Court Opinion

ID: 9786047
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 23:45:56.967158+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:41.139545
License: Public Domain

CHIN, J., Dissenting.
The majority’s interpretation of Penal Code section 1405 (section 1405) is reasonable. I do not believe, however, that it is the interpretation the Legislature intended. Accordingly, I dissent.
Section 1405 provides a means for prison inmates convicted of a felony to move .in the trial court for and, on a proper showing, obtain forensic deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) testing of physical evidence. (See § 1405, subd. (a).) The obvious purpose of this statute is to enable inmates to try to establish their innocence by use of modem, sometimes highly probative, DNA testing. To obtain the testing, the inmate must satisfy certain requirements, including, as relevant to the issue before us, (1) that the evidence sought to be tested is “material” to the question of the inmate’s identity as the culprit (or one of the culprits); and (2) that “[t]he requested DNA testing results would raise a reasonable probability that, in light of all the evidence, *1055the convicted person’s verdict or sentence would have been more favorable if the results of DNA testing had been available at the time of conviction.” (§ 1405, subd. (f)(4), (5).)
Four years ago, in May 2004, petitioner moved for DNA testing of four pubic hairs that were admitted as evidence at his trial. Although the evidence was disputed, the prosecution argued vigorously to the jury that the hairs belonged to defendant and, indeed, that the hairs constituted “very, very compelling evidence” of petitioner’s guilt. After petitioner’s motion was thoroughly litigated in the trial court, that court denied testing. In its ruling, however, it acknowledged that the hair evidence “was argued by the prosecutor and contested and a big issue was made of it.”
After the trial court denied the testing, petitioner sought review by filing this writ proceeding. He followed the proper procedure to seek appellate review. (See § 1405, subd. (j).) In order to review the trial court’s ruling meaningfully, we issued an order to show cause and made this matter a companion case to the automatic appeal of petitioner’s death judgment. (See People v. Richardson (2008) 43 Cal.4th 959 [77 Cal.Rptr.3d 163, 183 P.3d 1146].) Doing so was necessary to enable this court to review the massive trial record, which, in turn, was necessary to determine whether to uphold or overturn the ruling denying testing. The parties then filed a return to the order to show cause and a reply to that return. The question has been argued in this court. In today’s opinions—both in the automatic appeal and in this writ proceeding—the majority does a commendable job of analyzing all the relevant evidence and marshaling the facts in order to review the trial court’s ruling. For the reasons the majority states, I agree that, viewed in isolation, it is unlikely that hypothetical results of the hypothetical testing of the pubic hairs could raise a reasonable probability that the result would have been more favorable to petitioner had the results been available at trial.
The problem is that all of this litigation, both in the trial court and in this court, all of this effort, by the parties and this court, all of this analysis and examination of a massive record, has been done solely to determine whether the hairs should be tested. This four-year effort has undoubtedly been far more expensive—in terms of monetary costs, passage of time, and expenditure of judicial resources—than if the hairs simply had been tested four years ago. If the trial court had ordered the testing, or the parties had simply agreed to it, then the results would long since have been known. If die testing confirmed that the hairs, or some of them, were defendant’s, it would provide additional evidence of his guilt, and any doubts on this point would have been laid to rest. If the testing showed that the hairs belonged to one of the other possible suspects, or possibly an unknown person or persons, then the parties and judiciary could consider the significance of concrete results of *1056actual testing rather than making abstract decisions regarding hypothetical results of hypothetical testing.
Moreover, today’s opinion is not necessarily the end of the road. As I noted, viewing the hair evidence in isolation, it appears petitioner failed to satisfy a rigorously applied reasonable probability test. But the hair evidence need not always be viewed in isolation. Hypothetically, petitioner might be able to generate other evidence in the future that casts doubt on his guilt or weakens the significance of other prosecution evidence. It is possible that hypothetical favorable results of the requested DNA evidence, in combination with other facts that may be developed in the future, could satisfy the reasonable probability test. If that were to occur, I suspect petitioner would be allowed to renew his request for the testing.
