Griffin v. Municipal Court

• Decision Date: 12 December 1977
• Citation: 571 P.2d 997,20 Cal.3d 300,142 Cal.Rptr. 286
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: , 571 P.2d 997 Kenneth GRIFFIN et al., Petitioners, v. The MUNICIPAL COURT FOR the DESERT JUDICIAL DISTRICT OF RIVERSIDE COUNTY, Respondent; The PEOPLE, Real Party in Interest. L.A. 30804.

Page 286

142 Cal.Rptr. 286

20 Cal.3d 300, 571 P.2d 997

Kenneth GRIFFIN et al., Petitioners, v. The MUNICIPAL COURT FOR the DESERT JUDICIAL DISTRICT OF RIVERSIDE COUNTY, Respondent;

The PEOPLE, Real Party in Interest.

L.A. 30804.

Supreme Court of California.

Dec. 12, 1977.

Gary Scherotter, Erwin, Anderholt & Scherotter, Palm Desert, and David W. Agnew, for petitioners.

Byron C. Morton, Dist. Atty., and Jeffrey J. Prevost, Deputy Dist. Atty., for real party in interest.

TOBRINER, Justice.

We face here the narrow question whether the instant criminal defendants ¹ may obtain a discovery order directing the prosecutor to produce information relevant to defendants' claim that a certain penal statute is being discriminatorily enforced against them. We conclude that under our decision in Murgia v. Municipal Court (1975) 15 Cal.3d 286, 124 Cal.Rptr. 204, 540 P.2d 44, defendants, having made a prima facie showing of their claim of discriminatory enforcement, are entitled to pursue discovery with respect to their defense.

Defendants Griffin and Pounds are former Riverside County sheriff's deputies. Griffin, who is black, and Pounds, who is white, were jointly charged in July 1976 with violating Penal Code section 147 (willful inhumanity or oppression of a prisoner). ² A declaration filed in support of defendants' motions to dismiss stated that the charges arose from allegations that defendants locked a juvenile in a closed patrol car on a hot evening in July with the automobile heater running. Griffin alleges that the charges would not have been filed against him if he were not black; Pounds alleges that no criminal charges would have been filed against him if his partner for that evening had been white, or if he had acted alone. Defendants' declarations stated on information and belief that in the preceding ten years many white deputies acting alone or in concert with other white officers had committed acts of inhumanity without legal sanction. The declarations alleged nine unprosecuted incidents of prisoner beatings and mistreatment by white officers and the approximate dates on which those incidents took place. ³

In September 1976, defendants filed substantially similar discovery motions seeking production of all sheriff's department records, notes, or memoranda of departmental investigations into incidents of violent, cruel, or inhuman conduct toward prisoners during the preceding ten years. ⁴ The trial court granted the motions after an in camera review of some of the allegedly privileged records requested, ⁵ but the Court of Appeal ordered the discovery orders set aside on the grounds that the defense requests were "overly broad and (permit) the Real Parties in Interest to engage in a fishing expedition." We denied a hearing in the matter.

Griffin responded to this adverse ruling by narrowing his discovery request and filing a new motion. ⁶ This supplemental motion, which incorporated the declarations defendants had filed with their original motions to dismiss (see fn. 3, supra ), requested a statistical summary of sheriff's department records for the preceding 14 years, ⁷ disclosing, inter alia, annual figures as to (1) the number and percentage of black officers employed by the department, (2) the number and percentage of black officers terminated by the department, (3) the total number of investigations conducted by the department into alleged violations of section 147 and the number of such investigations which involved a black officer, and, finally (4) the total number of prosecutions commenced by the county for violation of section 147 and the number of such prosecutions which involved a black officer. ⁸ In addition, defendants applied for and received a subpoena duces tecum which paralleled the earlier broad request. (See fn. 4, supra.)

On the People's motion, however, the municipal court quashed the subpoena and denied in its entirety defendants' motion for supplementary discovery. The superior court and the Court of Appeal thereafter denied defendants' petitions for writs of mandate, the Court of Appeal concluding that "(n)either the District Attorney nor the Sheriff is required to prepare a statistical summary for use by petitioners. Moreover, the breadth of the discovery sought remains excessive." We granted defendants' petition for hearing.

