People v. Chinn
| Decision Date | 22 June 2020 |
| Docket Number | G058094 |
| Parties | THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. KENNETH LAWRENCE CHINN, Defendant and Respondent. |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS
California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.
OPINIONAppeal from an order of the Superior Court of Orange County, Michael A. Leversen, Judge. Affirmed.
Todd Spitzer, District Attorney, and Brian F. Fitzpatrick, Assistant District Attorney, for Plaintiff and Appellant.
The Law Office of Brian N. Gurwitz, and Brian N. Gurwitz, for Defendant and Respondent.
Respondent Kenneth Chinn was charged by complaint with three counts of sexual abuse of a child under the age of 14. (Pen. Code, § 288, subd. (a).)1 At the conclusion of the preliminary hearing, the prosecutor argued the corpus delicti rule did not apply at such hearings. Alternatively, even if it did, sufficient corpus delicti evidence had been presented to warrant the magistrate's consideration of respondent's admissions to hold respondent to answer. (See § 872.) Respondent argued the corpus delicti rule did apply at preliminary hearings, and the prosecution had failed to show sufficient corpus delicti for the magistrate to consider respondent's admissions. The magistrate agreed with the prosecutor on both points and held respondent to answer. In a section 995 motion to set aside the information, respondent renewed his arguments before the superior court. The court agreed and granted the motion.
The district attorney appeals, contending: (1) The corpus delicti rule does not apply at a preliminary hearing. (2) Even if it does, the evidence adduced at the preliminary hearing here established sufficient corpus delicti that, when combined with respondent's inculpatory statements, provided enough evidence to support the magistrate's order holding him to answer. Ergo, the trial court erred in granting the section 995 motion.
Like every California appellate court to consider the question, including our own, we again find the corpus delicti rule applies at the preliminary hearing. Moreover, here there was an insufficient showing of corpus delicti for the magistrate to consider respondent's statements in determining whether to hold him to answer to the charges he faced. We therefore affirm the trial court's order setting aside the information.
Police detective Gloria Scott testified that 24-year-old Jane Doe came to the police department to report possibly being sexually molested by her father, respondentKenneth Chinn. She told Scott she "didn't have very solid memories of her very early childhood," but thought she was about four years old when this occurred. She had recurring "flashbacks" of being in bed with respondent when she was very young. She remembered wearing gray floral pajamas, and feeling "frozen," very upset, and distressed. She did not recall any touching by respondent — sexual or otherwise — in these recurring "memory flashes." She believed she was about four years old because that was when she recalled wearing those particular pajamas.
She lived alone with respondent at the time because her mother had left them when Jane Doe was only a few months old. When she was about five years old, respondent married Jane Doe's stepmother, who then raised Jane Doe as her own child. Because of this recurring memory about her father, Jane Doe finally asked her stepmother whether respondent had done anything to her when she was young. No details of this conversation were adduced, but it was established that it had occurred about a year before she talked to Detective Scott.
A few weeks before she went to the police station, Jane Doe experienced a disturbing event while having sex with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend was on top of her and Jane Doe suddenly envisioned or "imagined" her father on top of her, not her boyfriend. She stopped, burst into tears, and told her boyfriend she believed respondent had sexually molested her.
Stepmother had accompanied Jane Doe to the police station. Separately, stepmother told Scott she had married respondent when Jane Doe was about five years old and she later had two children with him. She mentioned she was currently in the midst of a divorce and child-custody battle with respondent over one of their children. She said that soon after marrying respondent, she noticed Jane Doe acting "unusual" towards him, and seemed "fixated" on her father's penis. Specifically, Jane Doe would try to peek at respondent's penis under his towel when he left the shower. Stepmother was so disturbed by Jane Doe's behavior that she asked respondent if he had molestedJane Doe. Respondent admitted sexually molesting Jane Doe when she was between three and four years old. He said he was lying in bed and used Jane Doe's hand to masturbate himself. Stepmother told her church elders what respondent had said, but not police. She later told Jane Doe what he said, although not until she was an "adult," and only after Jane Doe had directly inquired. There was no evidence as to exactly when stepmother told Jane Doe, or what she said, but it was before Jane Doe's unusual experience with her boyfriend.
Scott interviewed respondent and he admitted molesting Jane Doe three or four times by using her hand to masturbate himself. This happened over "a period of three or four weeks" when she was about "two years old." He also admitted telling stepmother about the incidents, although he said he never told Jane Doe.
The prosecutor filed a brief arguing the corpus delicti rule does not apply at the preliminary hearing and, even if it does, her evidence would sufficiently establish the corpus delicti of the charged offenses. Respondent disputed both assertions. The magistrate found the corpus delicti rule did not apply at the preliminary hearing, relying on the prosecutor's brief and an unspecified "hornbook [] available to us [] on the bench." The magistrate alternatively found sufficient evidence of corpus delicti independent of respondent's statements, and held respondent to answer.
On respondent's section 995 motion to set aside the information, he again argued his admissions to stepmother and Scott should not have been considered by the magistrate because the corpus delicti of the charged offenses had not been independently established. In response, the district attorney did not contest the applicability of the rule at preliminary hearings, and instead simply "acknowledge[ed] the prosecution must establish the existence of the corpus delicti at the preliminary hearing . . . ." He argued the rule had been satisfied at the preliminary hearing and there was sufficient evidence presented for the magistrate to consider respondent's admissions in making its holdingorder. The trial court found insufficient evidence of corpus delicti had been presented, and granted the motion.
(People v. Ramirez (2016) 244 Cal.App.4th 800, 813.) "Sufficient cause" means (Ibid.) It is shown (Rideout v. Superior Court (1967) 67 Cal.2d 471, 474.) "[S]ection 995 allows a defendant to challenge an information based on the sufficiency of the record made before the magistrate at the preliminary hearing." (Lexin v. Superior Court (2010) 47 Cal.4th 1050, 1071-1072 (Lexin).) Thus, an information "shall be set aside" if the defendant has been "committed without reasonable or probable cause." (§ 995, subd. (a)(2)(B).)
In an appeal from a superior court's order granting a section 995 motion, we disregard the ruling of that court and directly review the underlying determination of the magistrate. (People v. Gonzalez (2017) 2 Cal.5th 1138, 1141.) "Insofar as the . . . section 995 motion rests . . . on consideration of the evidence adduced, we must draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the information [citations] and decide whether there is probable cause to hold the defendant[ ] to answer, i.e., whether the evidence is such that 'a reasonable person could harbor a strong suspicion of the defendant's guilt' [citations]." (Lexin, supra, 47 Cal.4th at p. 1072.) We do not substitute our own judgment for that of the committing magistrate concerning the weight of the evidence or the credibility of the witnesses. (People v. Block (1971) 6 Cal.3d 239, 245.) However, (People v. Black (2017) 8 Cal.App.5th 889, 898 (Black).)
In California, the corpus delicti rule is neither constitutional nor statutory.3 Instead, it finds its origin in the English common law, dating back at least to Perry's Case (1660) 14 Howell's State Trials 1311. There, (People v. Jones (1998) 17 Cal.4th 279, 322 (Jones) (conc. opn. of Mosk, J.).)
Thereafter, the British courts created the corpus delicti rule. (See Note, Proof of the Corpus Delicti Aliunde the Defendant's Confession (1955) ...
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