Court Opinion

ID: 9726335
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 12:44:55.917506+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:26.111042
License: Public Domain

Levin, J.
(concurring in part and dissenting in part). I am in agreement with my colleagues that the people need not prove that the fetus was viable when the pregnancy was aborted. I also agree that the case should be remanded to the trial court for an evidentiary hearing regarding the officer’s notes of the interviews with the complaining witness. I cannot, however, join in the Court’s opinion for several reasons.’
It is an established rule of law that, with exceptions not here pertinent,1 the admissions of an alleged accomplice of a defendant are admissible only against the accomplice, not against the defendant.2 *10Similarly, an accomplice’s plea of guilty3 or his conviction4 for the offense charged may not be shown in evidence against the defendant.
The force of this rule has been eroded by the practice of conducting joint trials at which admissions of an accomplice are provable with cautionary instructions that the admissions may be considered only in judging the accomplice’s guilt and not the guilt of the defendant.5 This is subject to the further qualification, since Bruton,6 that an accomplice’s admissions cannot be proven at all when he is not subject to cross-examination.7
Charlotte Bitker was, indeed, subject to cross-examination, but she was not jointly tried with the *11defendant Eugene Marra.8 Accordingly, there was no justification for introducing into evidence her plea of guilty or conviction.9 As to the defendant Marra, her plea was hearsay.10 It was not within any exception to the hearsay rule; it was her admission, not his.
The evidence against Marra was far from conclusive. We could not properly say that the prosecutor’s action in bringing to the jury’s attention Charlotte Bitker’s plea of guilty to the charge that she and Marra were participants in the alleged conspiracy was without significance in bringing about his conviction. Marra’s motion for a mistrial should have been granted.
Before the commencement of the trial Marra’s counsel asked the court to conduct a hearing out of the presence of the jury to determine whether an out-of-court photographic identification of Marra by the complaining witness was so tainted and colored by impermissibly suggestive procedures as to vitiate her in-court identification. The trial judge refused to conduct the hearing, saying: “it is a matter of credibility and a matter of the discretion of the jury of giving it such weight as the jury determines and that it would be improper for this court to impose its judgment in lieu of the jury. This is not one of the things that has been taken from the jury under the TPaiiber-type hearing and it seems to me that the court will proceed and permit the witness to be cross-examined at length relative to her ability to identify Mr. Marra.”
*12The majority reject Marra’s contention that it was error to deny him a separate hearing, holding that the granting of such a hearing is within the discretion of the trial court and that there was no abuse of discretion in this case.
A trial judge does not enjoy a general discretion to grant or deny Walker hearings as a matter of grace. There will, of course, be cases where it will appear that a request for such a hearing is insubstantial or that the refusal to grant such a hearing was inconsequential. But this is not such a case.
Moreover, in this case, in refusing to hold a separate hearing the judge did not purport to exercise discretion. He said in effect that it would be improper for him to substitute his judgment for that of the jury and that this is not the kind of issue as to which a “Walker-type" hearing should be held. That is not the exercise of discretion, but rather a refusal to exercise discretion; the judge ruled, as a matter of law, that he didn’t have the power to order a separate hearing.11
The complaining witness testified that she saw Marra for the first time on April 22, 1964, when an illegal operation was performed upon her. The next time she saw him was almost five years later in January 1969 when she made an in-court identification at the time of the preliminary examination. She testified that she had picked Marra’s photograph out of a large file of photographs which was shown to her at Detroit police headquarters in December 1964 and that a couple of days before the preliminary examination a police officer showed her a photograph of Marra.
In People v. Young (1970), 21 Mich App 684, 690, we held that, where an issue concerning the fairness *13of a pretrial lineup (there a pre-TPbcie12 pretrial lineup) is timely raised, identification testimony should not he admitted until a “separate determination” is made that the lineup was held in a manner consistent with the requirements of due process or that the in-court identification had an independent origin. I see no difference in principle between that case and a case such as this one where the defendant seeks to challenge the fairness of the procedure followed by the police during a pretrial photographic identification.13
Most pretrial photographic identifications will, as here, he based on mug shots in police files. Requiring a defendant who wishes to challenge the fairness of a pretrial photographic identification procedure to do so in the presence of the jury exposes him to the risk that the jury will conclude that he has a criminal record because his photograph was in a police file.
Moreover, leaving the question of the fairness of the photographic identification to the jury creates *14the substantial risk that the question will, at least in part, be determined by notions of the defendant’s guilt. Also, when a jury returns a general verdict the defendant is deprived of a separate determination whether his constitutional rights were violated by an improperly suggestive photographic identification. These are the deficiencies which a Walker hearing, a separate hearing not in the presence of the jury and a determination by the judge, is designed to avoid.14
As to the officer’s notes, I see no basis, in regard to the issue presented, for a distinction between “mere fragmentary jottings of the officer’s interpretation of the facts,” on the one hand, and “a substantial transcription of the complainant’s own words” on the other. As said in Dellabonda,15 on cross-examination a party has the right “to draw out from the witness and lay before the jury anything tending or which may tend to contradict, weaken, modify, or explain the testimony of the witness on direct examination or which tends or may tend to elucidate the testimony or affect the credibility of the witness.”
If the “fragmentary jottings” differ from the complaining witness’s formal statement, this may be either because the jottings are an incomplete or inaccurate reflection of what the witness told the officer or because the statement is incomplete or inaccurate. While it may be the jottings that are incomplete or inaccurate, we should not preclude the defendant from showing that it is the statement which is incomplete or. inaccurate, that something reflected in the jottings was intentionally or unintentionally omitted in the preparation of the statement.
*15The officer and the witness are at liberty to explain that it is the jottings which are incomplete and that the statement as written is true; that the inclusion of something in the statement that was not included in the jottings or the mention in the jottings of something omitted in the statement does not negate the truth of the statement and of the witness’s at-trial testimony.16 There is no need to shield from scrutiny “fragmentary jottings.” The interest in full disclosure requires that they he made available for examination at the trial by the defendant and his attorney.
I agree with the majority that the refusal to allow Marra’s lawyer to see the notes at the time of trial does not necessarily require a new trial. But it seems to me the inquiry on remand is whether there is anything in the notes which might have enabled Marra’s lawyer to impeach the credibility or the testimony of the complaining witness, not whether there is “prejudicial conflict” between the officer’s notes and her testimony.

