Court Opinion

ID: 9744687
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 22:12:39.473557+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:51.016574
License: Public Domain

FILES, P. J., Dissenting.
I would affirm the order. As I read the record it shows, without conflict, that defendant’s confession was subsequent to police interrogation but was not elicited by it. This is not a case like People v. Luker, 63 *643Cal.2d 464, 473 [47 Cal.Rptr. 209, 407 P.2d 9], and People v. North, 233 Cal.App.2d 884, 887 [44 Cal.Rptr. 123], where the evidence was ambiguous or incomplete. The testimony of the officer and of the defendant himself establish that he confessed because he wanted to clear his friends and not because the police had asked him to.
“Neither [the California Supreme Court] nor the United States Supreme Court, has ever taken the position that the desire of a guilty man to confess his crime should be stifled, impeded, discouraged, or hindered in any way. The contrary is true.” (People v. Cotter, 63 Cal.2d 386, 396 [46 Cal.Rptr. 622, 405 P.2d 862].)
The substance of defendant’s testimony was that he tried to save his friends by telling the police a lie, but it was quite reasonable for the trial court to believe, after seeing and hearing the witnesses, that defendant had saved his friends by telling the truth.
The fountainhead of the exclusionary rule is the statement in Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 491 [84 S.Ct. 1758, 12 L.Ed.2d 977, 986], that “no statement elicited by the police during the interrogation may be used against him at a criminal trial.” Elicit means “to draw or bring out.” One of its synonyms is “cause.” (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary.) I do not think we should go beyond the Escobedo rule to keep out of evidence voluntary statements which were not brought out or caused by police interrogation.
A petition for a rehearing was denied December 28, 1965. Files, P. J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted. Respondent’s petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied February 2, 1966. Mosk, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted.