Court Opinion

ID: 9547849
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:53:10.577307+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:18:09.504795
License: Public Domain

KAUS, J.
I concur in and have signed the Chief Justice’s opinion which, I believe, is foreordained by People v. Hill (1974) 12 Cal.3d 731, 767-769 [117 Cal.Rptr. 393, 528 P.2d 1]. In the past, Hill has led to some logically correct, but practically rather bizarre, reversals. (E.g., People v. Rios (1976) 16 Cal.3d 351 [128 Cal.Rptr. 5, 546 P.2d 293] [5,000 tablets legally seized, 13,500 taken illegally; plea to one count of possession for sale reversed].) The problem is, of course, that a guilty plea followed by a successful appeal under section 1538.5, subdivision (m) of the Penal Code does not permit an appellate assessment of prejudice.
*557Pending a legislative solution, it occurs to me that one way for a prosecutor to avoid unnecessary reversals is to stipulate, before the plea bargain is entered into, that certain evidence, the seizure of which may not be upheld on appeal, will not be used if the case were to go to trial. It is only a guess, of course, but a pretty safe one that if in the case at bar there had been a stipulation that the items seized in the washroom would not be offered at the trial—and the counts dependent on them dismissed—there would still have been a plea bargain to a number of counts and that the punishment meted out to defendant would not have been materially different.
I may, of course, be suggesting something which is already routinely taking place in our trial courts. If so, I apologize.