Court Opinion

ID: 9580196
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:03:03.550865+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:07.719385
License: Public Domain

KENNARD, J., Dissenting.
I do not agree that the erroneous admission of a criminal defendant’s coerced confession may be excused as harmless. When law enforcement officers have resorted to physical or mental abuse or other improper pressure tactics to extort a confession from an unwilling suspect, the values at stake—respect for the dignity and autonomy of the individual, and for the inviolability of the human personality—are too important to relegate to the uncertain protection afforded by any harmless error standard.
For some 200 years, courts in England and the United States have refused to allow prosecutors to prove criminal charges by means of confessions obtained by coercion. Originally, the basis of the rule was that coerced confessions were unreliable because an innocent person may confess falsely to escape intolerable pain and misery. (See 1 McCormick on Evidence (4th ed. 1992) § 146, p. 564; Paulsen, The Fourteenth Amendment and the Third Degree (1954) 6 Stan.L.Rev. 411, 414.) But for many years now untrustworthiness has ceased to be the primary reason that this country’s courts give for excluding coerced confessions. (See Colorado v. Connelly (1986) 479 U.S. 157, 167 [93 L.Ed.2d 473, 484-485, 107 S.Ct. 515]; Rogers v. Richmond (1961) 365 U.S. 534, 543-544 [5 L.Ed.2d 760, 767-768, 81 S.Ct. 735]; People v. Ditson (1962) 57 Cal.2d 415, 436-439 [20 Cal.Rptr. 165, 369 P.2d 714].) Such confessions, regardless of their truth, are barred from evidence because the means used to obtain them is fundamentally irreconcilable with the Anglo-American system of justice.
Chief Justice Earl Warren put it this way: “The abhorrence of society to the use of involuntary confessions does not turn alone on their inherent untrustworthiness. It also turns on the deep-rooted feeling that the police must obey the law while enforcing the law; that in the end life and liberty *555can be as much endangered from illegal methods used to convict those thought to be criminals as from the actual criminals themselves.” (Spano v. New York (1959) 360 U.S. 315, 320-321 [3 L.Ed.2d 1265, 1269-1271, 79 S.Ct. 1202].) Stated another way, “ ‘the considerations which call for the exclusion of a coerced confession are those which call for the protection of every citizen, whether he be in fact guilty or not guilty.’ ” (Jackson v. Denno (1964) 378 U.S. 368, 382-383, fn. 10 [12 L.Ed.2d 908, 918-919, 84 S.Ct. 1774, 1 A.L.R.3d 1205].)
Perhaps not coincidentally, the realization that exclusion of coerced confessions served to preserve core democratic values in this country took hold at a time when modern police states denying the dignity and worth of the individual were arising in other parts of the world. This contrast between the ideals of a free society and the practices of totalitarian forms of government has been expressly noted by the United States Supreme Court: “The Constitution of the United States stands as a bar against the conviction of any individual in an American court by means of a coerced confession. There have been, and are now, certain foreign nations with governments dedicated to an opposite policy: governments which convict individuals with testimony obtained by police organizations possessed of an unrestrained power to seize persons suspected of crimes against the state, hold them in secret custody, and wring from them confessions by physical or mental torture. So long as the Constitution remains the basic law of our Republic, America will not have that kind of government.” (Ashcraft v. Tennessee (1944) 322 U.S. 143, 155 [88 L.Ed. 1192, 1200, 64 S.Ct. 921], fn. omitted; see also, United States v. Grunewald (2d Cir. 1956) 233 F.2d 556, 581-582 (dis. opn. of Frank, J.), revd. 353 U.S. 391 (1957) [1 L.Ed.2d 931].)
