Involuntary Confession Rule Eased : Justice: State Supreme Court says a defendant may be convicted even if a coerced admission of guilt is introduced at trial. An error is considered harmless if other evidence is sufficient to convict.

Reversing a long-held principle of state law, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday that a defendant may be convicted even if a coerced confession of guilt was improperly introduced at trial.

Bringing California law in line with a recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, the state court concluded that the admission of an involuntary confession during trial may be considered “harmless error” if other evidence of guilt was sufficient by itself to win a conviction.

“We overrule the line of California decisions holding that the erroneous admission of a coerced confession is reversible per se under California law,” the court majority said in an opinion signed by five of the seven justices.

The court’s decision was assailed in dissents by Justices Stanley Mosk and Joyce Kennard, who argued that allowing admission of a coerced confession under any circumstances would weaken constitutional protection for defendants and increase the temptation of police officers to improperly extract statements from suspects.

In her dissent, Kennard said: “Abandoning the rule of automatic reversal sends the wrong signal to police, to prosecutors and to trial courts.”

The state Supreme Court’s decision came in the case of Mark Steven Cahill, who was convicted of the 1986 rape, robbery, burglary and murder of Dr. Ellis Chung, a physician who was found beaten to death in her Carmichael apartment. After his arrest, Cahill’s confession was elicited by police who gave him an implied promise of leniency based on inaccurate and misleading statements about the legal definition of first-degree murder.

The confession was admitted at Cahill’s trial, where he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

But the 3rd District Court of Appeal ruled that the confession was involuntary and reversed Cahill’s conviction. In a similar case, however, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991 overturned nearly a century of decisions holding that a coerced confession violated the U.S. Constitution.

Taking its cue from the high court, the state Supreme Court ruled in the Cahill case that while the state Constitution prohibits the coercion of a confession through torture or psychological manipulation, “a rule of automatic reversal is not warranted under California law.”