 See Gillespie, Michigan Criminal Law and Procedure (2d ed), §§ 466, 485, 1232.

 See People v. Tunnacliff (1965), 375 Mich 298; People v. Stevens (1882), 47 Mich 411.

 Leech v. People (1944), 112 Colo (146 P2d 346); Babb v. United States (CA 5, 1955), 218 F2d 538, 541; Pryor v. State (Okla Crim, 1926), 245 P 669, 672; Moore v. State (DCA Fla, 1966), 186 So 2d 56; Lane v. State (CA Ala, 1959), 109 So 2d 758; State v. Jackson (1967), 270 NC 773 (155 SE2d 236); Jackson v. State (1949), 215 Ark 420 (220 SW2d 800); State v. Gargano (1923), 99 Conn 103 (121 A 657); State v. Pikul (1962), 150 Conn 195 (187 A2d 442); People v. Zachery (1968), 31 App Div 2d 732 (297 NYS2d 183); Ward v. Commonwealth (1964), 205 Va 564 (138 SE2d 293).

 Leroy v. Government of Canal Zone (CA 5, 1936), 81 F2d 914; State v. Jackson, supra, fn 3; State v. Frese (1964), 256 Iowa 289 (127 NW2d 83); Gray v. State (1969), 221 Md 286 (157 A2d 261) ; People v. Eldridge (1969) 17 Mich App 306, 313.
See, generally, 22A CJS, Criminal Law, § 784, p 1190; Anno: Prejudicial effect of prosecuting attorney’s argument or disclosure during trial that another defendant has been convicted or has pleaded guilty, 48 ALR2d 1016; 2 Wharton’s Criminal Evidence (12th ed), § 439; 2 Underhill’s Criminal Evidence (5th ed), § 398, n 94, p 1020. Similarly, see 29 Am Jur 2d, Evidence, § 701, pp 759, 760, as to the nonadmissibility of a plea of guilty in a subsequent civil proceeding to which the one making the admission is not a party.

 See People v. Louzon (1953), 338 Mich 146, 155; People v. Maunausau (1886), 60 Mich 15, 19.

 Bruton v. United States (1968), 391 US 123 (88 S Ct 1620, 20 L Ed 2d 476).

 See, however, People v. Aranda (1965), 63 Cal 2d 518, 528 (407 P2d 265, 271) and American Bar Association Minimum Standards for Criminal Justice, Joinder and Severance, § 2.3(a) establishing higher standards without regard to whether the accomplice is subject to cross-examination.

 See United States v. Boyce (CA 4, 1964), 340 F2d 418.

 The question was deliberately put by the prosecutor (see Leech v. People fn 3). Immediately after preliminary questions as to the witness’s age and place of residence, she was asked:
“Q. Isn’t it true that you pled guilty to an indictment naming you, W. J. Wellman, David Pasehall, John C. Worke and Eugene R. Marra as co-conspirators in this county in 1964?”
“A. Yeah ”

 See People v. Stevens (1882), 47 Mich 411.

 See Department of Conservation v. Connor (1948), 321 Mich 648, 653.

 United States v. Wade (1967), 388 US 218 (87 S Ct 1926, 18 L Ed 2d 1149).

 In Simmons v. United States (1968), 390 US 377, 384 (88 S Ct 967, 19 L Ed 2d 1247) the United States Supreme Court ruled that the standard it had enunciated in Stovall v. Denno (1967), 388 US 293 (87 S Ct 1967, 18 L Ed 2d 1199) for judging the fairness of pretrial line-up procedures would also govern where a defendant challenges the fairness of a pretrial photographic identification. Manifestly, just as a defendant is entitled to a separate hearing on a Stovall claim, so too he is entitled to a separate hearing on a Simmons challenge of the fairness of pretrial photographic identification procedures.
See Dorsey v. State (1970), 9 Md App 80 (262 A2d 591, 594, 595); Davis v. State (Okla Crim 1970), 467 P2d 521; Mason v. United States (1969), 134 App DC 280 (414 F2d 1176, 1182); United States v. Allison (CA9, 1969), 414 F2d 407, recognizing that where the fairness of a pretrial photographic identification is duly challenged, the defendant is entitled to a separate hearing on the issue by the court outside the jury’s presence. Cf. People v. Hawkins (1970), 7 Cal App 3d 117 (86 Cal Rep 428, 432) where the right to a separate hearing was recognized, but the trial judge’s refusal to hold a hearing was upheld on the ground that the fairness of the procedures followed had already been adjudicated in an earlier hearing involving the same defendant.

 See Jackson v. Denno (1964), 378 US 368 (84 S Ct 1774, 12 L Ed 2d 908); People v. Walker (On Relrearing, 1965), 374 Mich 331.

 People v. Dellabonda (1933), 265 Mich 486, 499.

 An officer’s notes are not a statement of a witness. But upon examination of such notes the witness might properly be asked whether he made a statement there reflected. If he denies having made the statement, the officer could be asked whether the statement was made. If it appears that the witness made such a statement either from his testimony or the officer’s, that statement, if inconsistent with the witness’s written statement or trial testimony, would be of probative value.