Court Opinion

ID: 9541720
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:28:04.614025+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:04:33.749700
License: Public Domain

GOLDSTEIN, J.*
I respectfully dissent. We are here confronted with a petition for extraordinary relief from an alleged abuse of discretion on the part of the trial court which considered and denied petitioner’s motion for severance under section 954 of the Penal Code. Because there is no substantial prejudice to petitioner resulting from the denial of his motion for severance, I would find no abuse of discretion and deny the writ.
Petitioner concedes, as he must,1 that the June 16, 1981, murder count and the March 25, 1982, murder count are “offenses of the same class” *455and that the other offenses alleged to have been committed on June 16, 1981, were “connected together in their commission,” and, thus, all the offenses are properly joined under section 954. As to one another, each of the offenses is a charged offense.
Statutory permission to join did not prevent petitioner from moving the trial court for severance because section 954 gives that court discretion to order separate trials in the interest of justice. (People v. Blalock (1965) 238 Cal.App.2d 209, 222 [47 Cal.Rptr. 604].) Such a motion is an appeal to the sound discretion of the trial court. (People v. Duane (1942) 21 Cal.2d 71, 78 [130 P.2d 123]; People v. Isby (1947) 30 Cal.2d 879, 897 [186 P.2d 405].) Refusal to sever may be error if discretion is abused. (People v. Blalock, supra, at p. 222.) “If established, prejudice may require severance, even though joinder of the offenses is permissible under section 954. . . . Prejudice is not assumed, however, but must be clearly established by the party seeking severance.” (People v. Poon (1981) 125 Cal.App.3d 55, 69 [178 Cal.Rptr. 375].) “Because a severance motion lies within the discretion of the trial judge, denial of the motion will be disturbed on appeal only for abuse of discretion resulting in substantial prejudice to the defendant [citation omitted].” (People v. Matson (1974) 13 Cal.3d 35, 39 [117 Cal.Rptr. 664, 528 P.2d 752].) However, in the face of prejudice amounting to an abuse of discretion, appellate courts have not hesitated to correct the abuse. (See, Coleman v. Superior Court (1981) 116 Cal.App.3d 129, 139 [172 Cal.Rptr. 86].)
Put simply, in the absence of a constitutional infirmity, section 954 does not, and cannot, deny a criminal defendant any fundamental right to due process or a fair trial; no constitutional infirmity is raised by petitioner. The reason is clear. Under section 954, the trial court is vested with discretion to act in the interest of justice and for good cause shown. We are asked merely to review a trial court’s exercise of that discretion. If substantial prejudice to defendant resulted from the exercise of discretion, abuse, not unconstitutionality, is the consequence. If such abuse exists, a writ will right the wrong.
The majority opinion states, “[t]he initial step in any review of a motion to sever is to examine the issue of cross-admissibility of evidence.” (Majority opn., ante, p. 448.) The test of cross-admissibility is erroneous both in logic and law.
Until the Coleman court was enticed into stating that nonadmissibility was one of the four bases for its conclusion that the trial court had abused its discretion by denying a motion to sever, cross-admissibility had never been used as a test to show prejudice when all the offenses were charged. (Cole*456man v. Superior Court, supra, (1981) 116 Cal.App.3d 129, 136, 139; cf., People v. Blalock, supra, 223 [charged offenses, cross-admissibility used to suggest absence of prejudice]; People v. Haston (1968) 69 Cal.2d 233 [70 Cal.Rptr. 419, 444 P.2d 91] [uncharged offenses probative value outweighed prejudice]; People v. Matson, supra, 13 Cal.3d 35, 39-41 [charged offenses, cross-admissibility used to show absence of prejudice]; People v. Poon, supra, 125 Cal.App.3d 55, 70-74 [charged offenses, cross-admissibility used to show absence of prejudice].)
The Coleman court correctly decided the question of joinder under section 954 (Coleman v. Superior Court, supra, 116 Cal.App.3d 129, 134-135). However, when that reviewing court turned to the question of whether the trial court abused its discretion in denying the motion to sever, it cited People v. Jackson (1980) 102 Cal.App.3d 620 [162 Cal.Rptr. 574], as an example of cross-admissibility evidencing lack of prejudice. In Coleman, the People had embraced Jackson, which prompted the Court of Appeal to point out the superior court erred in concluding cross-admissibility was present in the case pending before it. Then, applying cases dealing with uncharged other offenses (People v. Thompson (1980) 27 Cal.3d 303 [165 Cal.Rptr. 289, 611 P.2d 883], People v. Haston, supra, 69 Cal.2d 233, People v. Thornton (1974) 11 Cal.3d 738 [114 Cal.Rptr. 467, 523 P.2d 267]), which it should not have done as they are inapplicable, (People v. Shells (1971) 4 Cal.3d 626, 631-632 [94 Cal.Rptr. 275, 483 P.2d 1227]), Coleman gratuitously undermined the sound differences between the line of cases which deal with the application of Evidence Code section 1101 and the question of uncharged other offenses (People v. Haston, supra) and the cases involving charged offenses where section 1101 has no application whatsoever (People v. Shells, supra) 2
