Court Opinion

ID: 9547258
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:44:19.268501+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:17:32.225444
License: Public Domain

CLARK, J.
I dissent. The Legislature’s purposes in enacting the diversion program are not served by permitting a defendant to exhaust such pretrial remedies as a suppression motion before consenting to diversion.
One of two fundamental purposes of the diversion program is to “identify the experimental or tentative user before he becomes deeply involved with drugs, to show him the error of bis ways by prompt exposure to *161educational and counseling programs in his own community, and to restore him to productive citizenship without the lasting stigma of a criminal conviction.” (People v. Superior Court (On Tai Ho) (1974) 11 Cal.3d 59, 61-62 [113 Cal.Rptr. 21, 520 P.2d 405].) Today’s decision frustrates this purpose by encouraging a potential addict to refuse participation in the program unless and until his suppression motion is denied and the denial upheld on pretrial review by extraordinary writ. However, in reality, his search and seizure claim has no bearing on his need for treatment.
The other fundamental purpose of the program is to reduce “the clogging of the criminal justice system by drug abuse prosecutions and thus [enable] the courts to devote their limited time and resources to cases requiring full criminal processing.” (People v. Superior Court (On Tai Ho), supra, 11 Cal.3d at pp. 61-62; fn. omitted.) However, if a defendant is given the alternative of entering the diversion program following denial of his suppression motion in the superior court, conservation of judicial resources will be negligible because defendants in drug prosecutions usually plead guilty following unsuccessful suppression motions—legality of the search and seizure being the only issue worth contesting in most cases.
McComb, J., concurred.