50-Plus Proposition 8 Cases Await Court Action

Having disposed of its first substantive cases involving Proposition 8, the so-called “Victims’ Bill of Rights,” on Monday, the state Supreme Court still has more than 50 cases pending on virtually every other aspect of the sweeping anti-crime initiative of 1982.

Among those issues, the court must decide:

- Whether state courts can be more restrictive than federal courts regarding the admission of illegally obtained evidence in trials. Unlike state law, for instance, federal law allows illegally obtained evidence if law enforcement agents can show that they had a good-faith belief that they were acting properly in obtaining the evidence.

The “truth in evidence,” section says all relevant evidence must be admitted in trials, and it appears to have done away with state grounds for excluding evidence.

One case involves a minor who was charged with marijuana possession after police illegally searched another person’s car. The trial judge agreed that the search was improper, but he refused to exclude the evidence, noting that under federal law, the youth had no grounds for claiming that his rights were violated because he did not own the car that was searched.

Other cases raise the question of whether evidence must be thrown out if its gathering is based on faulty information provided by police in an affidavit to obtain a search warrant.

- The standard for an insanity defense. Proposition 8 virtually did away with insanity defenses. The voters acted four years after the state Supreme Court issued a ruling allowing increased use of mental incapacity defenses.

- Whether, as the measure says, prosecutors can seek to impeach the credibility of a witness in a criminal trial by citing any prior felony convictions of the witness. That section directly conflicts with a 1972 state Supreme Court ruling that prior convictions may be used only if the crime reflects upon the honesty of a witness.

Perjury, for instance, involves one’s honesty and can be cited. A murder conviction, on the other hand, does not necessarily reflect on a person’s willingness to lie and cannot be used to attack credibility of a witness, the court has said.

- The amount of additional prison time that can be imposed on a defendant based on past convictions. Under Proposition 8, a defendant may be sentenced to two years for a burglary, for instance, and then receive unlimited additions of five years for each past felony conviction. In the past, so-called “enhancements” were limited to no more than twice the term for the current offense.