In a more reflective vein, United States Supreme Court Justice Frankfurter has explained why coercive police practices such as prolonged and relentless interrogation, food and sleep deprivation, sensory and physical isolation, and similar human indignities are incompatible with the Anglo-American system of criminal justice: “To turn the detention of an accused into a process of wrenching from him evidence which could not be extorted in open court with all its safeguards, is so grave an abuse of the power of arrest as to offend the procedural standards of due process, [f] This is so because it violates the underlying principle in our enforcement of the criminal law. Ours is the accusatorial as opposed to the inquisitorial system. Such has been the characteristic of Anglo-American criminal justice since it freed itself from practices borrowed by the Star Chamber from the Continent whereby an accused was interrogated in secret for hours on end. [Citation.] Under our system society carries the burden of proving its charge against the accused not out of his own mouth. It must establish its case, not by interrogation of *556the accused even under judicial safeguards, but by evidence independently secured through skillful investigation. ‘The law will not suffer a prisoner to be made the deluded instrument of his own conviction.’ 2 Hawkins, Pleas of the Crown, c. 46, § 34 (8th ed., 1824). The requirement of specific charges, their proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the protection of the accused from confessions extorted through whatever form of police pressures, the right to a prompt hearing before a magistrate, the right to assistance of counsel, to be supplied by government when circumstances make it necessary, the duty to advise an accused of his constitutional rights—these are all characteristics of the accusatorial system and manifestations of its demands. Protracted, systematic and uncontrolled subjection of an accused to interrogation by the police for the purpose of eliciting disclosures or confessions is subversive of the accusatorial system. It is the inquisitorial system without its safeguards. For while under that system the accused is subjected to judicial interrogation, he is protected by the disinterestedness of the judge in the presence of counsel. [Citation.].” (Watts v. Indiana (1949) 338 U.S. 49, 54-55 [93 L.Ed. 1801, 1806-1807, 69 S.Ct. 1347]; see also, Miller v. Fenton (1985) 474 U.S. 104, 110 [88 L.Ed.2d 405, 410-411, 106 S.Ct. 445].)
Because the use of coerced confessions is irreconcilable with our system of justice, such use constitutes a denial of due process of law under both the federal and state Constitutions. (U.S. Const., 14th Amend.; Cal. Const., art. I, § 15; Miller v. Fenton, supra, 474 U.S. 104, 109-110 [88 L.Ed.2d at pp. 410-411]; Jackson v. Demo, supra, 378 U.S. 368, 376-377 [12 L.Ed.2d at pp. 915-916]; Watts v. Indiana, supra, 338 U.S. 49, 54 [93 L.Ed.2d at p. 1806]; People v. Benson (1990) 52 Cal.3d 754, 778 [276 Cal.Rptr. 827, 802 P.2d 330]; People v. Sanchez (1969) 70 Cal.2d 562, 571 [75 Cal.Rptr. 642, 451 P.2d 74]; People v. Ditson, supra, 57 Cal.2d 415, 439; People v. Trout (1960) 54 Cal.2d 576, 583 [6 Cal.Rptr. 759, 354 P.2d 231, 80 A.L.R.2d 1418]; People v. Berve (1958) 51 Cal.2d 286, 290 [332 P.2d 97].) Indeed, the due process clause bars all police methods of evidence gathering that “shock[] the conscience” and are “offensive to human dignity.” (Rochin v. California (1952) 342 U.S. 165, 172, 174 [96 L.Ed. 183, 190-191, 72 S.Ct. 205, 25 A.L.R.2d 1396].) When faced with evidence that police in this state, seeking to recover capsules they believed to be illegal drugs, had forced a suspect to vomit, the United States Supreme Court in Rochin recognized the parallel to its earlier rulings barring use of coerced confessions: “It would be a stultification of the responsibility which the course of constitutional history has cast upon this Court to hold that in order to convict a man the police cannot extract by force what is in his mind but can extract what is in his stomach. [Fn. omitted.]” (Id. at p. 173 [96 L.Ed.2d at pp. 190-191].) To permit use of either form of coerced evidence against the accused “would be to afford brutality the cloak of law. Nothing would be more calculated to *557discredit law and thereby to brutalize the temper of a society.” (Id. at pp. 173-174 [96 L.Ed.2d at pp. 190-191].)
