Court Opinion

ID: 9626434
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 08:11:39.433668+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:27.012237
License: Public Domain

TRAYNOR, J.,
Dissenting. It is my opinion that the trial court erred in admitting the testimony that the deceased said on November 22d that she was going out with “Frank” that evening. A declaration of intention is admissible to show that the declarant did the intended act, if there are corroborating circumstances and if the declarant is dead or unavailable and hence cannot be put on the witness stand. (See MCBaine, Admissibility in California of Declarations of Physical or Mental Condition, 19 Cal.L.Rev. 231, 371, 378.) A declaration as to what one person intended to do, however, cannot safely be accepted as evidence of what another probably did. (See Maguire, The Hillmon Case-Thirty Three Years After, 38 Harv.L.Rev. 709, 717, 719.) The declaration of the deceased in this case that she was going out with Frank is also a declaration that he was going out with her, and it could not be admitted for the limited purpose of showing that she went out with him at the time in question without necessarily showing that he went with her. In the words of *190Mr. Justice Cardozo, “Discrimination so subtle is a feat beyond the compass of ordinary minds. The reverberating clang of those accusatory words would drown all weaker sounds. It is for ordinary minds, and not for psychoanalysts, that our rules of evidence are framed.” (Shepard v. United States, 290 U.S. 96, 104. [54 S.Ct. 22, 78 L.Ed. 196].) Such a declaration could not be admitted without the risk that the jury would conclude that it tended to prove the acts of the defendant as well as of the declarant, and it is clear that the prosecution used the declaration to that end. There is no dispute as to the identity of the deceased or as to where she was at the time of her death. Since the evidence is overwhelming as to who the deceased was and where she was when she met her death, no legitimate purpose could be served by admitting her declarations of what she intended to do on the evening of November 22d. The only purpose that could be served by admitting such declarations would be to induce the belief that the defendant went out with the deceased, took her to the scene of the crime and there murdered her. Her declarations cannot be admitted for that purpose without setting aside the rule against hearsay.
The evidence in question was so damaging to the defendant that it cannot reasonably be said that it probably had no effect on the jury’s verdict. (People v. Putnam, 20 Cal.2d 885, 892, 893 [129 P.2d 367].)
Edmonds, J., concurred.