Court Opinion

ID: 9634526
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 13:16:00.307229+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:04.576040
License: Public Domain

*550SULLIVAN, J.,
concurring in the result.
Hypnosis can be a valuable investigative tool for law enforcement authorities. However, I would not allow the use of hypnotically induced identification testimony against a defendant in a criminal trial. To do so would have the defendant’s innocence or guilt depend on the jury’s speculating, on the basis of conflicting scientific-medical testimony, whether the identification was true recollection or implanted by the hypnosis. My conclusion is aptly summarized in a law review article which is cited in the majority opinion. The author is Professor Diamond, who is both a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley and a clinical professor of psychiatry at the same university at San Francisco. In his article, Inherent Problems in the Use of Pretrial Hypnosis on a Prospective Witness, 68 Cal.L.Rev. 313 (1980), he states:
I believe that once a potential witness has been hypnotized for the purpose of enhancing memory his recollections have been so contaminated that he is rendered effectively incompetent to testify. Hypnotized persons, being extremely suggestible, graft onto their memories fantasies or suggestions deliberately or unwittingly communicated by the hypnotist. After hypnosis the subject cannot differentiate between a true recollection and a fantasy or a suggested detail. Neither can any expert or the trier of fact. This risk is so great, in my view, that the use of hypnosis by police on a potential witness is tantamount to the destruction or fabrication of evidence. [68 Cal.L.Rev. at 314]
Because of the inherent unreliability of hypnotically induced identification testimony, I would bar its use against a defendant in a criminal trial.
Justice CLIFFORD joins in this opinion.
SULLIVAN and CLIFFORD, JJ., concurring in the result.
For affirmance — Chief Justice WILENTZ and Justices SULLIVAN, PASHMAN, CLIFFORD, SCHREIBER, HANDLER and POLLOCK — 7.
For reversal — None.