People v. Mann

California Court of Appeal Mar 1, 1957 No. Crim. 5706Published

Before: Moore

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Holding. A defendant in a rape prosecution lacks standing to challenge the trial court's denial of a witness's privilege against self-incrimination, as the privilege is personal to the witness and its violation does not render the resulting testimony inadmissible against the defendant.

Issues

Whether a defendant may object to the trial court's refusal to allow a witness to invoke the privilege against self-incrimination.
Whether testimony obtained from a witness in violation of their privilege against self-incrimination must be excluded under the exclusionary rule.

Disposition. affirmed

Quotations verified verbatim against the opinion

“conceding her claim to be correct, the error was not committed as against the accused and was not a matter about which he might complain.”

MOORE, P. J.

Convicted by the court of rape as defined by subdivision one of section 261, Penal Code, appellant was

[852]

committed to the youth authority. His motion for a new trial having been denied, he demands a reversal on the ground that the court required the prosecutrix “to give testimony which might tend to incriminate her.” He contends (1) that the witness had the right to refuse to testify as provided in the state and federal Constitutions; (2) that when the witness was forced to answer, her testimony was illegally obtained.

Prosecutrix was born January 6, 1939. On November 29, 1955, having completed her visit at the home of a girl friend in Lomita about 10 p. m., she answered the honk of an automobile horn by^ looking from the front door. She saw four men in the automobile who had come for another girl that was not present. One of them asked whether they could give her a lift on her way home. She entered the ear and occupied the back seat beside appellant. Instead of driving to her home, the driver proceeded to the Palos Verdes Hills. She told them she “had to go home to go to work the next day . . . I have to get up at 6:30 in the morning so take me home.” After they had talked for a while in the hills, they drove to a slough in the rear of Harbor Junior College about midnight. Three of the boys left. She was then alone with appellant. She there had an act of sexual intercourse with him. She was married December 11, 1955.

At the time the prosecuting attorney inquired as to the act of intercourse, appellant’s counsel requested the court to advise the witness that she need not testify to “any fact which she feels might incriminate her . . . Article I,, section 13, of the Constitution of California is sufficiently inclusive to allow a witness to take immunity even though the only punishment might be that of being filed on in the juvenile court . . . she might be filed upon under one of the subdivisions of Section 647, the vagrancy section of the Penal Code.”

On appeal, the same contentions are renewed and additional authorities from this and other states are cited.

(Ex parte Nesson,

25 S.D. 49 [125 N.W. 124, 126, 27 L.R.A. N.S. 872];

People v. Mann

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MOORE, P. J.

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