Scott v. California

• Decision Date: 05 December 1960
• Docket Number: M,No. 241,241
• Parties: Leonard Ewing SCOTT v. CALIFORNIA. isc
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

364 U.S. 471

81 S.Ct. 245

5 L.Ed.2d 222

Leonard Ewing SCOTT

v CALIFORNIA.

No. 241, Misc.

Supreme Court of the United States

December 5, 1960

Rehearing Denied Jan. 16, 1961.

See 364 U.S. 944, 81 S.Ct. 462.

Morris Lavine, for appellant.

Stanley Mosk, Atty. Gen. of California, William E. James, Asst. Atty. Gen., William B. McKesson and Lewis Watnick, for appellee.

PER CURIAM.

The motion to dismiss is granted and the appeal is dismissed. Treating the papers whereon the appeal was taken as a petition for certiorari, certiorari is denied.

Mr. Justice DOUGLAS, dissenting.

The salient facts in this case are related in 176 Cal.App.2d 458, 1 Cal.Rptr. 600. A reading of the report shows that the entire evidence against the defendant was circumstantial. It was not even shown directly that his wife, whom he is now convicted of murdering, is dead. Proof of the corpus delicti, as well as proof of petitioner's criminal agency, was to inferred from his wife's inexplicable disappearance coupled with his unnatural behavior thereafter. A prominent aspect of this unnatural behavior was his silence. At the trial, the petitioner did not take the stand. The trial judge in accord with California law charged the jury as follows:

'It is a constitutional right of a defendant in a criminal trial that he may not be compelled to testify. Thus, whether or not he does testify rests entirely in his own decision. As to any evidence or facts against him which the defendant can reasonably be expected to deny or explain because of facts within his knowledge, if he does not testify, the jury may take that fact into consideration as tending to indicate the truth of such evidence and as indicating that among the inferences that may be reasonably drawn therefrom those unfavorable to the defendant are the more probable. The failure of a defendant to deny or explain evidence against him does not, however, create a presumption of guilt or by itself warrant an inference of guilt, nor does it relieve the prosecution of its burden of proving every essential element of the crime and the guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt.' (Italics added.)

Using a defendant's silence as evidence against him is one way of having him testify against himself. This would not be permitted, we have assumed, in a federal trial by reason of the Fifth Amendment. Adamson v. California, 332 U.S. 46, 50, 67 S.Ct. 1672, 91 L.Ed. 1903. That rule, embodied in a federal statute, has much history behind it. See Wilson v. United States, 149 U.S. 60, 13 S.Ct. 765, 37 L.Ed. 650. Its value in protecting the interests of an accused was well stated in Bruno v. United States, 308 U.S. 287, 294, 60 S.Ct. 198, 200, 84 L.Ed. 257, where we said:

'To the...