The fact that evidence would be cross-admissible if charges were severed does prove that denying severance is without prejudice. On the other hand, it is necessary to ignore the fact that all the offenses are charged as to one another and assume precisely what is being sought, severance, before non-admissibility can be entertained as a basis for granting a motion to sever. (People v. Shells, supra, 4 Cal.3d at pp. 631-632; People v. Menely (1972) 29 Cal.App.3d 41, 51-52 [105 Cal.Rptr. 432].)
We are not being asked to approve the joinder of separately charged offenses (uncharged as to one another) where petitioner would lose the ben*457efits of any nonadmissibility that might inure to him.3 Obviously, prejudice would flow from such a joinder. We are dealing with properly joined charges, all charged offenses as to one another, which, under the majority’s reasoning, will never withstand the test of assumed severance when the offenses charged are of the same class of crimes or offenses but not connected together in their commission. The majority has usurped the function of the Legislature by recasting section 954. In doing so, it abrogates, sub silentio, People v. Shells, supra, 4 Cal.3d 626, and substantial portions of People v. Matson, supra, 13 Cal.3d 35. The result is that the trial courts are left without a usable standard as to when a reviewing court will find an otherwise statutorily proper joinder to be intolerably prejudicial.
Contrary to the majority’s approach, it would seem more correct to start with Penal Code section 954 rather than “the issue of cross-admissibility.” The difference is significant. If the charges are properly joined, as is here conceded, Evidence Code section 1101 has no application. (People v. Shells, supra, 4 Cal.3d 626.) The search then is for substantial prejudice, if any there be, to test the trial court’s exercise of discretion.
I adopt the following from Justice Easting’s decision below, “Legally, petitioner relies upon Coleman v. Superior Court (1981) 116 Cal.App.3d 129 [172 Cal.Rptr. 86], wherein the court found that it was error not to sever two counts of sexual assaults against children from counts charging the rape-murder of an adult. The factors cited by the court in Coleman, supra, were that the evidence in the rape-murder was weaker than that in the child assaults [there were no eyewitnesses to the former crime and identity was in issue], the evidence of the crimes against the children would not be admissible to prove identity as to the murder charge, joinder of the highly inflammatory sexual assaults on children, as to which there was eyewitness evidence, would have a serious prejudicial effect on the jury, and the fact that the defendant faced the death penalty, but only as to the rape-murder, exacerbated the potential for prejudice.
“Comparison of the facts before us with those present in Coleman, supra, demonstrates conclusively that respondent court herein did not abuse the discretion .... Thus the inflammatory quotient of the June 16th and March 25th incidents is virtually identical. Both involved wanton gang related shootings in public locations after dark [fn. omitted]. There is strong eyewitness evidence establishing petitioner as a participant in both incidents. *458The evidence as to whether petitioner actually fired a weapon in either incident is only circumstantial.
“Gang membership may be relevant to establish motive in both incidents. We need not now decide whether evidence of gang membership will be admissible at trial; it would, in fact, be premature to do so now. We can say, however, that the relevant factors as to admissibility will be the same for both incidents ....
“Petitioner’s situation falls well within the purview of People v. Matson (1974) 13 Cal.3d 35, 39, wherein the court, citing Witkin, California Procedure, page 288, held that where, as here, the test for joinder is met, the difficulty of showing prejudice from denial of severance is so great that the courts almost invariably reject the claim of abuse of discretion; and further pointed out: ‘The judge’s discretion in refusing severance is broader than his discretion in admitting evidence of uncharged offenses. The requirements of similarity that apply to the admission of evidence of uncharged offenses [citation omitted] are not applicable when all offenses are charged. (People v. Shells, supra, [94 Cal.Rptr. 275, 483 P.2d 127], italics in the original.)’ People v. Matson, supra, 13 Cal.3d 35, 41.)”
There being no substantial prejudice to petitioner, I would deny the writ.

 Assigned by the Chairperson of the Judicial Council.

See, footnote 3, majority opinion, ante, page 447.

The combined result of the Haston and Shells cases not only satisfies one’s sense of logical symmetry, but also provides sound law securely resting on the antecedents of the two cases. It is interesting to note that Haston and Shells are the product of a single mind, Justice Sullivan, and this court was also of a single mind, at least as to the issues here pertinent, the three dissenting justices in Haston having concurred with the majority’s conclusions regarding the admissibility of other uncharged offenses.

A joinder of separately charged offenses to obtain cross-admissibility where cross-admissibility did not previously exist would result in substantial prejudice to defendant and clearly would be an abuse of discretion. This intolerable circumstance is the only true analogue to the “admissibility proves absence of prejudice” test referred to earlier and is not present in this case.