Court Opinion

ID: 9789385
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:35:48.54084+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:22.204716
License: Public Domain

GRODIN, J., Concurring.
I thought this court was wrong in People v. Castro (1985) 38 Cal.3d 301 [211 Cal.Rptr. 719, 696 P.2d 111], when it held that trial court discretion to exclude prior felony convictions for purposes of impeachment survived Proposition 8 (see my conc. & dis. opn., id., at pp. 319-322), and I still think so. Like the trial court in this case— and most others, judging from the number of cases on appeal which involve “Castro error”1—the language and intent of the initiative in this respect seemed to me quite clear.
I agree with former Chief Justice Traynor, however, that once a dissenter has expressed his views “he has had his day. He should yield to the obligation that is upon him to live with the law as it has been stated. He may thereafter *397properly note that he is concurring under compulsion ... but he should regard dearly enough the stability of the law that governs all the courts in the state not to renew the rataplan of his dissent.” (Traynor, Some Open Questions on the Work of State Appellate Courts (1957) 24 U.Chi.L.Rev. 211, 219.)
Accordingly, and under compulsion of this court’s decision in Castro, I agree that the trial court erred in failing to exercise its discretion under Evidence Code section 352 with respect to the admissibility of defendant’s prior conviction for purposes of impeachment. I agree also, though with some reservations as to dicta,2 with the remand procedure which the court now adopts for this and similar cases that have been tried with “Castro error.” Finally, though again with some reservations as to the analysis,3 I agree with the court’s adoption of the Luce procedure for future cases.

At latest count there are 27 cases in which we have granted hearing or review pending decision in this matter—an all-time record for “grant-and-holds.”

Unlike the majority, I would reserve decision as to whether appeal will lie from a judgment rendered after determination that Castro error was harmless (ante, p. 392, fn. 16) or as to the scope of appeal if the court finds prejudice (ante, p. 392, fn. 17).

Rather than suggesting that a defendant has no “right” to give testimony immune from impeachment by unduly prejudicial prior convictions (see ante, p. 387), I believe it may be more accurate to say that the state has a legitimate interest in prescribing the procedure by which the defendant may have such a “right” enforced or implemented, and that the Constitution does not prohibit the state from requiring the defendant to take the witness stand in order to invoke the right at issue here. (See generally Westen & Mandell, To Talk, To Balk, or To Lie: The Emerging Fifth Amendment Doctrine of the “Preferred Response” (1982) 19 Am.Crim.L.Rev. 521, 550-552.) As the court notes (ante, pp. 384-385), in Luce the United States Supreme Court enumerated a number of compelling reasons that support such a procedural requirement. (Luce v. United States (1984) 469 U.S. 38, 40-43 [83 L.Ed.2d 443, 447-448, 105 S.Ct. 460, 463-464].)