As we explain, we believe that defendants correctly contend that the denial of their motion for statistical summaries of police records deprives them of evidence which might support a defense to the criminal charge pending against them and therefore denies them their right to a fair trial. Accordingly, we have concluded that defendants are entitled to obtain such statistical information from the prosecutorial authorities. ⁹

In Murgia v. Municipal Court, supra, 15 Cal.3d 286, 124 Cal.Rptr. 204, 540 P.2d 44, we followed a principle, long recognized in federal law, ¹⁰ that discriminatory enforcement of the laws may be a valid defense in a case in which the defendant can establish deliberate invidious discrimination by prosecutorial authorities. We found that defendants' discriminatory enforcement defense did not "rest simply upon allegations of laxity of enforcement; instead, defendants . . . clearly alleged that the Kern County law enforcement authorities undertook a practice of 'intentional, purposeful and unequal enforcement of penal statutes' against (defendants)." (Murgia v. Municipal Court, supra, 15 Cal.3d 286, 301, 124 Cal.Rptr. 204, 214, 540 P.2d 44, 54.) Since defendants had established a specific prima facie showing of such discriminatory prosecution, they were entitled to pursue discovery against the prosecution with respect to the claim of discriminatory enforcement.

Unlike civil discovery, criminal discovery in California is strictly a judicial creation. In Pitchess v. Superior Court (1974) 11 Cal.3d 531, 536-537, 113 Cal.Rptr. 897, 901, 522 P.2d 305, 309, we held that in contrast to the formal statutory requirements for civil discovery, "an accused in a criminal prosecution may compel discovery by demonstrating that the requested information will facilitate the ascertainment of the facts and a fair trial. (Citations.) The requisite showing may be satisfied by general allegations which establish some cause for discovery other than 'a mere desire for the benefit of all information which has been obtained by the People in their investigation of the crime.' (Citations.)"

Applying this reasoning to the defense of discriminatory enforcement, we held in Murgia that the defendants' right to discovery should be given effect according to "traditional principles of criminal discovery." (Murgia v. Municipal Court, supra, 15 Cal.3d 286, 306, 124 Cal.Rptr. 204, 540 P.2d 44.) While at the pretrial stage we are not able to determine what evidence a defendant will ultimately proffer in support of his claim, a motion for discovery "must nevertheless describe the requested information with at least some degree of specificity and must be sustained by plausible justification." (Ballard v. Superior Court (1966) 64 Cal.2d 159, 167, 49 Cal.Rptr. 302, 306, 410 P.2d 838, 843.) We concluded in Murgia that defendants' prima facie showing of a conscious policy of selective enforcement against them satisfied that requirement of "plausible justification."

In the present case, the declarations filed by defendants are clearly sufficient to justify discovery under the foregoing standard. In the declarations, defendants specify several incidents of misconduct as serious as or more serious than their own involving nine named white officers which did not result in prosecution, and thereby establish "plausible justification" for believing that invidious discrimination may have played a role in the decision to pursue the present prosecution. Defendants' supplemental motion itself limits the discovery request to a statistical summary of the data necessary to prepare the defense of discriminatory enforcement, and requires disclosure only of the information relating to incidents of mistreatment of prisoners. ¹¹ Such a statistical summary will avoid the possibility of impairing the confidentiality of sensitive information irrelevant to the asserted defense. ¹² Moreover, it is evident that defendants cannot readily obtain the information requested through their own efforts, since, as was the case in Pitchess, the sheriff's department maintains exclusive control over the records necessary to substantiate the asserted defense. (See also Hill v. Superior Court (1974) 10 Cal.3d 812, 817, 112 Cal.Rptr. 257, 518 P.2d 1353.)

Finally, a statistical summary is clearly relevant since it would tend to show, directly or circumstantially, the application of different policies for disposition of cases involving white and black officers. The first step in the present defendants' proof of discrimination may well be to demonstrate a significant disparity between blacks' representation in the population of Riverside County sheriff's deputies, and blacks' representation in the group of disciplined, discharged, and prosecuted deputies. Past discriminatory prosecution cases uniformly accept a defendant's use of statistical proof in this way to make out a prima facie case of invidious discrimination. (See, e. g., Murgia v. Municipal Court, supra, 15 Cal.3d 286, 305 & n. 17, 124 Cal.Rptr. 204, 540 P.2d 44; People v. Gray (1967) 254 Cal.App.2d 256, 260-261, 63 Cal.Rptr. 211; People v. Harris (1960) 182 Cal.App.2d Supp. 837, 839, 5 Cal.Rptr. 852; cf. Alexander v. Louisiana (1972) 405 U.S. 625, 629-631, 92 S.Ct. 1221, 31 L.Ed.2d 536.)

The rulings on defendants' discovery motions have placed defendants in an impossible position. These rulings decree in essence that defendants cannot properly claim the raw data necessary to the defense because this procedure would permit a "fishing expedition," and that defendants have no right to a summary of that data because the prosecution is under no...