Court Opinion

ID: 9530473
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:00:07.549451+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:07.404611
License: Public Domain

UDALL and PHELPS, Justices
(dissenting) .
We are firmly of the opinion defendant received a fair and impartial trial and that hence the judgment of conviction should be affirmed.
The reversal, by our brethren of the majority, rests upon two grounds: First, the admission into evidence of the confession. The majority hold it to have been reversible error for the trial court to permit Governor McFarland to testify before the jury to the confession made in his presence by the defendant for the reason that a proper foundation had not been laid.
The governing principles of law with reference to the necessary steps, preliminary to the admission of a confession, are well settled in this jurisdiction—our latest expression thereon being State v. Pulliam, Ariz., 349 P.2d 781. While the burden was on the State to prove the confession was voluntary, all it needed to do, initially at least, was to make a prima facie case. This was done. Certainly the learned trial court concluded that this preliminary question of law and fact was established to its satisfaction. It is our considered opinion that the testimony adduced was amply sufficent to sustain such a finding. While it doubtless would have been the safer practice for the prosecution to have called the Attorney General to relate what occurred in his private interview with defendant, still as a matter of law, in our opinion, it was not *58fatal for the State to fail to do so. At that stage, faced with a prima facie showing, the defendant had some responsibility if he hoped to have the confession excluded. It must be remembered a preliminary hearing on this matter was being held in chambers—out of the presence of the jury— hence, if the claim of error now asserted was being made in good faith the defendant could—without jeopardy to himself— have testified to the court and shown what promises or threats were made as an inducement to his confession. This he did not do.
The means were equally available to both the State and defendant preliminarily to present to the trial court the issue of fact, if there was one, whether defendant’s confession was freely and voluntarily made. No such issue of fact was presented to the court and it did the only thing it could do, that is, admit the confession in evidence and submit to the jury, under proper instructions, the question of whether it was freely and voluntarily made. Zuckerman v. People, 213 Ill. 114, 72 N.E. 741. This was in strict compliance with our holdings in Galas v. State, 32 Ariz. 195, 256 P. 1053; Kermeen v. State, 17 Ariz. 263, 151 P. 738, and State v. Thomas, 78 Ariz. 52, 275 P.2d 408.
It is noteworthy that the Chief Executive—an experienced lawyer in his own right'—went the second mile in warning defendant of his rights when he said:
“Crosby, you realize that things you are saying now could be used against you in court, and do you now want to make that statement, realizing that it could be used against you?
Defendant answered:
“Yes, it is the truth; and you don’t know what a load it is off of my mind and what a load I have been carrying.”
Certainly no undue advantage was taken of defendant. The objection now urged,, we feel, is supertechnical, and without substance.
Secondly, the restrictive cross-examination of Sam Deutsch who was charged jointly with defendant in the case before the court is held to be reversible error. Counsel for defendant presented to the trial' court twenty-one written questions to be asked Deutsch on cross-examination for the avowed purpose of refuting the opening statement to the jury by counsel for the State, to wit: “that it would prove Mr. Holden guilty by proving that he was the chief right-of-way agent.” The statement of counsel, of course, is not evidence—neither is it a correct statement of any rule of evidence. Upon motion such a statement would no doubt have been stricken, but it is not subject to refutation by cross-examination of a codefendant or accomplice or anyone else until evidence is introduced to support it. Later counsel asked leave to add that he proposed to ask said ques*59tions for the purpose of impeachment. This Tequest was granted.
The questions largely consisted of inquiries into similar crimes claimed to have been committed by Deutsch and one Kelly Moore which occurred more than two years previous to the date of the crime charged in the instant case. Holden succeeded Moore as chief right-of-way agent in January 1955 and he was charged with presenting the false claim involved here in January 1957.
The court, in the absence of the jury, ruled that four of the 21 questions could be asked and answered but that the remaining 17 questions were improper. Petulantly, counsel for defendant then did not choose to even ask the four questions. In other words, his actions amounted to a withdrawal of approved questions 14, 16, 17 and 20.
We believe the reasonable inference to be drawn from the attitude of counsel for the defense is that if he could not propound all of the 21 questions he would not propound any. The four questions the court offered to permit him to ask were direct inquiries as to whether it was not a fact that he and Kelly Moore actually committed the crime for which Holden was then being tried. The majority of the 21 questions were, in our view, clearly not admissible for any purpose. There were however three or four questions, in addition to the ones to which the court offered to permit answers which should have been allowed by the court touching upon the animus of Deutsch toward Holden and although it was error not to allow them to be asked, it was not reversible error in our opinion to refuse it.
We have no quarrel with the rule stated by the majority that counsel for defendant should be given a wide latitude in the cross-examination of a codefendant in a criminal case who has turned State’s evidence against defendant, but we do not agree with the application of the rule as the majority seek to apply it in this case. Certainly it cannot be construed as a license to violate well-established rules of evidence. Impeachment must be bottomed upon something more substantial than the insinuations of the cross-examiner; nor can it be used to throw suspicion upon someone not before the court.
Our Constitution, Art. 6, § 22 provides that:
“ * * * No cause shall be reversed for technical error in pleading or proceedings when upon the whole case it shall appear that substantial justice has been done.”
We believe no one can read the uncontradicted record of “skulduggery” disclosed in this case without concluding that substantial justice has been done. The judgment therefore should be affirmed.