Court Opinion

ID: 9787097
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 00:10:39.957013+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:52.186812
License: Public Domain

CHIN, J.
I concur with the holding that Penal Code section 784.7 (section 784.7) comports with state and federal constitutional requirements. I agree that the Sixth Amendment’s vicinage provision does not apply to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, and that the statute does not violate the state Constitution, specifically California Constitution, article I, section 16.1 write to explain further why I believe section 784.7 is valid under the state Constitution.
Although the California Constitution contains no specific reference to a right of vicinage, case law has interpreted article I, section 16, which gives defendants the right to a jury trial, as including by implication the right to trial by a jury selected from the vicinage or county. (E.g., People v. Hill (1992) 3 Cal.4th 959, 984 [13 Cal.Rptr.2d 475, 839 P.2d 984].) “This section guarantees the right of jury trial as it existed at common law when the Constitution was adopted in 1849.” (Dorsey v. Barba (1952) 38 Cal.2d 350, 355 [240 P.2d 604].) But this guarantee does not mean that all features of the jury trial right must remain exactly as they were in 1849. The right remains flexible enough to adapt to changed circumstances. “The constitutional guarantee does not require adherence to the letter of common law practice, and new procedures better suited to the efficient administration of justice may be substituted if there is no impairment of the substantial features of a jury trial.” (Id. at p. 356.)
Section 784.7 provides that when a defendant is charged with more than one of certain crimes, generally sexual assault, child abuse, and domestic violence, committed against the same victim in more than one county, all of the charges may be tried together in any one of those counties. Thus, in this case, the charges that defendant committed numerous crimes against his two young children may be tried together in Riverside County, rather than some in Riverside County and one, involving his daughter, in Santa Clara County. Section 784.7 does not dispense with vicinage requirements; trial must still be held in a county where at least one of the charged crimes occurred. Thus, the issue before us is narrow: whether all of the crimes involving the same victim and defendant may be tried together where at least one of those *1080crimes occurred, or whether there must be a separate trial in each county. The answer is clear; the right to a jury trial does not require the state to move the defendant, victim, and other witnesses from county to county for trial after trial, limited only by the number of counties in which the crimes occurred. These crimes may be tried together while preserving the substantial features of a jury trial.
Circumstances have changed in California dramatically since 1849 as they relate to the question where a trial may and should be held. Much has happened in the century and a half since our Constitution was adopted. Improvements in transportation and communication have made the joint trial of related crimes that cross county lines much easier than formerly. The railroad has been developed, the automobile and airplane have been invented and are widely used, and roads are vastly improved. The telephone has been invented and has come into common use; we are now in the age of the Internet. Our Constitution is flexible enough to adapt to these changes. It does not force us, at the dawn of the 21st century, to remain in the 19th century. The Legislature may enact reasonable reforms to take advantage of the fact that a joint trial is now more practical, while still preserving the substance of a jury trial.
The Legislature has responded to modern times by reducing the unavoidable burden of multiple trials on the judicial system, the public, the parties, and, above all, on victims like the six-year-old daughter here. Victims of crime, including children, and victims of domestic violence, must appear in court to confront the defendant and be subjected to cross-examination, even though that experience is often difficult and traumatic. (See, e.g., Alvarado v. Superior Court (2000) 23 Cal.4th 1121 [99 Cal.Rptr.2d 149, 5 P.3d 203].) But nothing in our Constitution forces these victims to do so repeatedly in county after county, trial after trial. Not only is joint trial of related crimes that cross county lines practical today, the Legislature may reasonably conclude it is also eminently desirable.
The legal climate has also changed as it relates to the right of vicinage. As the Court of Appeal below noted, “the original purpose of the vicinage requirement was to ensure that a case was heard by jurors who were familiar with the parties and the locality, and could apply their own personal knowledge in evaluating the testimony or other evidence. Nowadays, of course, the goal is to avoid a jury with such knowledge in favor of a set of 12 tabulae rasae in the jury box, applying only their common sense and intuition.” (See Hernandez v. Municipal Court (1989) 49 Cal.3d 713, 719-720 [263 Cal.Rptr. 513, 781 P.2d 547].) The goal today is fully served by allowing a Riverside County jury to render a verdict on a series of crimes, some committed in that county and some committed elsewhere.
*1081Joint trial in a single county is also fair to defendants. Although defendant here complains about being tried far from the locale of the crimes, the issue is not whether he may be tried in Riverside County, for he surely may, at least for the crimes in that county. The issue is solely whether he may be tried for all of these related crimes in Riverside County, or must be tried in Riverside County for the crimes in that county and then tried separately in Santa Clara County. The Legislature can reasonably—and constitutionally— conclude that one trial, rather than multiple trials, one after the other, fully protects a defendant’s legitimate rights.
As the majority points out, a single crime involving multiple counties has long been triable in any county in which part of that crime occurred. For example, a murder charge may be tried in the county where the fatal injury was inflicted, or the victim died, or the body was found. (Pen. Code, § 790.) Obviously, if a homicide case is tried where the body was found but not where the victim was killed, the trial would not be in the vicinage of all the criminal events. It is but a small step, and a logical one, to go from allowing a single crime that crosses county lines to be tried in any of those counties to allowing a series of related crimes committed in multiple counties—such as those involving the same defendant and victim—also to be tried in one of those counties.
Accordingly, I conclude that section 784.7 is constitutional. Because this case involves only the validity of that single statute, I express no view on the outer limits of the Legislature’s authority to permit crimes committed in separate counties to be tried together. Section 784.7 comes within those limits whatever they may be.
Brown, J., concurred.