Court Opinion

ID: 9731679
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:54:15.177385+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:20.338287
License: Public Domain

THOMPSON, J.
I concur in the typically clear analysis of controlling precedent in the opinion of Justice Lillie and consequently in its result. This concurring opinion is impelled by the thought that a rift has developed in the seamless web of California decisional law which should be noted on the possibility that its presence may induce our Supreme Court to reconsider its decisions in People v. Bracamonte (1975) 15 Cal.3d 394 [124 Cal.Rptr. 528, 540 P.2d 624], and People v. Scott (1978) 21 Cal.3d 284 [145 Cal.Rptr. 876, 578 P.2d 123],
Bracamonte holds that the use of an emetic by medical personnel to cause a suspect to vomit is such a violation of “ ‘integrity of an *955individual’s person’ ” as to render the process the equivalent of an illegal search where another alternative to obtain the evidence, there the course of nature, is present. (People v. Bracamonte, supra, 15 Cal.3d at p. 404.) In Scott, our high court held that a bodily intrusion in the form of a physician-administered prostate massage to the rectum of a suspect to obtain a semen sample is a “significant invasion of both dignity and privacy . . . [involving ... the most intimate of bodily functions ... as extreme as the forced regurgitation at issue in Bracamonte and Rochin [v. California (1952) 342 U.S. 165 (96 L.Ed. 183, 72 S.Ct. 205, 25 A.L.R.2d 1396)]. . . .” (People v. Scott, supra, 21 Cal.3d at p. 294.) Hence Scott bars evidence of guilt, there indicia of a venereal disease transmitted to a victim of child molestation, obtained in the process.
In contrast, our Supreme Court held some five weeks after its decision in Scott that a defendant’s conduct in assaulting a female victim of a burglary by rape, forcible sodomy, and forcible oral copulation, so as to cause great psychological trauma manifested in part by vomiting, could not reasonably have been intended by the Legislature to have been encompassed within the definition of infliction of “great bodily injury” as that phrase is used to enhance the penalty for burglary. (People v. Caudillo (1978) 21 Cal.3d 562, 582 [146 Cal.Rptr. 859, 580 P.2d 274].)
The invasion upon the “dignity and privacy” of the female victim in Caudillo seems to me to be no less an intrusion upon her “most intimate of bodily functions” than was the prostate massage administered to the suspect in Scott. The regurgitation experienced by the victim in Caudillo by the defendant’s forcing her to orally copulate him seems to me to be no less traumatic to the victim than was the regurgitation by medically approved means imposed upon the suspect in Bracamonte.
I hence see no way in which Caudillo can be reconciled with Bracamonte and Scott. Certainly psychic trauma can cause as great or greater injury to the body than can purely physical trauma. So long as the conduct in Caudillo is characterized as of a nature which the Legislature could not reasonably have intended to be included in the definition of infliction of “great bodily injury,” conduct of a less drastic character causing results similar to those described in Bracamonte and Scott seemingly cannot be characterized as shocking to the conscience to the extent it is so described in Bracamonte and Scott.
We, of course, are bound by Bracamonte and Scott as they protect persons suspected of crimes from police conduct seeking relevant *956evidence of guilt. We are equally bound by Caudillo as it protects defendants from enhancement of a prison term. I suggest, however, that Caudillo, which post-dates Bracamonte and Scott, appears to require that the earlier cases be reconsidered.