Pitchess v. Superior Court

• Court: United States State Supreme Court (California)
• Writing for the Court: MOSK; WRIGHT; CLARK
• Citation: 11 Cal.3d 531,522 P.2d 305,113 Cal.Rptr. 897
• Decision Date: 23 May 1974
• Parties: , 522 P.2d 305 Peter J. PITCHESS, as Sheriff, etc., Petitioner, v. The SUPERIOR COURT OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY, Respondent; Caesar ECHEVERIA, Real Party in Interest. L.A. 30224.

Page 897

113 Cal.Rptr. 897 11 Cal.3d 531, 522 P.2d 305 Peter J. PITCHESS, as Sheriff, etc., Petitioner,
v.
The SUPERIOR COURT OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY, Respondent;
Caesar ECHEVERIA, Real Party in Interest. L.A. 30224. Supreme Court of California,
In Bank. May 23, 1974.

[11 Cal.3d 533]

Page 898

[522 P.2d 306] John H. Larson, County Counsel, Robert C. Lynch, Frederick R. Bennett and Jeffrey H. Nelson, Deputy County Counsel, Los Angeles, for petitioner.

Thomas M. O'Connor, City Atty. (City and County of San Francisco), Philip S. Ward, Deputy City Atty., Edward A. Goggin, City Atty. (Oakland), Mark B. Shragge, Deputy City Atty., Royce A. Fincher, Jr., San Jose, Frank G. Carrington, Wayne W. Schmidt, Evanston, Ill., Paul Keller, Glen R. Murphy, Gaithersburg, Md., and Jeremiah F. O'Shea, Jr., South San Francisco, as amici curiae on behalf of petitioner.

No appearance for respondent.

[11 Cal.3d 534] Miguel F. Garcia, Pico Rivera, for real party in interest.

Page 899

[522 P.2d 307] Richard S. Buckley, Public Defender, Dennis A. Fischer and Edward A. Rucker, Deputy Public Defender, Andrew K. Dolan, Leon Letwin, Los Angeles, and Richard A. Wasserstrom, Santa Monica, as amici curiae on behalf of real party in interest.

MOSK, Justice.

Petitioner, Sheriff of Los Angeles County, seeks a writ of mandate to compel respondent superior court to quash its subpoena duces tecum requiring the production of certain documents sought by Caesar Echeveria, real party in interest and defendant in a pending trial for multiple counts of battery (Pen.Code, §§ 242, 243). Petitioner contends the discovery at issue should not have been granted because the motion to discover is procedurally defective and the requested information is not subject to discovery. We conclude the trial court did not abuse its discretion in ordering discovery and therefore deny the writ.

Defendant, together with others, was charged in March 1972 with committing battery against four deputy sheriffs. Soon thereafter one charge was dismissed, and defendant now awaits trial on the remaining three. Defendant asserts he intends at trial to establish that he acted in self-defense in response to the use of excessive force by the deputy sheriffs. (People v. Curtis (1969) 70 Cal.2d 347, 356, 74 Cal.Rptr. 713, 450 P.2d 33.) To that end, he sought to discover evidence of the complaining witnesses' propensity for violence. Specifically, he moved for the production of records of several investigations conducted by the administrative services bureau, a sheriff's department internal unit which inquires into citizen complaints of official misconduct. The investigations involved accusations by various members of the public that the deputies allegedly attacked had themselves used excessive force on previous occasions. The motion was granted by the trial court, and the prosecution was ordered to secure the records from the sheriff. The commander of the administrative services bureau, however, refused to cooperate, whereupon defendant obtained a subpoena duces tecum directing the sheriff to produce the information. The sheriff declined to do so, and unsuccessfully moved to quash the subpoena. Now he seeks mandate.

At the threshold we observe that the case comes to us by a somewhat convoluted route. The trial court ordered the prosecution to obtain the records from the sheriff. When the sheriff refused to produce the information,[11 Cal.3d 535] the prosecutor should have invoked process of the court; instead, the burden of so moving was imposed upon the defendant, here the real party in interest. Nevertheless the trial court found the burden had been met and therefore issued a subpoena duces tecum, the sheriff moved to quash, and the motion was denied. Thus the matter is now in a justiciable posture on the sheriff's request for mandate. On the motion to quash, and petition for mandate after denial of the motion, the burden shifts to the moving party, the sheriff, to demonstrate an abuse of discretion by the trial court. As will appear we find he has not met that burden.

