Court Opinion

ID: 9723739
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 10:29:37.215306+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:51.444550
License: Public Domain

SIMS, J.
 I concur in nearly all aspects of Justice Carr’s opinion. I write only to add my view that the rule of People v. *603Jimenez (1978) 21 Cal.3d 595 [147 Cal.Rptr. 172, 580 P.2d 672], requiring the People to prove the voluntariness of a confession beyond a reasonable doubt, is required by article I, section 15 of the California Constitution.1
For reasons stated in Justice Carr’s opinion, I agree that the privilege contained in Evidence Code section 940 survives enactment of Proposition 8 and applies to extrajudicial statements.
Evidence Code section 940 provides that “7b the extent that such privilege exists under the Constitution of the United States or the State of California, a person has a privilege to refuse to disclose any matter that may tend to incriminate him.” (Italics added; see Ramona R. v. Superior Court (1985) 37 Cal.3d 802, 808 [210 Cal.Rptr. 204, 693 P.2d 789].)
The crucial question, then, is whether the Jimenez rule is required by the state constitutional privilege so that the rule exists “under ... the Constitution of . . . the State of California.” (Evid. Code, § 940.) In Jimenez, our Supreme Court held the reasonable doubt standard is required in California as a judicially declared rule of criminal procedure. (P. 605.) The court found it unnecessary to determine whether article I, section 15 of the state Constitution compels application of that standard in order to protect the important values embodied therein. (Ibid.) However, in my view, recent cases of our Supreme Court leave no doubt that the Jimenez /rule is of constitutional origin. The handwriting on the wall is written too large.
In Ramona R. v. Superior Court, supra, our Supreme Court recently resolved a closely analogous question: whether, following Proposition 8, the People were still precluded from using at trial statements made by the minor at a prior fitness hearing. (37 Cal.3d at p. 804.) In arriving at the conclusion the People were precluded, the court placed crucial reliance on People v. Coleman (1975) 13 Cal.3d 867 [120 Cal.Rptr. 384, 533 P.2d 1024], where the court had, as in Jimenez, adopted a judicially declared rule prohibiting use at trial of a defendant’s statements made at a prior probation revocation proceeding. (Ramona R., supra, 37 Cal.3d at pp. 809-810.) The Ramona R. court held the policies underlying Coleman demonstrated that, even though the Coleman rule had not been based on the state Constitution when promulgated, “because we deemed such a determination to be unnecessary” (id., at p. 809), the rule was of constitutional origin. (Ibid.) Recently, in People v. Weaver (1985) 39 Cal.3d 654 [217 Cal.Rptr. 245, 703 P.2d 1139], the court held that the Coleman rule itself survived Proposition 8. (P. 660.)
*604Since the policies underlying the Coleman rule and the Jimenez rule are nearly identical, there is no persuasive reason to deny that Jimenez's true parentage is found in the California Constitution.
Thus, the Coleman rule was adopted in part to vindicate the policy of “maintaining ‘ “a fair state-individual balance” ’ at the subsequent criminal trial ‘ “by requiring the government ... in its contest with the individual to shoulder the entire load.” ’ [Citations.] Together with the demands of due process that an accused be presumed innocent and that his guilt be established beyond a reasonable doubt [citations], the privilege against self-incrimination requires the prosecution in a criminal trial to produce sufficient evidence to establish the defendant’s guilt before he must decide whether to remain silent or to testify in his own behalf. [Citations.]” (People v. Coleman, supra, 13 Cal.3d at p. 875, italics in original.) The rule also reflected the law’s “ ‘unwillingness to subject those suspected of crime to the cruel trilemma of self-accusation, perjury or contempt.’” (Id., at p. 878, quoting Murphy v. Waterfront Comm’n (1964) 378 U.S. 52, 55 [12 L.Ed.2d 678, 681, 84 S.Ct. 1594].)
In Jimenez, as in Coleman, our high court emphasized the central place of the privilege against self-incrimination in our system of jurisprudence. (People v. Jimenez, supra, 21 Cal.3d at p. 605-606.) The court noted that the privilege “reflects many of the fundamental values and most noble aspirations of our society, including: ‘our unwillingness to subject those suspected of crime to the cruel trilemma of self-accusation, perjury or contempt; our preference for an accusatorial rather than an inquisitorial system of criminal justice; our fear that self-incriminatory statements will be elicited by inhumane treatment and abuses; . . . our respect for the inviolability of the human personality . . .; our distrust of self-deprecatory statements; and our realization that the privilege, while sometimes a “shelter to the guilty,” is often “a protection to the innocent.” Quinn v. United States, 349 U.S. 155, 162.’ (Murphy v. Waterfront Comm’n (1964) 378 U.S. 52, 55 [12 L.Ed.2d 678, 681, 84 S.Ct. 1594].)” (Id., at p. 605.) The court took notice of special safeguards which have been designed to preserve the right, including the rule that automatically reverses a conviction when an involuntary confession has been used, even though there is ample evidence aside from the confession to support the conviction. (Ibid.)
Thus, the reliance of both Coleman and Jimenez on the same line of judicial authority (see, e.g., Murphy v. Waterfront Comm’n, supra, 378 U.S. at p. 55 [12 L.Ed.2d at pp. 681-682]; In re Winship (1970) 397 U.S. 358 [25 L.Ed.2d 368, 90 S.Ct. 1068]) demonstrates that both cases are grounded upon closely allied policy considerations.
*605Ramona R. tells us that these policy considerations are of constitutional magnitude in the context of a defendant’s former testimony. It would be wholly illogical to conclude that these policies are of less significance in the context of involuntary confessions.
Consequently, in my view, the Jimenez rule survives the enactment of the “truth-in-evidence” provision of Proposition 8 for precisely the same reason the Coleman rule survives: because it implements crucial policies which have already been recognized as being of constitutional dimension. (People v. Weaver, supra, 37 Cal.3d at p. 659; Ramona R. v. Superior Court, supra, 37 Cal.3d at p. 809-811.)

Article I, section 15 provides in pertinent part: “Persons may not ... be compelled in a criminal cause to be a witness against themselves . . . .”