Court Opinion

ID: 9531606
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:13:23.516665+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:32.941633
License: Public Domain

MOSK, J.
I concur in the judgment. After review, I have found no prejudicial error or other defect.
*209I also concur generally in Justice George’s opinion for the court. In my view, it is substantially sound in reasoning and manifestly correct in result.
I write separately to address defendant’s claim that the trial court erred when it instructed the jury that it might consider evidence that he committed crimes other than the charged murders “for any purpose, including but not limited to” “[h]is character or any trait of his character” and “[h]is conduct on a specific occasion . . . .”
I believe that the “other crimes” instruction was erroneous under California law. It impermissibly allowed the jury to use the evidence in question to infer that defendant was possessed of a bad character or had a disposition or propensity to commit unlawful acts, and that he conducted himself accordingly with respect to the charged murders. It should not have done so. (See, e.g., People v. Hayes (1990) 52 Cal.3d 577, 625 [276 Cal.Rptr. 874, 802 P.2d 376] [impliedly approving an instruction that “warned the, jury not to consider the other-crimes evidence to prove that [the] defendant was a person of bad character or had a disposition to commit crimes” (italics in original)]; cf. Evid. Code, § 1101, subd. (a) [providing that, as a general matter, “evidence of a person’s character or a trait of his or her character (whether in the form of an opinion, evidence of reputation, or evidence of specific instances of his or her conduct) is inadmissible when offered to prove his or her conduct on a specified occasion”].) It goes without saying that a charge of this sort should never again be given.
I shall assume that the “other crimes” instruction was also erroneous under the United States Constitution. The due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment “protects the accused against conviction except upon proof [by the state] beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which he is charged” (In re Winship (1970) 397 U.S. 358, 364 [25 L.Ed.2d 368, 375, 90 S.Ct. 1068]), including, of course, identity. If an instruction lightens the state’s burden, it violates due process. (See, e.g., Sandstrom v. Montana (1979) 442 U.S. 510, 520-524 [61 L.Ed.2d 39, 48-51, 99 S.Ct. 2450].) It is argued that the instruction here effectively did so.
On the assumption that it offends the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the “other crimes” instruction would be subject to harmless-error analysis under Chapman v. California (1967) 386 U.S. 18 [17 L.Ed.2d 705, 87 S.Ct. 824, 24 A.L.R.3d 1065]. “The Chapman test is whether it appears ‘beyond a reasonable doubt that the error complained of did not contribute to the verdict obtained.’ ” (Yates v. Evatt (1991) 500 U.S. 391, 402-403 [114 L.Ed.2d 432, 448, 111 S.Ct. 1884, 1892].) “To say that an error did not contribute to the verdict is . . .to find that error unimportant in *210relation to everything else the jury considered on the issue in question . . . (Id. at p. 403 [114 L.Ed.2d at p. 449, 111 S.Ct. at p. 1893].)
Turning to the case at bar, I conclude that the “other crimes” instruction was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt under Chapman.
To be sure, in the general case an instruction allowing the jury to use “other crimes” evidence to infer that the defendant is possessed of a bad character or has a disposition or propensity to commit unlawful acts, and that he conducted himself accordingly with respect to the charged offenses, poses a “ ‘grave danger of prejudice’ to [the] accused . . . .” (People v. Thompson (1980) 27 Cal.3d 303, 317 [165 Cal.Rptr. 289, 611 P.2d 883].)
This, however, is not the general case. On several occasions and to several persons, defendant confessed that he committed the charged murders. By evidence both physical and testimonial, his confessions were corroborated.
It has been stated that a confession may have an “indelible impact” on the jury, inducing it “to rest its decision on that evidence alone, without . . . consideration of’ the rest. (Arizona v. Fulminante (1991) 499 U.S. 279, 313 [113 L.Ed.2d 302, 333, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 1266] (conc. opn. of Kennedy, J.).)
If even a single confession may have such an “indelible impact,” several confessions—as in this case—must practically compel the jury to return a guilty verdict no matter what the other evidence says or does not say.
Hence, to my mind, the “other crimes” instruction proved to be “unimportant in relation to everything else the jury considered on the issue in question . . . .” (Yates v. Evatt, supra, 500 U.S. at p. 403 [114 L.Ed.2d at p. 449, 111 S.Ct. at p. 1893].) Therefore, “it appears ‘beyond a reasonable doubt that [it] did not contribute to the verdict. . . .’” (Id. at pp. 402-403 [114 L.Ed.2d at p. 448, 111 S.Ct. at p. 1892].)
Because I have found no prejudicial error or other defect, I concur in the judgment.