Court Opinion

ID: 9445389
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:27:44.892292+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:14.846726
License: Public Domain

DENMAN, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
Since the Supreme Court holds the due process of the Fourteenth Amendment applies to the trial in the Los Angeles Superior Court to create a record of what happened there, as the basis of an appeal from Chessman’s death sentence, the Superior Court’s admitted refusal to permit him to participate in the trial, denied him due process. Hence the Superior Court’s order creating the record must be set aside and the California Supreme Court’s affirmation based on that record also must be set aside and the trial for the determination of the record proceed anew in the Los Angeles Superior Court with Chessman participating therein.
Piecemeal Due Process
I dissent from the extraordinary doctrine that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applies only in part to the Los Angeles County Superior Court’s trial of facts to determine the transcript of what had transpired in that court, as the basis for the review of that court’s death sentence in the California Supreme Court.
Nothing is better established than that the due process of the Fourteenth Amendment requires that a party affected by the decision of a trial shall be given notice and an opportunity to participate in it and that, if this be denied, the decision made in his absence must be set aside.1
Here was a trial in the Los Angeles County Court to determine what had happened in that court leading to Chessman’s death sentence. That county court alone had jurisdiction of the trial for the determination of the record. The record was taken by a reporter who died when he had transcribed but a thousand of the three thousand pages of his shorthand notes. They were written in a system undecipherable by another reporter, a witness at the restoration trial. The order for the determination of the record is based on the testimony of witnesses before the Los Angeles County Court of what they heard and remembered of what was said producing the death sentence by the parties’ witnesses and of the judge’s statements to the jury during the trial and of his final instructions to the jury. What the trial before the judge produced was this record of at least 2,000 pages of the testimony.
Chessman’s request that he be present in the determination of the 2,000 pages on which his life or death depended was denied by the trial court, though the *220right to cross-examine the witnesses produced by the prosecuting attorney and in Los Angeles to seek for and produce other witnesses from the clerks and jurors who heard the trial, is of the essence of due process. No clearer case could be had for a litigant’s presence in the vicinage of the trial, i. e., Los An-geles County, where witnesses could be summoned and directly examined and cross-examined and distant depositions not necessary.
It will be remembered that the United States District Court, sitting in the Northern District of California at San Francisco, held it could not summon witnesses from Los Angeles, 400 miles distant.
No one can question that Chessman would have been entitled to a reversal if he had been able to maintain his contention that the judge instructed the jury that if they found he had committed the offense charged they must render a verdict for the death penalty, although Section 209 of the California Penal Code provides that they have the discretion to choose between life imprisonment and the death penalty. Reinforcing this is his claim that the true record would show grossly prejudicial statements made by the prosecuting attorney and the presiding judge.
The majority opinion is forced to admit that the Supreme Court has held that the due process of the Fourteenth Amendment applies to the claimed procuring of perjured testimony but it claims that another violation of due process does not. It proceeds on a piecemeal application of the Fourteenth Amendment. ' In this it relies on Dowdell v. United States, 221 U.S. 325, 31 S.Ct. 590, 55 L.Ed. 753, but omits to state that in that case all the testimony of the criminal trial was written up by a living reporter and that appellant had counsel during his appeal. The point is summarized by the following headnote on page 325 of 221 U.S., 31 S.Ct. 590:
“Although-due process of law requires the accused to be present at every stage of the trial, it does not require accused to be present in an appellate court where he is represented by counsel and where the only function of the court is to determine whether there was prejudicial error below.”
Likewise the majority opinion relies on Schwab v. Berggren, 143 U.S. 442, 449, 12 S.Ct. 525, 527, where again the Supreme Court confined its ruling to the consideration of questions of law before the appellate court and suggests that where there are other questions involved the rule might be otherwise, stating:
“But neither reason nor public policy require that he shall be personally present pending proceedings in an appellate court whose only function is to determine whether, in the transcript submitted to them, there appears any error of law to the prejudice of the accused, especially, where, as in this case, he had counsel to represent him in the court of review. We do not mean to say that the appellate court may not, under some circumstances, require his personal presence; but only that his presence is not essential to its jurisdiction to proceed with the case.” (Emphasis added.)
The majority opinion further ignores the subsequent cases in the Supreme Court clearly distinguishing these earlier decisions. Among them is- the recent case of Cole v. Arkansas, 333 U.S. 196, 201, 68 S.Ct. 514, 517, 92 L.Ed. 644, where the Supreme Court ruled that:
“* * * since Arkansas provides for an appeal to the State Supreme Court and on that appeal considers questions raised under the Federal Constitution, the proceedings in that court are a part of the process of law under which the petitioners’ convictions must stand or fall. Frank v. Mangum, 237 U.S. 309, 327, 35 S.Ct. 582, 587, 59 L.Ed. 969. Cf. Mooney v. Holohan, 294 U.S. 103, 113, 55 S.Ct. 340, 342, 79 L.Ed. 791.” (Emphasis added.)
Nor is considered In re Oliver, 333 U. S. 257, 273, 68 S.Ct. 499, 507, 92 L.Ed. *221682, where the State Supreme Court affirmed on appeal a contempt judgment “without ever having seen the record of his [appellant’s] testimony” and the affirmation set aside on the ground that the appellant had been denied his liberty without due process of law of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Nor does the opinion consider Frank v. Mangum, 237 U.S. 309, at page 327, 35 S.Ct. 582, at page 587 where the court states:
“And while the 14th Amendment does not require that a state shall provide for an appellate review’ in criminal cases * * *, it is perfectly obvious that where such an appeal is provided for, and the prisoner has had the benefit of it, the proceedings in the appellate tribunal are to be regarded as a part of the process of law under which he is held in custody by the state, and to be considered in determining any question of alleged deprivation of his life or liberty contrary to the H.th Amendment.’’ (Emphasis added.)
From these later cases it is apparent that if the Supreme Court itself had conducted the trial in which the 2,000 pages of record were established by the memory of witnesses, it would have been a violation of due process to deny Chessman’s request to participate in the proceedings. A fortiori, is it a denial of due process where he was excluded from the proceeding in the Los Angeles Superior Court.
The District Court of the Northern District of California by merely ignoring Chessman’s contention of his right to participate in the Los Angeles County evidence restoration hearing, cannot create in itself the right in San Francisco to determine what the record should or should not contain.
Since it is not questioned that Chessman was denied his right to participate in the Los Angeles proceeding, this court should order that the record there created should be set aside and likewise the affirming judgment based on it.

. Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45, 67, 53 S.Ct. 55, 77 L.Ed. 158; Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97, 105, 54 S.Ct. 330, 78 L.Ed. 674; Saunders v. Shaw, 244 U.S. 317, 318, 37 S.Ct. 638, 61 L.Ed. 1163; Railroad Comm. v. Pacific Gas, 302 U.S. 388, 393, 58 S.Ct. 334, 82 L.Ed. 319; Ohio Bell Tel. Co. v. Public Utilities Commission, 301 U.S. 292, 304, 57 S.Ct. 724, 81 L.Ed. 1093; Standard Oil Co. v. Missouri, 224 U.S. 270, 281, 32 S.Ct. 406, 56 L.Ed. 760.