I find it hard to believe that, in enacting section 1405, the Legislature intended to create a process by which deciding whether to order DNA testing will often, perhaps routinely, be more expensive than the testing itself. I believe instead that in creating the materiality and reasonable probability requirements of section 1405, subdivision (f)(4) and (5), the Legislature intended to create a relatively straightforward and reasonably objective method of determining whether to order DNA testing without requiring testing in all circumstances. The difficulty in this case, I recognize, lies in the precise language of section 1405, subdivision (f)(5). Read literally, as the majority does, the statute does seem to require all of the hypothetical judgments and the thorough analysis the trial court and the majority have undertaken. But the statute does not compel a literal interpretation. “In general, it is settled that the language of a statute should not be given a literal meaning if doing so would result in absurd consequences that the Legislature did not intend. To this extent, therefore, intent prevails over the letter of the law and the letter will be read in accordance with the spirit of the enactment.” (In re Michele D. (2002) 29 Cal.4th 600, 606 [128 Cal.Rptr.2d 92, 59 P.3d 164].)
The Legislature certainly did not intend to require DNA testing routinely in all cases. This is understandable and explains the purpose behind the materiality and reasonable probability requirements. But I also believe the Legislature did not intend to make litigation over whether to conduct testing more time consuming and costly than the testing itself. It must have intended courts to interpret the reasonable probability test in a way that avoids such an absurd result. We should interpret section 1405 in context. As the majority correctly notes (maj. opn., ante, at p. 1051), that section does not involve a determination whether to grant relief on some hypothetical habeas corpus petition after testing, which would require rigorous examination of all the evidence and all *1057the relevant facts, but merely whether to order testing in the first place. Section 1405, subdivision (f)(5)’s reasonable probability test should be interpreted with this in mind.
I would interpret section 1405 to require only a preliminary assessment of whether testing results would raise a reasonable probability of a different outcome. The trial court and, ultimately, a reviewing court, should base this preliminary assessment on the evidence and arguments set forth in the motion for testing and any opposition, and should not be obligated to review the entire trial record and reach a definite conclusion regarding the ultimate issue whether hypothetical test results would establish the petitioner’s innocence. When, as here, the evidence was presented at trial, this preliminary assessment would be satisfied if the evidence sought to be tested played a significant role at trial, and the testing results could potentially contradict the prosecution theory at trial regarding that evidence. This would normally be an easy ruling to make and to review for abuse of discretion. Ordering the testing in this situation would be consistent with the legislative intent not to permit testing routinely but only when the evidence was truly important to the outcome. It would also at least minimize the occasions in which determining whether to order testing is more expensive and time consuming than the testing itself.
In this case, the hairs sought to be tested were admitted at trial. The prosecution theory was that the hairs belonged to petitioner and, indeed, that they provided compelling evidence of his guilt. As the trial court acknowledged, the evidence played a prominent role at trial. This should have been enough to satisfy the requirements of section 1405, subdivision (f)(4) and (5). No one disputes that the remaining requirements of that statute have been satisfied; accordingly, the trial court should have ordered the testing.
Because we are interpreting a statute, the Legislature can always change it. If it did not intend to erect as high a barrier to DNA testing as the majority demonstrates it erected, it can, and should, amend the statute. It might, for example, simply state that the materiality and reasonable probability requirements are satisfied (1) if the evidence sought to be tested was admitted and played a significant role at trial, and the testing results could potentially contradict the prosecution theory at trial regarding that evidence; or (2) if the evidence sought to be tested was not admitted at trial but the trial court concludes the evidence would have played a significant role at trial if it had been admitted, and the testing results could potentially provide significant evidence exonerating defendant.
*1058For these reasons, I would grant the relief petitioner seeks and order the hairs to be subjected to DNA testing to determine whether they were, in fact, defendant’s and, if not, whose they might have been.
George, C. J., concurred.
Petitioner’s petition for a rehearing was denied July 16, 2008, and the opinion was modified to read as printed above. Chin, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted.