Court Opinion

ID: 9792080
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:22:46.480083+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:05.714685
License: Public Domain

SCHAUER, J., Dissenting.
In my opinion the record sustains the initial determination of the trial judge and the subsequent implied determination of the jury that defendant’s *587confession was voluntary. It does not appear as a matter of law that the police were without justification in taking Mrs. Trout into custody or that they did so in order to elicit a confession from defendant by the use of official threats and promises that her release would depend upon such confession. Rather, Mrs. Trout’s original false and inconsistent statements as to the whereabouts of defendant and Hecht at the time of the crimes, and as to the extent of their association, were probable cause for regarding her as an accessory to a kidnaping and robbery for which she knew her husband was under arrest (Pen. Code, §32; see People v. Garnett (1900), 129 Cal. 364, 366 [61 P. 1114]) or perhaps even as being herself guilty of complicity in the principal crimes.
Whatever Mrs. Trout’s motive for lying to the officers1 (the evidence on this issue is conflicting) its obviously intended effect was to aid her husband to avoid prosecution. Thus in the early hours of December 24 at her home she was committing the offense of being an accessory in the presence of the officers and they could and properly did arrest her.
The legality as to Mrs. Trout of her subsequent detention is of no concern here. What is of concern, in my view, is that there is evidence that such detention was proper in its inception and that the record does not compel a determination that at some time during its course the police came to the conclusion that Mrs. Trout was no longer (in the language of Lieutenant Murray’s testimony) “a suspect in this case” but, despite this conclusion, continued to hold her (in the language of the majority, p. 584, ante) “for the purpose of securing a confession from defendant.”
I recognize that there is evidence, some of it uncontradieted, that the police made representations, express and implied, that defendant’s wife would be released if defendant described his participation in the kidnaping and robbery. But the trial judge and the jury presumably considered these representations of the police in their context. As defendant knew from the interrogation of the officers, they were investigating crimes *588committed by a group of conspirators which, according to the victims’ statements to the police, included Hecht, a man who accompanied Hecht at the time of the crimes and whom Hecht called Ralph, and a man referred to by Hecht and Ralph in the victims ’ presence but not seen by them. The officers had ample cause to believe that defendant was one of the conspirators and naturally (and properly, in the performance of their duty) wished to know whether his wife was also a conspirator. Because of the inconsistencies and falsehoods in both defendant’s and his wife’s statements, the officers had reason to doubt defendant’s and his wife’s declarations that she was at a church party when the crimes were committed. A description by defendant of his own role in the crimes would aid the officers to determine whether Mrs. Trout had participated therein. (In this connection, because of the majority’s emphasis on the lack of evidence that the police made any independent investigation of the truth of Mrs. Trout’s statements that she was at church at the time of the crimes, it is noted that she could have aided or encouraged their commission even if she was elsewhere when the criminal plans were carried out.)
In the foregoing circumstances the triers of fact could determine that defendant understood the officers’ representations concerning his wife to mean that she would be released if he gave a credible account of his criminal activity which would also show in the light of the investigation already made, or to be made, that she was not involved; the triers of fact were not required as a matter of law to believe that the officers intended, or that defendant thought they proposed, to make Mrs. Trout’s release mechanically dependent solely upon defendant’s making any sort of purported confession.
Further, I conclude that the record as a whole does not impel the determination that the representations of the police as to the release of Mrs. Trout were inherently coercive so as to vitiate defendant’s confession. (See People v. Matlock (1959), 51 Cal.2d 682, 697 [22] [336 P.2d 505].)
Since I am of the opinion that the record shows no reversible error or miscarriage of justice (Cal. Const., art. VI, § 4½) I would affirm the judgment.
McComb, J., concurred.

The majority (p. 584, ante) say that “Such inconsistent answers as she gave could well have been the result of the natural inclination of a wife to protect her husband. ’ ’ There is hearsay testimony of an officer that another officer said that he asked Mrs. Trout why she told so many lies and she replied that defendant wanted her to do so. Mrs. Trout testified that Hecht had told her that he participated in the robbery and kidnaping, instructed her to say that he was at the Trout house during the evening of those crimes, and stated that “if I didn’t he would blow my brains out ’ ’; and that she lied to the police because of that threat, not knowing that Hecht was dead.