Court Opinion

ID: 9625883
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:53:59.781025+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:16.511286
License: Public Domain

SCHAUER, J.
I dissent from the order denying the petition for hearing. In my opinion a conviction which rests upon evidence of incriminating objects obtained from the body of the accused by physical abuse is as invalid as a conviction which rests upon a verbal confession extracted from him by such abuse.
‘ ‘ To extort testimony from a defendant by physical torture in the very presence of the trial tribunal is not due process. The case stands no better if torture induces an extrajudicial confession which is used as evidence in the courtroom.
“A trial dominated by mob violence in the courtroom is not such as due process demands. The case can stand no better if mob violence anterior to the trial is the inducing cause of the defendant’s alleged confession.
“If, by fraud, collusion, trickery, and subornation of perjury, on the part of those representing the state, the trial of an accused person results in his conviction, he has been denied due process of law. The case can stand no better if, by the same devices, a confession is procured, and used in the trial.
“The concept of due process would void a trial in which, by threats or promises in the presence of court and jury, a defendant was induced to testify against himself. The case can stand no better if, by resort to the same means, the defendant is induced to confess and his confession is given in evidence.” (Lisenba v. California (1941), 314 U.S. 219, 237 [62 S.Ct. 280, 86 L.Ed. 166].)
In People v. One 1941 Mercury Sedan (1946), 74 Cal.App.2d 199, 213 [168 P.2d 443], where law enforcement officials assaulted and battered accused, compelling him to vomit an incriminatory substance, the court said that the privilege against self-incrimination “protects the accused from the process of extracting from his own lips against his will an admission of guilt, but it does not extend to the exclusion of his body as evidence when such evidence may be relevent and material. The privilege is aimed at preventing the compul*150sory oral examination of the accused before or during trial. Experience of many years has demonstrated that when statements are extorted from an accused there is a strong likelihood that the extorted evidence would be unreliable. But the reason for the rule no longer exists when physical evidence is considered.” This reasoning’ appears to ignore a problem more basic and more important in legal concept than the question of the actual guilt or innocence of the accused. We are not concerned here merely with a rule designed to exclude untrustworthy evidence; we are, or should be, as in the situations described in the above quotation from the Lisenba case, concerned with the fundamental concept of due process. The requirements of due process are just as applicable to the guilty as to the innocent.
The privilege against self-incrimination protects a guilty person from being required, by orderly process, to answer questions on the ground that such answers might furnish “a link in the chain of evidence needed in a prosecution.” (Blau v. United States (1950), 340 U.S. 159 [71 S.Ct. 223, 95 L.Ed. -], 19 L.W. 4062.) The person who claims this privilege before a grand jury or a court has the opportunity to establish his right to remain silent by litigation. The defendant here had no such opportunity, Without a warrant the officers broke into his room; they assaulted and battered defendant and took him away by force; by further force he was compelled to vomit and thus to produce evidence against himself. Had the evidence forced from defendant’s lips consisted of an oral confession that he illegally possessed a drug, then, even though the sheriffs by physical violence had deprived him of his privilege against self-incrimination, he would have the protection of the rule of law which excludes coerced confessions from evidence. But because the evidence forced from his lips consisted of real objects the People of this state are permitted to base a conviction upon it. I find no valid ground of distinction between a verbal confession extracted by physical abuse and a confession wrested from defendant’s body by physical abuse.
Carter, J., concurred.