Court Opinion

ID: 9721930
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 09:12:55.366137+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:29.464153
License: Public Domain

POCHÉ, J.—I respectfully dissent.
After a jury found him guilty of the two felonies with which he was charged defendant moved for a new trial on the ground that his counsel was ineffective in failing to object to testimony of the victim which, as the trial court put it, described “a continuing course of conduct of sex acts over a several year period of time.” The trial court granted a new trial, explaining *751that if an objection had been made “I would have sustained the objection” and the evidence of other offenses would not have been admitted. Soon defendant was faced with a first amended information which charged not two (2) but one hundred eleven (111) felonies. Not surprisingly the defendant moved to dismiss the one hundred nine (109) new charges on the ground that they were brought vindictively in violation of the due process clause of both the California and United States Constitutions. As to one hundred and six (106) of the new counts that constitutional question was mooted when they were dismissed pursuant to Penal Code section 995. As to the remaining three (3) new charges, the motion was denied. The single reason given was, “I am satisfied that the District Attorney’s purpose in adding some of the counts contained in the First Amended Information was to render evidence of their commission admissible at defendant’s retrial, rather than to retaliate against defendant because defendant successfully moved for a new trial.”
Thus our context is a recharging after jeopardy has attached and a new trial granted. There is no dispute that the presumption of prosecutorial vindictiveness arose as to all but the original two counts that were the subject of the first trial. The only question is whether the trial court’s finding that the prosecutor was not subjectively vindictive is sufficient to overcome the presumption under the California Constitution, article I, sections 7 and 15.
A lot of reading is not necessary to decide this. Just one case. Last year the California Supreme Court held that not only is such evidence not sufficient to overcome the presumption it is not even relevant to the determination. (In re Bower (1985) 38 Cal.3d 865, 880, fn. 7 [215 Cal.Rptr. 267, 700 P.2d 1269].) There the high court held that the presumption of prosecutorial vindictiveness “cannot” be rebutted “by the prosecutor’s declaration that he or she was motivated by a reassessment of the evidence against the defendant rather than by any desire to punish the exercise of a protected right.” Instead, to rebut the presumption the prosecution “must demonstrate that (1) the increase in charge was justified by some objective change in circumstances or in the state of the evidence which legitimately influenced the charging process and (2) that the new information could not reasonably have been discovered at the time the prosecution exercised its discretion to bring the original charge.” (At p. 879.)
Under part one of the Bower test—some objective change in circumstances or in the state of the evidence—it is the dissent of Justice Lucas in Bower that makes most apparent what the decision holds: that “a bona fide reevaluation of evidence, following a mistrial, is itself insufficient” (at p. 882) as is the “mistrial order itself.” Given that undeniably accurate character*752ization of the holding in Bower it is difficult to understand how my majority colleagues arrive at the conclusion that an order granting a new trial qualifies.
What the California Supreme Court repeatedly spelled out in Bower is that with only one exception the criminal justice process cannot permit a prosecutor—even one acting in the best of good faith and with the purest of motives—to increase the charges against a defendant who has successfully exercised either a constitutional or a procedural right after jeopardy has attached. The reason is that a process which permitted such late charging “would have a chilling effect upon the assertion of those rights and could undermine the integrity of the entire proceeding.” (At p. 878.) That is so because if such charging were allowed the defendant would be deterred from exercising such a constitutional or procedural right. It is for this reason that the “only” exception (ibid.) allowed to this rule is one that has nothing to do with the credibility or good faith of the prosecutor but is the “situation in which the prosecuting authority can show that ‘it was impossible to proceed on the more serious charge at the outset.’” (At pp. 878-879, italics added, citations omitted.) Because impossibility is the only exception the Supreme Court held that the subjective motivation of the individual prosecutor is not relevant. (At p. 880, fn. 7.)
Here no impossibility has even been hinted at and the sole basis for the order is the trial court’s belief concerning a matter that is irrelevant: the subjective motivation of the individual prosecutor.
Because the prosecution did not rebut the presumption of prosecutorial vindictiveness which arose from its filing of more than a hundred new felony charges against defendant after he had been granted a new trial I would grant the peremptory writ ordering that all new charges contained in the first amended complaint be dismissed.
A petition for a rehearing was denied June 19, 1986. Boché, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted. Betitioner’s application for review by the Supreme Court was denied August 14, 1986.