Anti-Crime Provision Is Upheld : Justice: Appeal Court says defense, as well as prosecution, can be required to share evidence.

In a ruling on a San Diego case, a state appeal court Thursday upheld a key provision of Proposition 115, the sweeping anti-crime initiative, saying that defense lawyers must disclose evidence to prosecutors before trial.

Ruling in a common burglary case, the 4th District Court of Appeal in San Diego said the provision, widely viewed by defense attorneys as damaging, was legal. Prosecutors long have been forced to disclose evidence before trial to defense attorneys, and a three-judge panel of the court said it was only fair to compel defense lawyers to reciprocate.

Defense lawyers claimed that disclosure would violate a client’s constitutional rights, particularly the right to be free from self-incrimination. The court disagreed, saying that trials were designed to seek the truth and and stressing that voters concluded last year it was time to “restore balance to our criminal justice system.”

Prosecutors hailed the ruling. “It will eliminate trial by ambush,” Dist. Atty. Edwin L. Miller Jr. said Thursday.

San Diego County Public Defender Frank Bardsley, whose office challenged the provision, could not be reached for comment, nor could the two deputies on the case. The Los Angeles County Public Defender’s office also weighed in on the case with a friend-of-the-court brief, urging the panel to strike down the measure’s disclosure provision.

Proposition 115, backed by a coalition of prosecutors and victims’ rights advocates, was passed in June, 1990, by a 57% majority. The initiative provided for a wide range of constitutional amendments and statutory changes aimed at reducing delays in court, and sought to limit the constitutional rights of criminal defendants.

Last December, the California Supreme Court struck down a broad provision in Proposition 115 that would have required state courts to defer to the U.S. Supreme Court in defining the rights of criminal defendants. It left the rest of the initiative to what promises to be an issue-by-issue review.

The San Diego case grew out of a pretrial bid by county prosecutors to obtain material gathered by the public defender’s office in the misdemeanor burglary case of Timothy C. Hobbs. Hobbs was originally charged with residential burglary, a felony, but the charge was reduced to a misdemeanor after a preliminary hearing last Nov. 6.

On Jan. 3, San Diego Municipal Judge Charles G. Rogers ordered defense lawyers to turn over to prosecutors the names and addresses of defense witnesses, relevant witness statements and any physical evidence Hobbs intended to produce at a trial. Defense lawyers objected, and appealed to the 4th District court.

Justice William L. Todd Jr., however, said there was no merit to defense claims that the provision was unfair. Rejecting a defense contention that the provision violated the state and federal constitutional guarantees against self-incrimination, Todd said the “ends of justice” are best served by an exchange of the “maximum possible amount of information.”

Todd also denied the defense claim that the provision violated the right to due process.

Defense lawyers had claimed that due process would be violated because there is no explicit wording in Proposition 115 forcing prosecutors to divulge information they later learned because of defense-supplied material.

The U.S. Supreme Court, however, has held that prosecutors must release that sort of information. That was more than enough to compensate for the lack of an explicit phrase in Proposition 115, Todd said.

Defense lawyers tried a variety of other arguments, arguing that divulging defense material would violate the long-honored lawyer practice of keeping casework confidential, and that Proposition 115 applies only to more serious felonies, not misdemeanors. Todd said there was no merit to these claims.

Justice Daniel J. Kremer joined in the ruling. Justice Howard Wiener also concurred, saying the provision is legal but adding a short opinion to caution against blanket rules and stressing that the facts of each case should be looked at separately.