Supreme Turnabout

For decades the California Supreme Court was regarded by lawyers and judges as perhaps the nation’s greatest state court. Under both Republican and Democratic governors the state high court could be counted on to be an independent arbiter of the law, construing the California Constitution and supervising the lower California courts by its own lights--no matter what decisions the U.S. Supreme Court handed down.

But that may be changing. To be sure, a court does not write its entire history in a single opinion, but the new California Supreme Court, reconstituted with five appointees of Gov. George Deukmejian, shows signs of being far less independent than its predecessors.

In a 4-3 decision the court on Monday overruled a 1976 California decision and held that a confession coaxed from a defendant in violation of the Miranda rules can be used to impeach his credibility if he takes the stand at his own trial. As every devotee of television police dramas knows, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1966 ruling in Miranda vs. Arizona requires the police to advise every suspect taken into custody of his right to remain silent and of his right to consult an attorney.

The U.S. Supreme Court has increasingly carved out exceptions to the Miranda rules, saying that they can be waived entirely in emergencies and giving prosecutors free rein to impeach a defendant with incriminating statements that he made even after he had requested a lawyer. But the California Supreme Court consistently took a loftier view, saying in 1976 that it did not want illegally obtained confessions to be used in the courts of California, no matter what the circumstances.

On Monday the state high court reversed itself, scuttling that decision and a philosophy that had served it well for years. The majority justified the new ruling by saying that it was simply making California law conform to that laid down by the U.S. Supreme Court--and to the wishes of the California electorate. In Proposition 8, the Victims’ Bill of Rights initiative adopted in 1982, the voters indicated that they wanted all “relevant evidence” used in criminal proceedings and intended to nullify any state decisions that put more restrictions on prosecutors and police than were required by federal courts, the majority said.

What is the practical effect of the new ruling? Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, who had urged this course on the state Supreme Court, said that the decision will discourage perjury: Defendants will no longer be able to take the stand and lie about their previous confessions.

But in our view the decision also sends an unfortunate signal to police officers: Once you read a suspect his Miranda rights, you’ve done your duty. You can continue to interrogate him even if he exercises his rights and asks for a lawyer. You can coax him to speak against himself.

That doesn’t square with our view of the Fifth Amendment and its explicit message that no one “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”

What the ruling suggests about the California Supreme Court is equally disturbing: This is not the kind of decision that you get from a body that thinks for itself.