People v. Armbruster

• Decision Date: 14 January 1985
• Docket Number: Cr. 12901
• Citation: 210 Cal.Rptr. 11,163 Cal.App.3d 660
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Allen Ray ARMBRUSTER, Defendant and Appellant.

Page 11

210 Cal.Rptr. 11

163 Cal.App.3d 660

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Allen Ray ARMBRUSTER, Defendant and Appellant.

Cr. 12901.

Court of Appeal, Third District, California.

Jan. 14, 1985.

Certified for Partial Publication

Hearing Denied March 14, 1985.

Richard K. Uno, San Francisco, for defendant and appellant.

John K. Van de Kamp, Atty. Gen., Charles P. Just and Eddie T. Keller, Deputy Attys. Gen., for plaintiff and respondent.

PUGLIA, Presiding Justice.

A jury convicted defendant of forcible rape (Pen.Code, § 261, subd. (2)), and the trial court imposed the middle term of six years in state prison. On appeal, defendant challenges the constitutionality of Penal Code section 1112 which prohibits the trial court from ordering a victim in a sexual assault prosecution to submit to a psychiatric or psychological examination for the purpose of assessing his or her credibility. He also contends the evidence is insufficient to support the conviction and that the court improperly weighed and determined aggravating and mitigating circumstances in imposing the middle term. These contentions are without merit and we shall affirm the judgment. Inasmuch as Part II and Part III dealing with sufficiency of the evidence and the challenge to the sentence respectively do not meet the standards for publication, they are not to be published (rule 976.1, Cal.Rules of Court).

Beulah H., age 9, testified that in November 1982, the defendant forcibly raped her. A police officer recounted certain post-arrest admissions defendant made to him. The only defense witness was Dr. Judy Cook, who examined Beulah on December 29, 1982. She did not observe any evidence of recent physical trauma corroborative of a rape, but noted that any such condition could have healed in a month. She testified that Beulah's hymen was no longer intact, but she could not discern the cause of that condition.

I

Prior to trial, defendant moved for an order requiring Beulah to undergo a psychiatric examination "in order to aid the trier of fact in its assessment of [her] competency and credibility." The court denied the motion solely on the basis of Penal Code section 1112, which provides: "The trial court shall not order any prosecuting witness, complaining witness, or any other witness, or victim in any sexual assault prosecution to submit to a psychiatric or psychological examination for the purpose of assessing his or her credibility." (Added by Stats.1980, ch. 16, § 1, p. 63.) Defendant challenges that ruling, urging that section 1112 violates several provisions of both the state and federal Constitutions. ¹ First, defendant argues Penal Code section 1112 operates to deny him due process of law in that it deprives him of the right to confront his chief accuser. Principally, he urges that the bar imposed by this section made impossible the effective cross-examination of Beulah.

By requesting a mental examination, defendant merely sought discovery which may or may not have led to evidence relevant to Beulah's credibility. Due process does not compel pretrial discovery in favor of a defendant. (Jones v. Superior Court (1962) 58 Cal.2d 56, 59-60, 22 Cal.Rptr. 879, 372 P.2d 919.) Therefore, the Supreme Court did not act under constitutional compulsion when it held in Ballard v. Superior Court (1966) 64 Cal.2d 159, 176, 49 Cal.Rptr. 302, 410 P.2d 838, that "discretion should repose in the trial judge to order a psychiatric examination of the complaining witness in a case involving a sex violation...." (See People v. Municipal Court (Runyan) (1978) 20 Cal.3d 523, 530-531, 143 Cal.Rptr. 609, 574 P.2d 425.) Ballard dealt with the courts' inherent power, in the absence of germane statutory law, to promote the orderly ascertainment of truth through discretionary pretrial discovery. (See Jones v. Superior Court, supra.) It follows then that when Penal Code section 1112 was enacted so as to abrogate the Ballard decision to that extent, the legislation did not trench on constitutionally guaranteed rights of due process.

Second, defendant apparently urges that enactment of Penal Code section 1112 constituted a violation of substantive due process guaranties. The cardinal principle of substantive due process is that a law which deprives a person of life, liberty, or property must not be the product of arbitrary legislative judgment. (Palko v. Connecticut (1937) 302 U.S. 319, 327, 58 S.Ct. 149, 153, 82 L.Ed. 288, overruled on other grounds in Benton v. Maryland (1969) 395 U.S. 784, 793-794, 89 S.Ct. 2056, 2061-2062, 23 L.Ed.2d 707.) Such a law must be reasonably related to the object sought to be attained by its enactment. (See Barsky v. Board of Regents of N.Y. (1954) 347 U.S. 442, 452-453, 74 S.Ct. 650, 656, 98 L.Ed. 829.) We perceive no arbitrariness in section 1112. Ballard prompted increased exercise by trial courts of the authority to order the prosecutrix in a sex case to undergo a mental examination testing her credibility. The Legislature halted that trend by enacting section 1112, the evident purpose of which is to spare victims of sex crimes the inconvenience and embarrassment of a mental examination, a procedure of debatable value to the ascertainment of the truth in such cases (Ballard, supra, 64 Cal.2d pp. 174-175, fn. 10, 49 Cal.Rptr. 302, 410 P.2d 838) and a probable disincentive to more widespread reporting of sex offenses. The enactment of section 1112 represents the Legislature's sound assessment of the practice given impetus by Ballard and the resulting prohibition bears a reasonable relationship to the evident legislative purpose to counteract that practice.

Third, defendant contends Penal Code section 1112 operates to deny him equal protection of the laws. Even assuming for present purposes that section 1112 theoretically involves disparate treatment of defendants in sex and non-sex cases, such disparity would not sustain defendant's equal protection claim. A statute is not invalid simply because it does not cover the whole of a permissible field. The Legislature may recognize degrees of evil and act to correct the greater ones. (Werner v. Southern Cal. etc. Newspapers (1950) 35 Cal.2d 121, 132, 216 P.2d 825.) We take note of the paucity of precedent for court-ordered mental examinations of witnesses in non-sex cases. (In re Darrell T. (1979) 90 Cal.App.3d 325, 335, 153 Cal.Rptr. 261; see People v. Haskett (1982) 30 Cal.3d 841, 859, fn. 8, 180 Cal.Rptr. 640, 640 P.2d 776.) The Legislature could reasonably have acted to ameliorate an intolerably invasive discovery practice utilized principally, if not exclusively, in the prosecution of sex offenses. The remedy embodied by section 1112 was rationally conceived and circumscribed. ²

Fourth, defendant argues Penal Code section 1112 violates article I, section 28(d), of the California Constitution, which provides in pertinent part that "relevant evidence shall not be excluded in any criminal proceeding...." The People enacted article...