, again,1 the responsibility of the district attorney to obtain valid guilty pleas and admissions.
The district attorney, by charging appellant with second degree robbery, subjected him to a five-year state prison term. By alleging two serious priors, the district attorney quintupled the stakes to twenty-five years to life.
These stakes, if nothing else, demand the attention of a competent prosecutor. The task of eliciting a valid admission is rudimentary. It has been expressly prescribed for over 25 years (Boykin v. Alabama (1969) 395 U.S. 238 [23 L.Ed.2d 274, 89 S.Ct. 1709]; In re Tahl (1969) 1 Cal.3d 122 [81 Cal.Rptr. 577, 460 P.2d 449]) and has not changed (People v. Howard, (1992) 1 Cal.4th 1132, 1175 [5 Cal.Rptr.2d 268, 824 P.2d 1315]).
Since the district attorney obtains over 80 percent of his convictions not by trial but by guilty plea and admission, self-interest should ensure mastery of this rudimentary procedure.
Apparently—if People v. Howard (see fn. 1, ante), People v. Torres (see fn. 1, ante), and the instant case are any measure—it has not.
As a consequence of the district attorney’s failure to obtain valid admissions of readily provable serious priors, appeals are filed, briefs are prepared, appellate research and record review are conducted, argument is heard, appellate opinions are written, matters are remanded to trial courts, defendants are transported from prisons to county jails to courtrooms, attorneys are appointed to represent defendants, and prior allegations are belatedly relitigated.
The only certain consequence of such district attorney failure is the squandering of precious, increasingly scarce judicial resources.
It bears repeating, “. . . the district attorney . . . ha[s] a duty to train . . . attorneys in the proper taking of guilty pleas and admissions . . . .” (People v. Howard, supra, 25 Cal.App.4th 1660, 1666 (conc. & dis. opn. of Woods (Fred), J.).)

See People v. Howard (1994) 25 Cal.App.4th 1660, 1665-1666 [31 Cal.Rptr.2d 103] (conc. & dis. opn. of Woods (Fred), J.); People v. Torres (1996) 43 Cal.App.4th 1073 [51 Cal.Rptr.2d 77] (conc. opn. of Woods (Fred), J.).