Court Opinion

ID: 9560468
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:49:33.336358+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:12:56.114048
License: Public Domain

KENNARD, J., Dissenting.
I agree with the majority that the trial court erred when it precluded a defense witness from testifying that defendant’s brother, Gregory Cudjo, had confessed that he, acting alone, committed the capital crimes at issue here. But I do not agree that this error was harmless.
When it refused to permit defendant’s witness to testify, the trial court violated defendant’s rights under the federal and state Constitutions to present a defense. The effect of the federal constitutional error must be measured against the controlling federal standard, which requires reversal unless the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. When applied to the record in this case, the federal standard compels reversal of the judgment as to both guilt and penalty. Therefore, I dissent.
*638I.
Excluding the Testimony of Defendant’s Witness Violated Defendant’s Constitutional Right to Present a Defense
In an adversary system of adjudication, the right to be heard is essential to due process of law. (Rock v. Arkansas (1987) 483 U.S. 44, 51, fn. 8 [97 L.Ed.2d 37, 46, 107 S.Ct. 2704].) In a criminal prosecution, the defendant’s right to be heard includes the right to summon and examine witnesses whose testimony is expected to support the defense case. Indeed, “[f]ew rights are more fundamental than that of an accused to present witnesses in his [or her] own defense.” (Chambers v. Mississippi (1973) 410 U.S. 284, 302 [35 L.Ed.2d 297, 312-313, 93 S.Ct. 1038].) The right to summon and examine defense witnesses is guaranteed by both the state and federal Constitutions.
The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees to persons against whom the state brings criminal proceedings “the right . . . to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in [their] favor.” The California Constitution contains a similar provision. (Cal. Const., art. I, § 15.)
Because the right to compel witnesses to appear in court would be hollow and useless if the government was free to prevent those witnesses from testifying, the compulsory process guarantee encompasses a substantive right to have defense witnesses testify before the trial jury. (Taylor v. Illinois (1988) 484 U.S. 400, 407-409 [98 L.Ed.2d 798, 809-811, 108 S.Ct. 646]; Pennsylvania v. Ritchie (1987) 480 U.S. 39, 56 [94 L.Ed.2d 40, 56-57, 107 S.Ct. 989]; Washington v. Texas (1967) 388 U.S. 14, 23 [18 L.Ed.2d 1019, 1025-1026, 87 S.Ct. 1920]; see In re Martin (1987) 44 Cal.3d 1, 29 [241 Cal.Rptr. 263, 74 P.2d 374].) The Sixth Amendment’s right of compulsory process, which includes the right to have the testimony of defense witnesses received in evidence, is made applicable to state criminal trials- by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution. (Washington v. Texas, supra, at pp. 17-19 [18 L.Ed.2d at pp. 1022-1023]; Rock v. Arkansas, supra, 483 U.S. 44, 52 [97 L.Ed.2d 37, 46]; Pennsylvania v. Ritchie, supra, at p. 45, fn. 5 [94 L.Ed.2d at pp. 49-50].)
Of course, the right to present defense witnesses at trial is not absolute. Although “a trial court may not ignore the fundamental character of the defendant’s right to offer the testimony of witnesses in his [or her] favor,” it is also true that “the mere invocation of that right cannot automatically and invariably outweigh countervailing public interests.” (Taylor v. Illinois, supra, 484 U.S. 400, 414 [98 L.Ed.2d 798, 813-814].)
*639Restrictions on the right to present defense evidence are constitutionally permissible if they “ ‘accommodate other legitimate interests in the criminal trial process’ ” and are not “arbitrary or disproportionate to the purposes they are designed to serve.” (Rock v. Arkansas, supra, 483 U.S. 44, 55-56 [97 L.Ed.2d 37, 48-49], quoting Chambers v. Mississippi, supra, 410 U.S. 284, 295 [35 L.Ed.2d 297, 308-309]; accord, Michigan v. Lucas (1991) 500 U.S. 145 [114 L.Ed.2d 205, 211-213, 111 S.Ct. 1743, 1746-1747].)
In this case, excluding the testimony of defendant’s witness, John Culver, was not reasonably necessary to further any legitimate governmental interest. Indeed, the majority effectively concedes as much when it concludes that no rule of evidence justified the exclusion, and that the trial court’s ruling was therefore erroneous.
In particular, the ruling was not justified by the trial court’s apparent belief that the proposed testimony would be untruthful. The decisions of the United States Supreme Court under the Sixth Amendment’s compulsory process clause establish that, as one commentator has phrased it, the testimony of a defense witness may not be excluded because of doubts about the witness’s credibility if the testimony is “capable of being rationally evaluated by a properly instructed jury for its probative value and weight.” (Westen, Confrontation and Compulsory Process: A Unified Theory of Evidence for Criminal Cases (1978) 91 Harv.L.Rev. 567, 627, fn. 167.)