As the realization grew among the judiciary that the use of coerced confessions violated the most cherished values of our democratic system of justice, it became widely accepted that error of such fundamental importance could never be harmless. (See People v. Speaks (1957) 156 Cal.App.2d 25, 40 [319 P.2d 709] [“The complaint is not of the commission of mere error, but of a wrong so fundamental that it rendered the conviction wholly void.”].) This has long been the California rule, often repeated and often applied. (See, e.g., People v. Sanchez, supra, 70 Cal.2d 562, 576-577; People v. Matteson (1964) 61 Cal.2d 466, 469-470 [39 Cal.Rptr. 1, 393 P.2d 161]; People v. Brommel (1961) 56 Cal.2d 629, 634 [15 Cal.Rptr. 909, 364 P.2d 845]; People v. Trout, supra, 54 Cal.2d 576, 585; People v. Berve, supra, 51 Cal.2d 286, 290; People v. Hinds (1984) 154 Cal.App.3d 222, 241 [201 Cal.Rptr. 104]; People v. Rodriguez (1943) 58 Cal.App.2d 415, 425 [136 P.2d 626].)
There are several reasons why the rule should be acknowledged and applied in this case, not all of which are of equal weight.
First, the rule of automatic reversal is existing California law. Under the doctrine of stare decisis,1 which “expresses a fundamental policy of common law jurisdictions” and promotes “certainty, predictability and stability in the law” (9 Witkin, Cal. Procedure (3d ed. 1985) Appeal, § 758, p. 726), this court should ordinarily adhere to rules declared in its own prior decisions. “Without a proper adherence to the rule [of stare decisis], no certainty of adjudication can ever be attained, and confusion and doubt must invariably follow every change of the Bench that occurs by death or otherwise.” (People ex rel. Vermule v. Bigler (1855) 5 Cal. 23, 25 (separate opn. of Murray, C. J.).) Stare decisis “permits society to presume that bedrock principles are founded in the law rather than in the proclivities of individuals, and thereby contributes to the integrity of our constitutional system of government, both in appearance and in fact.” (Vasquez v. Hillery (1986) 474 U.S. 254, 265-266 [88 L.Ed.2d 598, 610-611, 106 S.Ct. 617].) Stability in the law is specially needed when, as in the treatment of coerced confessions, the rule at issue affects fundamental rights and democratic values that define the nature of our society.
A change in course by the United States Supreme Court, interpreting the federal Constitution, is no justification for a change in this court’s interpretation of the distinct provisions of our state Constitution. This court should *558disabuse itself of the notion that in matters of constitutional law and criminal procedure we must always play Ginger Rogers to the high court’s Fred Astaire—always following, never leading. The rights guaranteed by the state Constitution “are not dependent on those guaranteed by the United States Constitution.” (Cal. Const., art. I, § 24; see Raven v. Deukmejian (1990) 52 Cal.3d 336, 351-355 [276 Cal.Rptr. 326, 801 P.2d 1077].) We have the power and the duty to give independent meaning and force to the provisions of our state charter.
Second, automatic reversal prevents erosion of the harmless error standard. Faced with a record containing persuasive but not overwhelming evidence that the accused is guilty of a repulsive crime, the urge to uphold the conviction, so that the crime may not go unpunished, is difficult to resist. It has become increasingly apparent that this court, in particular, is not immune to the siren song of harmless error. (See, e.g., In re Jackson (1992) 3 Cal.4th 578, 617 [11 Cal.Rptr.2d 531, 835 P.2d 371] (dis. opn. of Mosk, J.); In re Marquez (1992) 1 Cal.4th 584, 610 [3 Cal.Rptr.2d 727, 822 P.2d 435] (dis. opn. of Kennard, J.).) Abandoning the automatic reversal rule for erroneous use of coerced confessions will require California appellate courts to apply a harmless error standard to a class of cases in which conscientious application of the standard should almost invariably lead to reversal of the conviction. This will multiply the occasions in which courts are tempted to apply the standard disingenuously in order to save the conviction of an apparently guilty defendant. The probable result, I fear, is that the doctrine of harmless error will be repeatedly stretched beyond the breaking point. Distorted and degraded in this way, the standard will cease to provide meaningful guidance for appellate courts.
