Court Opinion

ID: 9865059
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 16:21:59.252555+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:37:00.388479
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Bakke
dissenting.
I dissent. This is another case of the court swallowing a camel and straining at a gnat. A bare glance at the record discloses that the one important question—and the only important one involved—was and is whether defendant had been denied his right under the Constitution, which says, “No person shall be compelled to testify against himself in a criminal case.” The two obvious facts present are that defendant testified, and that he did so under a subpoena, which is compulsion within the meaning of this particular provision of the Constitution. Stripped of juridical legerdemain, that is all there is to this case.
The court’s opinion contains language used by Wig-more in his work on evidence to the effect that this constitutional guarantee should “not be worshipped blindly as a fetish.” The distinguished writer aptly expressed himself. A fetish was a form of idol with the tribes of West Africa and they believed that so long as one had it in his possession “no harm could come to him.” Defendant, even though a lawyer, had some constitutional rights, and so long as he was possessed of this one he was justified in assuming that “no harm would come to him.”
The court’s opinion disposes of this vital question as if it were simply a rule, of evidence that can be juggled around like the hearsay rule. Wigmore recognizes its importance when he says that it “has something more than the ordinary interest of a rule of evidence.” The law always recognized it as a privilege, and it would *328seem, considering its history, that it approximates a fundamental right. Its protection should be freely accorded without quibble any time during a criminal trial.
Without discourse in detail, it is well to remember that the privilege is as old as recorded history. In the Code of Hammurabi it appears in this form: “If a man make a false accusation against a man, putting a ban upon him, and cannot prove it, then the accuser shall be put to death.” In the ancient Jewish criminal code it appears in these words: “Not only is self-condemnation never extorted from the defendant by means of torture, but no attempt is ever made to lead him on to self incrimination. Moreover, a voluntary confession on his part is not admitted in evidence, and therefore not competent to convict him, unless a legal number of witnesses minutely corroborate his self-accusation.” Mendelsohn, “Criminal Jurisprudence of the Ancient Hebrews,” page 133, quoted from volume I, page 271 of. “The Trial of Jesus” by Chandler. (Italics are mine.)
The maxim “nemo tenetur seipsum accusare” (no man can be compelled to criminate himself) so permeated the field of Roman criminal jurisprudence that it could well have been described as its keystone. The subsequent history of the privilege is fully set forth by Wigmore.
The fact that it is preserved.in the United States Constitution and in the Constitutions of all the states of the Union, with the possible exception of one or two, indicates the regard with which it was held by our forefathers. Consequently, no good purpose would be served by dwelling longer on the philosophy involved.
The court’s opinion quotes from People v. Bermel, 128 N. Y. S. 524, what it calls the distinction (It may be noted here that the New York Court of Appeals in the case of People ex rel. Lewisohn v. O’Brien, 176 N. Y. 253, 68 N. E. 353, follows the rule in the Counselman case, infra), and says that there is an adherence to this distinction in the case of Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 *329U. S. 547, 12 Sup. Ct. 195, 35 L. Ed. 1110. The most significant statement appearing in the opinion in the Counselman case and recognized by the authorities as the law of that case is as follows: “It is impossible that the meaning of the constitutional provision can only be that a person shall not be compelled to be a witness against himself in a criminal prosecution against himself. It would doubtless cover such cases; but it is not limited to them. The object was to insure that a person should not be compelled, when acting as a witness in any investigation, to give testimony which might tend to show that he himself had committed a crime.”
The only modification of this statement that I have been able to find is in the case of Brown v. Walker, 161 U. S. 591, 16 Sup. Ct. 644, 40 L. Ed. 819, and that modification was predicated upon a federal statute which gave the defendant complete immunity from subsequent prosecution based on anything he may have said at a preliminary investigation. There is no such statute in Colorado.
The other point relied upon for reversal is that there was no evidence introduced by defendant in support of his motion to quash, at the hearing on that motion. In addition to the matter quoted by the court, in its opinion, from 31 C. J., we find this statement (p. 815, §393): “The sufficiency of the affidavits is a question of law. Unless controverted they are to be taken as true.” In this case the district attorney filed a demurrer to the motion. It is elementary that a demurrer admits the truth of the opposing contentions, if they are well pleaded, and the court’s opinion concedes that the court did not err in entertaining the motion, which certainly is an admission of its validity. Assuming that evidence in support of the motion was necessary, the trial court could judicially notice the facts disclosed by its own records where they are “produced and legitimately brought to the court’s attention.” Downing v. Howlett, 6 Colo. App. 291, 293, 40 Pac. 505. The court records *330disclosed: 1. That defendant was subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury; 2. that he gave testimony tending to incriminate himself; 3. that the charges in the information were based upon the testimony given by him. What further evidence was necessary? The court’s opinion is silent on the point, thus indicating, as I believe, that it is closing its eyes to what was perfectly apparent to the trial court when it so cautiously and advisedly gave the district attorney the opportunity to bring in any other evidence supporting the charges, not based on defendant’s own story, before he sustained the motion.
“Appeals of this kind present this further anomaly. The defendant has been acquitted, and goes about as a free man. Yet if the state’s appeal is successful, public record is made of the fact that in the opinion of the highest judicial tribunal of the state there were certain errors in the lower court which probably prevented the defendant from being brought to justice. In fact he is a free man. But in the view of the appellate court he ought not to be.” Criminal Appeals in America, by Lester B. Orfield, page 67.
In disposing of the cause in this manner the court, it seems to me, is trifling with the defendant’s constitutional privilege. It ill becomes us, as the people’s tribunal of last resort to so dispose of it. This attempt to carry the weight of so profound a constitutional guarantee as freedom from self incrimination — a right of free men as old as the pyramids — across the abyss of the “thumbscrew and the rack” on the tight rope of technical pleading is fraught with such potentially dire results as to make believers in a government of laws shudder.
I yield to no one in my insistence upon integrity in public office, but in ferreting out the culprits, I also insist that it should be done in a manner which recognizes the constitutional rights of all, be they kings, potentates, saints or felons.