The high court first addressed this issue in 1967, in Washington v. Texas, supra, 388 U.S. 14. In that case, a defendant’s attempt to offer exculpatory eyewitness testimony was frustrated by a state rule of evidence that barred a defendant from presenting the testimony of anyone who had been charged with the same crime. The court began its analysis with a look at the historical origins of the federal compulsory process clause:
“Joseph Story, in his famous Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, observed that the right to compulsory process was included in the Bill of Rights in reaction to the notorious common-law rule that in cases of treason or felony the accused was not allowed to introduce witnesses in his defense at all. Although the absolute prohibition of witnesses for the defense had been abolished in England by statute before 1787, the Framers of the Constitution felt it necessary specifically to provide that defendants in criminal cases should be provided the means of obtaining witnesses so that their own evidence, as well as the prosecution’s, might be evaluated by the jury.
“Despite the abolition of the rule generally disqualifying defense witnesses, the common law retained a number of restrictions on witnesses who *640were physically and mentally capable of testifying. To the extent that they were applicable, they had the same effect of suppressing the truth that the general proscription had had. Defendants and codefendants were among the large class of witnesses disqualified from testifying on the ground of interest. A party to a civil or criminal case was not allowed to testify on his own behalf for fear that he might be tempted to lie. Although originally the disqualification of a codefendant appears to have been based only on his status as a party to the action, and in some jurisdictions co-indictees were allowed to testify for or against each other if granted separate trials, other jurisdictions came to the view that accomplices or co-indictees were incompetent to testify at least in favor of each other even at separate trials, and in spite of statutes making a defendant competent to testify in his own behalf. It was thought that if two persons charged with the same crime were allowed to testify on behalf of each other, ‘each would try to swear the other out of the charge.’ This rule, as well as the other disqualifications for interest, rested on the unstated premises that the right to present witnesses was subordinate to the court’s interest in preventing perjury, and that erroneous decisions were best avoided by preventing the jury from hearing any testimony that might be perjured, even if it were the only testimony available on a crucial issue.” (Washington v. Texas, supra, 388 U.S. 14, 19-21 [18 L.Ed.2d at pp. 1023-1024], fns. omitted.)
Having thus concluded that the compulsory process clause was introduced into the federal Constitution at least in part to preclude the. operation of exclusionary rules based on fear of perjured testimony, the high court recalled language in one of its earlier decisions, Rosen v. United States (1918) 245 U.S. 467, 471 [62 L.Ed. 406, 409, 38 S.Ct. 148], referring to “ ‘the conviction of our time that the truth is more likely to be arrived at by hearing the testimony of all persons of competent understanding who may seem to have knowledge of the facts involved in a case, leaving the credit and weight of such testimony to be determined by the jury or by the court ....’” (Washington v. Texas, supra, 388 U.S. 14, 22 [18 L.Ed.2d at pp. 1024-1025].) The court immediately noted that although the decision in Rosen “rested on nonconstitutional grounds, we believe that its reasoning was required by the Sixth Amendment.” (388 U.S. at p. 22 [18 L.Ed.2d at pp. 1024-1025].)
Applying this same reasoning to the issue before it, the court concluded that the defendant had been “denied [the] right to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor because the State arbitrarily denied him the right to put on the stand a witness who was physically and mentally capable of testifying to events that he had personally observed, and whose testimony would have been relevant and material to the defense.” (Washington v. Texas, supra, 388 U.S. 14, 23 [18 L.Ed.2d 1019, 1025-1026].)
*641The United States Supreme Court has subsequently reaffirmed this view of the right of compulsory process1 in a case concerning a state rule of evidence restricting a defendant’s ability to testify. Referring to the common law rule that barred an accused from testifying, the court said: “There is no justification today for a rule that denies an accused the opportunity to offer his [or her] own testimony. Like the truthfulness of other witnesses, the defendant’s veracity, which was the concern behind the original common-law rule, can be tested adequately by cross-examination. See generally Westen, The Compulsory Process Clause, 73 Mich. L. Rev. 71, 119-120 (1974).” (Rock v. Arkansas, supra, 483 U.S. 44, 52 [97 L.Ed.2d 37, 46, 107 S.Ct. 2704], italics supplied.)
From these decisions of the high court, I conclude that the Sixth Amendment’s compulsory process guarantee requires that defense witnesses be permitted to testify to the jury, regardless of the trial court’s apparent distrust of the proposed testimony, if the credibility question is one that the jury is reasonably well equipped to deal with. Here, the reasons for the trial court’s apparent distrust of the defense witness—his prior friendship with defendant, inconsistencies both within his testimony and between his testimony and other evidence in the case—were reasons that the trial jury was competent to assess.
Finally, I reject the majority’s suggestion that there was no constitutional violation in this case because the defendant’s witness was barred from testifying, not by a state statute or rule of evidence, but as a result of the trial court’s erroneous application of state law. The suggestion amounts to an odd distortion of the nature and purpose of the constitutional guarantee. What the state and federal Constitutions secure for the accused is the right to present a defense, not merely the right to be free of unduly restrictive state laws of evidence and procedure. When, in this case, a crucial defense witness was not permitted to testify, defendant was denied that fundamental right.