Petitioner initially urges that the affidavits in support of the subpoena duces tecum are insufficient to justify discovery because they fail to demonstrate 'good cause' with adequate specificity as required by Code of Civil Procedure sections 1985 and 2036. ¹ The contention is premis

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ed [522 P.2d 308] on the erroneous assumption that the statutory provisions governing discovery in civil actions apply to criminal proceedings.

Unlike the statutory development of civil discovery in California, the right of an accused to seek discovery in the course of preparing his defense to a criminal prosecution is a judicially created doctrine evoling in the absence of guiding legislation. (Ballard v. Superior Court (1966) 64 Cal.2d 159, 176, fn. 12, 49 Cal.Rptr. 302, 410 P.2d 838; Louisell & Wally, Modern Cal. Discovery (2d ed. 1972) pp. 847--848.) A defendant's motion to discover is addressed solely to the sound discretion of the trial court, which has inherent power to order discovery when the interests of justice so demand. (Hill v. Superior Court (1974) 10 Cal.3d 812, 816, 112 Cal.Rptr. 257, 518 P.2d 1353; People v. Terry (1962) 57 Cal.2d 538, 560--561, 21 Cal.Rptr. 185, 370 P.2d 985; Powell v. Superior Court (1957) 48 Cal.2d 704, 708, 312 P.2d 698; Vetter v. Superior Court (1961) 189 Cal.App.2d 132, 134, 10 Cal.Rptr. 890.) Allowing an accused the right to discover is based on the fundamental proposition that he is entitled to a fair trial and an intelligent defense in light of all relevant and reasonably accessible information. (Hill v. Superior Court (1974) supra, 10 Cal.3d at p. 816, 112 Cal.Rptr. 257, 518 P.2d 1353; Cash v. Superior Court (1959)[11 Cal.3d 536] 53 Cal.2d 72, 75, 346 P.2d 407; Powell v. Superior Court (1957) supra, 48 Cal.2d at pp. 707, 709, 312 P.2d 698; People v. Riser (1956) 47 Cal.2d 566, 586, 305 P.2d 1; Louisell & Wally, Modern Cal. Discovery (2d ed. 1972) supra, pp. 881--882.)

In accordance with these principles, it has long been held that civil discovery procedure has no relevance to criminal prosecutions. (Powell v. Superior Court (1957) supra, 48 Cal.2d 704, 707--708, 312 P.2d 698; Yannacone v. Municipal Court (1963) 222 Cal.App.2d 72, 74--75, 34 Cal.Rptr. 838; Clark v. Superior Court (1961) 190 Cal.App.2d 739, 742--743, 12 Cal.Rptr. 191; People v. Wilkins (1955) 135 Cal.App.2d 371, 377--378, 287 P.2d 555; People v. Ratten (1940) 39 Cal.App.2d 267, 271, 102 P.2d 1097; Gonzales v. Superior Court (1935) 3 Cal.2d 260, 263, 44 P.2d 320.) Chief Justice Traynor reaffirmed this dichotomy in Shively v. Stewart (1966) 65 Cal.2d 475, 479, 55 Cal.Rptr. 217, 220, 421 P.2d 65, 68, when he wrote: 'We are committed to the wisdom of discovery, by statute in civil cases (Code Civ.Proc., §§ 2016--2036), and by common law in criminal cases.' Legislative silence on criminal discovery, he noted, means that it has left to the courts the adaptation of common law concepts. More recently this court in Hill unequivocally declared that criminal discovery is an inherent power of the court 'in the absence of legislation' (10 Cal.3d at p. 816, 112 Cal.Rptr. 257, 518 P.2d 1353). While civil discovery in general is as old as our Code of Civil Procedure, Witkin observes that the 'California law of discovery in criminal cases is a creation of the courts dating back only a few years.' (Witkin, Cal. Criminal Procedure (1963) p. 265.)

Nothing in the legislative history of the current version of the civil discovery act (Code Civ.Proc. § 2016 et seq.) discloses an intention to expand its province to incorporate criminal matters. (See Committee on Administration of Justice, Report on Discovery (1956) 31 State Bar J., 204--209, 227; Comment, Depositions, Proceedings to Perpetuate Testimony, Interrogatories to Parties: The Federal Rules and the California Law (1956) 44 Cal.L.Rev. 909.) Indeed, civil discovery in California is now virtually co-extensive with the federal practice, which clearly does not embrace criminal proceedings. (See Fed.Rules Crim.Proc.)

Were a court to require strict...