Longer Sentences Upheld Under Victims’ Rights Bill

In its first interpretations of provisions in the sweeping anti-crime “Victims Bill of Rights” initiative, the state Supreme Court Monday unanimously upheld enhanced sentences for repeat offenders but ruled against a section of the law that reduced protections against self-incrimination for juvenile defendants.

The section of the law affirmed by the justices Monday is one that has let judges put scores of habitual criminals behind bars for an extra five years if one of their past crimes was home burglary. The justices knocked down a portion of the initiative that removed automatic grants of immunity to juvenile defendants who testify at court hearings called to determine whether they should be tried as adults.

The court has dealt with Proposition 8 before, most notably upholding it in 1982 against a broad constitutional attack after it was passed by 56% of the voters. However, since then, the court agreed to review dozens of cases on the measure’s specific provisions. Monday’s rulings were the first of what will be a series of decisions during the coming months and perhaps years on the law, which wrought major changes in California criminal law.

Assistant Atty. Gen. Steven White said prosecutors will be “relatively pleased” with the sentencing rulings but that there is “cause for concern” in the other decision. Nevertheless White welcomed the rulings.

White’s boss, Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp, recently criticized the court for failing to act on Proposition 8 cases, leaving judges and lawyers uncertain as to how to apply the new law.

Court critics have been anticipating that the liberal-dominated court’s Proposition 8 rulings would provide fodder for the campaign to oust at least three liberal justices who face voter confirmation on the November, 1986, ballot.

However, Monday’s rulings may not lend themselves to such a campaign. The rulings were narrow. The sections in question were themselves somewhat complex and obscure.

In the juvenile case (Ramona R. vs. Superior Court, L.A. 31800), the court had its first chance to deal with Proposition 8’s most far-reaching section: the “truth-in-evidence” provision, which requires that all “relevant evidence” be admitted in trials and which sought to invalidate several previous state court rulings.

The court did place a limit on exactly what is relevant evidence, but it confined the ruling only to a specific aspect of juvenile law: testimony by juvenile defendants at Juvenile Court sessions, called fitness hearings, in which the court decides whether the accused should be tried as an adult.

Pending Cases

Several pending cases question other, broader aspects of the relevant evidence section.

In a unanimous opinion by Justice Stanley Mosk, the court held that minors like Ramona enjoy “substantial protection against the use at trial of any statements she may make to her probation officer or to the court at her fitness hearing.”

At age 17, Ramona was charged with the Oct. 12, 1982, murder of her guardian, who was shot, struck with an ax and repeatedly stabbed with a knife. Ramona denied the charges but told authorities that she had been at the scene “metaphysically.”

Because Ramona was over 16, she was subject to trial as an adult, which would expose her to a potential life sentence. First, however, there had to be a fitness hearing.

At the hearing, Ramona refused to testify, fearing that under Proposition 8’s truth-in-evidence provision, anything she said could be used against her at a subsequent murder trial. Before the initiative’s passage, nothing juveniles said at fitness hearings could be used against them at a later trial.

Without testimony from Ramona, the hearing officer ordered that she be tried as an adult.

The high court ordered a new fitness hearing for Ramona and ruled that she may testify at that hearing with immunity. The murder charges are still pending.

What prompted prosecutor White’s “cause for concern” was the reliance of the court in its opinion on its own previous interpretations of the state Constitution.

One of the principal aims of Proposition 8 was to force courts in California to rely on federal rules on admission of evidence, rather than more restrictive state rulings. The court’s decision Monday bypassed federal law on the topic, and White suggested that it may be a precursor of future rulings based on state law.

In the two sentencing cases, the court ruled unanimously that a defendant could have five years added to his sentence for a current crime if he had a previous conviction for a residential burglary or admitted that he had previously committed a home burglary.

The proposition also expanded previous law by saying that stiffer sentences imposed on repeat offenders for past crimes should be more than twice the length meted out for a current serious felony. The court declared the change proper.

White said prosecutors will be “relatively pleased” by the rulings. (People vs. Jackson, crim. 23622 and People vs. O’Bryan, crim. 23621).

While the sentencing section is one of Proposition 8’s more obscure parts, it probably has done more to add teeth to the criminal justice system than any other aspect of the Paul Gann-sponsored measure, according to prosecutors.

The reason is simple. More defendants are convicted of burglary than any other serious felony. So more career criminals receive an added five years in prison if they have past burglary convictions.

“It has a direct, practical impact,” Deputy Atty. Gen. Richard Millar Jr. said of the section. “Five years is a substantial increase in a sentence, especially when you consider that a lot of the base sentences are two, three and four years.”

The proposition says that any repeat offender will receive a sentence for the present crime, plus an “enhancement” of five years if that person previously had been convicted of any one of 25 serious felonies.

One of the felonies was “residential burglary.”

The fight in Monday’s cases centered on the fact that before Proposition 8 the law did not separate residential burglary from burglaries of offices or other property. (The law has since been changed so that residential burglary is a specific crime.)

Jeffrey Dean O’Bryan of Ventura County and Harold Binion Jackson of San Diego County pleaded guilty to home burglaries in 1982 after the initiative passed. They also admitted that they were convicted in 1980 of home burglaries, even though the previous convictions did not specify that.

They were sentenced to two years for the current crime and received five years’ enhancement for the past residential burglaries.

The court relied on the fact that the two defendants admitted that their previous crimes were against homes. It left for another day the question of what will happen to defendants who do not admit that previous burglaries were residential.

“There is no rule . . . which bars the defendant from admitting that a prior burglary involved entry into a residence,” the court said in an opinion by Justice Allen Broussard.