II.
Violation of the Constitutional Right to Present a Defense Requires Application of the Federal Harmless Error Standard
Once a reviewing court determines that exclusion of defense evidence has violated the defendant’s right of compulsory process, the effect of the *642violation on the validity of the resulting conviction is determined by harmless error analysis (Crane v. Kentucky (1986) 476 U.S. 683, 691 [90 L.Ed.2d 636, 645-646, 106 S.Ct. 2142]) using the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard (see Delaware v. Van Arsdall (1986) 475 U.S. 673, 684 [89 L.Ed.2d 674, 686-687, 106 S.Ct. 1431]).
Under this test, the appropriate inquiry is “not whether, in a trial that occurred without the error, a guilty verdict would surely have been rendered, but whether the guilty verdict actually rendered in this trial was surely unattributable to the error.” (Sullivan v. Louisiana (1993) 508 U.S._,_ [124 L.Ed.2d 182, 189, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 2081], original italics.)
III.
Application of the Federal Harmless Error Standard Compels Reversal of the Judgment
The determination of prejudice begins with an examination of the defense presented at trial, which was that defendant had consensual sexual relations with Amelia P. but did not murder her, and that his brother Gregory was the killer. The success of this defense depended in large measure on providing the jury with sufficient reasons to credit defendant’s explanation and to doubt the contrary version presented through Gregory’s previous statements inculpating defendant. By erroneously excluding evidence that Gregory had confessed to the killing, the trial court’s ruling eviscerated this defense.
The prosecution’s case was far from compelling. The murder victim’s young son, Kevin, could not identify defendant, nor did he recognize the survival knife or the cut-off jeans found in the Cudjo camper. Defendant’s fingerprints were not found at the victim’s home, and no bloodstains were detected on any of defendant’s clothing, on any articles seized from the Cudjo camper, or on the shoes seized from defendant’s mother’s automobile. No articles taken from the victim’s residence were found in defendant’s possession, nor did any witness testify to such possession.
The police inferred from their interviews with Kevin and from the shoe tracks that the murder was the work of one man. Because much of the evidence pointed as strongly to Gregory as to defendant, law enforcement suspicion initially focused equally on defendant and Gregory. Both Gregory and defendant were present in the camper to which the shoe tracks led, and both Gregory and defendant owned shoes that could have made the tracks. The cut-off jeans and the knife found in the camper were equally accessible to defendant and to Gregory.
*643Some of the evidence pointed more strongly to Gregory as the intruder that Kevin described. Kevin testified that the intruder, who wore a sleeveless top, did not have tattoos on his arms or any facial hair such as a mustache or beard. Defendant had tattoos on both arms, and he testified without contradiction that he had obtained them before the murder. Defendant also had facial hair on the day of the murder. Gregory, on the other hand, had neither tattoos nor facial hair.
Although the semen found on the murdered woman could not have come from Gregory, the murderer need not have been the person who was the source of the semen. The victim’s body bore no signs of traumatic sexual assault, Kevin’s testimony did not mention a sexual assault, and the physical evidence was consistent with defendant’s account of consensual sexual relations with the victim.
Gregory’s previous statements to sheriff’s investigators, which closely tracked Kevin’s description of the intruder’s conduct and provided details about the interior of the murder victim’s home, were perhaps the strongest evidence of defendant’s guilt presented by the prosecution, yet this evidence too was equally if not more consistent with Gregory’s guilt. Because Gregory did not testify at trial, the jury was never given an opportunity to judge his credibility by observing his demeanor under oath.
Because the trial court excluded Culver’s testimony, defendant’s testimony was essentially uncorroborated. Evidence that Gregory had confessed to the murder would have filled a major gap in the defense case, and would have greatly increased the likelihood of the jury’s entertaining a reasonable doubt of defendant’s guilt. Under the circumstances, it is not possible to conclude that the guilty verdict in defendant’s trial “was surely unattributable to the error.” (Sullivan v. Louisiana, supra, 508 U.S. _, _ [124 L.Ed.2d 182, 189, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 2081].)
IV. Conclusion
Exclusion of the testimony of defense witness John Culver was error of constitutional dimension that may not be excused as harmless. I would reverse the judgment.
Mosk, J., concurred.
Appellant’s petition for a rehearing was denied Feburary 9, 1994, and the opinion was modified to read as printed above. Mosk, J., and Kennard, J., were of the opinion that the petition should be granted.

Another fundamental right deserves mention in this context. As Justice Brennan has noted, “Precluding a witness based solely on a judge’s belief that the witness lacks credibility might also implicate the constitutional right to a jury trial in that it usurps the jury’s central function of assessing the credibility of witnesses. The constitutional right to a jury trial would mean little if a judge could exclude any defense witness whose testimony he or she did not credit.” (Taylor v. Illinois, supra, 484 U.S. 400, 430, fn. 5 [98 L.Ed.2d 798, 824] (dis. opn. of Brennan, J.).)