Third, compelling reversal whenever the trial court has failed to exclude a defendant’s coerced confession is a simple bright-line rule that conserves appellate resources. The rule saves a reviewing court the labor of searching the trial record to evaluate the probable effect of the unconstitutional evidence on the jury’s verdict. The vast majority of convictions, as the majority acknowledges, will not survive such scrutiny in any event. By avoiding case-by-case prejudice evaluations, automatic reversal for coerced confessions “simplifies and expedites the review of criminal cases, for evidence obtained at the expense of constitutional or other basic guarantees is almost invariably prejudicial.” (Gibbs, Prejudicial Error: Admissions and Exclusions of Evidence in the Federal Courts (1957) 3 Vill. L.Rev. 48, 68.)
Fourth, abandoning the rule of automatic reversal sends the wrong signal to police, to prosecutors, and to trial courts.
*559The rule that the admission of a coerced confession results inexorably in the reversal of a conviction has served to impress upon the police the judiciary’s resolve that the use of overbearing tactics to secure a confession will not be tolerated. Abrogation of that stern rule, which has been in force for so long, will give an impression to those charged with the arduous daily challenge of law enforcement that courts are taking a somewhat more indulgent view of abusive interrogation practices.
For prosecutors the question normally is not whether to employ coercive methods in questioning an accused, but whether to offer in evidence a confession obtained by such methods. If the rule of automatic reversal is abandoned, “the problem for the prosecution concerned about reversal would not be to avoid the use of coerced confessions but only to insure their verification by independent evidence. The prosecution might then be encouraged to supplement other evidence by introducing a coerced confession in order to guarantee a conviction. On review, it could defend the conviction on the ground that it was warranted by the independent evidence.” (Meltzer, Involuntary Confessions: The Allocation of Responsibility Between Judge and Jury (1954) 21 U.Chi.L.Rev. 317, 354; see also, Note, Arizona v. Fulminante: Extending Harmless-Error Analysis to the Erroneous Admission of Coerced Confessions (1991) 66 Tul. L.Rev. 581, 591; Kamisar, What Is an “Involuntary” Confession? Some Comments on Inbau and Reid’s Criminal Interrogation and Confessions (1963) 17 Rutgers L.Rev. 728, 737.)
Trial courts, anxious to preserve the products of their labor, are strongly motivated to avoid the commission of any error requiring automatic reversal. Use of a harmless error standard, by contrast, “provides another reduction in pressure on the trial court’s scrutiny of the use of the coerced confession or its fruits.” (Bloch, Police Officers Accused of Crime: Prosecutorial and Fifth Amendment Risks Posed by Police-Elicited “Use Immunized” Statements, 1992 U. Ill. L.Rev. 625, 656.)
The fifth and most important reason to preserve the automatic reversal standard is that it is the only standard that gives sufficient weight to the primal constitutional interest at stake. It has been written that “respect for the individual” is “the lifeblood of the law.” (Illinois v. Allen (1970) 397 U.S. 337, 351 [25 L.Ed.2d 353, 363-364, 90 S.Ct. 1057] (conc. opn. of Brennan, J.).) In no area is this value tested more severely, nor is its implementation more critical, than in the official treatment of those accused of crime. In this context, “respect for the individual” demands, among other things, that agents of law enforcement refrain from all forms of trickery, coercion, and overreaching in the questioning of the accused.
*560Because the rule the majority adopts must inevitably weaken respect for this most fundamental constitutional value and increase the temptation to commit or to condone practices which undermine that value, I dissent.
Mosk, J., concurred.

“Stare decisis, et non quieta movere, meaning ‘to adhere to precedents, and not to unsettle things which are established,’ is one of the most important maxims of the law.” (Sunderlin, Stare Decisis (1939) 14 State Bar J. 175.)