Court Opinion

ID: 9724700
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 11:09:07.768274+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:04.844689
License: Public Domain

POCHÉ, Acting P. J.
I respectfully dissent.
My colleagues and I agree that in a straight murder prosecution (i.e., one without a special circumstance allegation), the degree of the crime need not be charged and the magistrate need not make any finding with respect to the degree of the murder. (See majority opn., ante, pp. 520-521.) We also all recognize that where routine enhancements are charged—such as those that if found true add years to sentences—the magistrate must pass on the sufficiency of the evidence to hold the defendant to answer to the enhancement. (People v. Superior Court (Mendella) (1983) 33 Cal.3d 754, 761-762 [191 Cal.Rptr. 1, 661 P.2d 1081].) And we all acknowledge that this rule applies where the ultimate enhancement—a special circumstance— is involved. (Ramos v. Superior Court (1982) 32 Cal.3d 26, 33-34 [184 Cal.Rptr. 622, 648 P.2d 589]; accord People v. Superior Court (Mendella), supra, 33 Cal.3d at pp. 761-762.)
I part company with my colleagues at the point at which they conclude that when a special circumstance is charged the magistrate has no obligation to determine whether there is sufficient cause to believe the defendant is guilty of murder in the first degree. Because such a determination is a prerequisite to the validity of any special circumstance charge, I understand both Mendella and Ramos to compel the conclusion that the magistrate must determine whether there is sufficient cause to believe the defendant is guilty of murder in the first degree. To spell out the obvious: if sufficient cause *527of first degree murder is lacking the special circumstance charge fails because it attaches only to murders of the first degree.
Even if this court were free to ignore the ramifications of Mendella and Ramos, there is no reason to do so and every reason not to. The criminal procedure enunciated in the majority opinion subjects trial judges, jurors, defendants, the taxpayers and the entire criminal justice system to the enormously costly and time consuming procedure which attends any death penalty trial without first subjecting the matters that count to a judicial determination of reasonable cause. In doing so the majority’s rule runs counter to the long standing recognition that a preliminary examination is a proceeding designed to weed out groundless or unsupported charges of grave offenses and to relieve the accused of the degradation and expense of a criminal trial. (People v. Superior Court (Mendella), supra, 33 Cal.3d at p. 759; Jennings v. Superior Court (1967) 66 Cal.2d 867, 880 [59 Cal.Rptr. 440, 428 P.2d 304]; People v. Brice (1982) 130 Cal.App.3d 201, 209 [181 Cal.Rptr. 518].)
What we end up with under this holding is a system of criminal procedure that affords a quick and efficient pretrial method for eliminating unnecessary trials in easy, run of the mill criminal prosecutions but abhors the use of such procedure in the most elaborate criminal proceedings yet devised: death penalty trials in the 1980’s. To allow the procedure to take hold in the death penalty context, according to my colleagues, would be “novel and inventive” and lacking in “legal and logical support.” (Cf., majority opn., ante, pp. 520-521.) So far as I can determine their description is accurate but misaimed.
For these reasons* 11 conclude that the superior court quite properly granted defendant’s motion to set aside the information and therefore I would affirm the judgment.
A petition for a rehearing was denied August 14, 1986. Poché, Acting P. J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted. Respondent’s petition for review by the Supreme Court was denied October 2, 1986. Bird, C. J., and Reynoso, J., were of the opinion that the petition should be granted.

 Only because it is unnecessary to reach the alternative ground for judgment (i.e., that the magistrate also erred in refusing to allow the defense to call to the stand percipient police officer witnesses on the ground their testimony would involve an undue consumption of time (Evid. Code, § 352» do I express no opinion with respect thereto except to comment that I agree entirely with the superior court and its terse analysis: that for the magistrate to take such a position in a death penalty case is “ludicrous.”