Court Opinion

ID: 9724583
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 11:03:21.293421+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:02.760481
License: Public Domain

AULT, J.
I concur.
I believe the judgment should be reversed and to that extent concur in the majority opinion. However, I disagree with the conclusion reached in the opinion that Officer Taylor, because of his conceded participation in the act prohibited by Penal Code section 288a, became an accomplice as a matter of law. I also disagree with the broader apparent holding the so-called feigned accomplice rule has no applicability to common law general intent crimes.
The question of whether Officer Taylor was a real or feigned accomplice was never considered in the trial court. It should have been. And the failure of the trial court to instruct the jury on the law of accomplices constitutes reversible error. (People v. Jones, 228 Cal.App.2d 74, 94-95 [39 Cal. Rptr. 302]; People v. Featherstone, 61 Cal.App.2d 793, 796-797 [155 P.2d 685].)
When the question of an accomplice arises in a trial, the proper procedures to be followed under varying circumstances are outlined in People v. Jones, supra, 228 Cal.App.2d 74, where at pages 94 and 95 the court stated: “Whether a witness for the prosecution is or is not an accomplice may be a question of law or fact. Where the facts with respect to the participation of a witness in the crime for which the accused is on trial are clear and not disputed, it is for the court to determine whether he is an accomplice; but where, although there is evidence tending to connect the witness with the crime, the facts are disputed or susceptible of different inferences, the question of complicity should be submitted to the jury. [Citations.] Where such witness is an accomplice as a matter of law, the court should so charge, and an instruction defining an accomplice is not necessary. Conversely, where, as a matter of law, the witness is not an accomplice, the court does not err in refusing to charge that he is or in refusing to submit the issue to the jury. But where it is for the jury to determine whether or not the witness is an accomplice, the court should so charge, and should instruct as to what constitutes an accomplice. [Citation].”
*481The act denounced by Penal Code section 288a is a general intent crime; a specific intent is not a necessary element of the offense. (People v. Avanzi, 25 Cal.App.2d 301, 302 [77 P.2d 237].) When intent is not made an affirmative element of the crime charged, the law imputes a criminal intent to one who intentionally commits the forbidden act. (People v. McCalla, 63 Cal.App. 783, 794 [220 P. 436]; People v. Peak, 66 Cal.App.2d 894, 902 [153 P.2d 464].) But the so-called “presumed intent” which arises under these circumstances is not a true presumption; it is merely an inference of fact to be drawn by the jury.
“Where the offense is one which requires a general criminal intent, but not a specific intent, a guilty intention may sometimes be inferred from the act, but this in principle is an inference of fact to be drawn by the jury, and not an implication of law to be applied by the court. And the inference may be removed by the attending circumstances.” (21 Am.Jur.2d, Criminal Law, § 81, p. 163; see also Perkins, Criminal Law, p. 659.)
It is the factual inference of guilty intent, sufficient when combined with admitted participation in the denounced act to establish guilt, which requires a distinction to be drawn in accomplice rules as between general intent and specific intent crimes. Where, as here, a police officer participates in a general intent crime for the alleged purpose of detecting and prosecuting a criminal, the determination of whether he is an accomplice, whose testimony must be corroborated, or a feigned accomplice, whose testimony need not be corroborated, is necessarily a question of fact. This follows from the conflict in the evidence between the factual inference of guilty intent, arising from his admitted participation in the act, and his testimony he did so for detection purposes only.
As already indicated, the inference of criminal intent which arises from participation in an act which constitutes a general intent crime may be dispelled by the attending circumstances. The person participating may be so young the law will not permit the inference of guilty intent to be drawn. Under certain circumstances, a reasonable mistake of fact, or the fact the act was coerced, is sufficient to remove the inference of guilty intent. While voluntary intoxication is not sufficient, under proper circumstances, involuntary intoxication or narcosis will be. (See Perkins, Criminal Law, supra, pp. 654-655.) If feigned police participation is sufficient in law to negative specific intent where specific intent is an essential element of a crime, it also ought to be sufficiently exculpatory to dispel the inference of criminal intent which ordinarily arises from participation in a general intent crime. I see no compelling reason to hold evidence a police officer participated in a general intent crime for the sole purpose of detecting, exposing and punishing crime, if believed by the trier of fact, is insufficient to remove the *482inference of guilty intent. No authority has been cited, and we have found none, which holds to the contrary.
Furthermore, I do not believe the case of People v. Spaulding, 81 Cal. App. 615 [254 P. 614], referred to in the majority opinion, can be properly distinguished from the instant case. Like this case, Spaulding involved a prosecution for violation of Penal Code section 288a. While only one of the two deputy sheriffs who testified participated in the illegal act, both were involved. The second sheriff aided and abetted in bringing about the act which the defendant performed on the first sheriff. In so doing, he became a principal in any crime committed by the first sheriff. (Pen. Code, § 31.) If tire first sheriff was an accomplice, the second was a co-accomplice whose testimony could not supply corroboration. (People v. Goldstein, 146 Cal. App.2d 268, 272 [303 P.2d 892]; People v. Clapp, 24 Cal.2d 835, 837 [151 P.2d 237].) Certainly the court in Spaulding considered and treated both witnesses as participants, both as potential accomplices, and neither as an independent witness. Beginning at page 617, the court stated: “The prosecuting witnesses emphatically stated under oath that their participation in the transaction was for the sole purpose of detecting the defendant in the commission of a criminal act which they had reason to believe he would commit. It is well established that merely engaging in a scheme for the purpose of detecting, exposing, and punishing crime does not constitute one an accomplice whose testimony requires corroboration. [Citations.] Certain of the testimony amply justifies the conclusion that if Pefley and Lant were accomplices at all they were feigned ones only, and hence their testimony need not have been corroborated. [Citations.] Where, as here, the evidence is conflicting, the question as to whether or not the witnesses were accomplices is one for the jury, and having been determined by them in the negative, their verdict is conclusive. [Citation.]” (People v. Spaulding, 81 Cal.App. 615, 617-618 [254 P. 614].)
The Spaulding case is direct authority for the proposition a police officer, who participates in a violation of Penal Code section 288a for the purpose of detecting the defendant in the commission of a criminal act, need not be an accomplice as a matter of law. It is also a case in which the accomplice issue was submitted to the jury for determination.
Implied in the second to last sentence of the majority opinion is the thought the defendant may not have actually performed the act condemned by the statute before she was interrupted by Officer Taylor. Ordinarily, such a question should not be permitted to hang in mid-air. However, insofar as the record before us indicates, this contention was not raised in the trial court, and it has not been advanced on appeal. Consequently, neither the defendant nor the Attorney General has presented *483argument or authority on the subject. For this reason, and because the case must be reversed in any event, it is not appropriate to discuss the question further. I would reverse the judgment for the sole reason the trial court failed to submit to the jury, under proper instructions, the issue of whether Officer Taylor was an accomplice or a feigned accomplice.
A petition for a rehearing was denied February 4, 1971, and respondent’s petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied March 16, 1971. McComb, J., and Burke, J., were of the opinion that the petition should be granted.