Court Opinion

ID: 9611036
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:51:13.886755+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:08.720387
License: Public Domain

KAUS, J.
I, too, must dissent. I agree with Justice Richardson that, in principle, this case is indistinguishable from People v. Griffin (1967) 66 Cal.2d 459, 464 [58 Cal.Rptr. 107, 426 P.2d 507]. The majority’s attempt to distinguish Griffin appears to be based on a misreading of the record that was shared by the trial court: the opinion states that here “the foreman twice declared .. . that the jury stood firmly and finally 12 to nothing in favor of acquittal of both degrees of murder.” As I read the record, the foreman did nothing of the sort: he merely reported the breakdown of the votes and said that there was no hope for a verdict. No one will ever know whether this was so in spite of the heroic efforts of one or more jurors who would have voted for a murder conviction to compromise on the basis of a manslaughter verdict. This possibility was apparently overlooked by the trial court which ruled “that there is a clear expression that ... there is not one juror of the 12 who believes that the evidence is sufficient to support a finding of . . . murder .. .. ” This statement — the majority’s second basis for distinguishing Griffin — was made while the jury was out of the courtroom: if the court was mistaken — as it very easily might have been — the foreman was not around to protest.
Thus, in my view, the record here — as in Griffin — does not demon- . strate that a partial verdict was reached. Accordingly, I dissent from the majority’s conclusion that defendant may not be retried on the murder charges.
*526Although I see no bar!to a retrial, the trial court’s comments at the first trial suggest to me that it may well have been under a misapprehension as to the scope of a jury’s authority to return a partial verdict under present California law. Section 1160 of the Penal Code currently provides that “[w]here two or more offenses are charged in any accusatory pleading, if the jury cannot agree upon a verdict as to all of them, they may render a verdict as to the charge or charges upon which they do agree, and the charges on which they do not agree may be tried again.” Since, for present purposes at least, there can be no rational distinction between accusatory pleadings which expressly charge lesser included offenses and those which do so impliedly, the trial court couM appropriately have informed the jury of its power to render a verdict on less than all of the offenses on which it had been instructed. (See Sturms v. Justice Court (1970) 4 Cal.App.3d 36, 39 [84 Cal.Rptr. 69].) Because the present record does not demonstrate that the jury was prepared to render a unanimous verdict as to any offense, however, I do not think defendant is entitled to the writ relief he seeks. (See also People v. Finch (1963) 213 Cal.App.2d 752, 762 [29 Cal.Rptr. 420].)
It should go without saying that since no partial verdict had been reached, the discussion of the constitutional issues decided by the majority is academic.
On June 15, 1982, the dissenting opinion by Justice Kaus was modified to read as printed above.