Word: dorados
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Acting under its broad new confession doctrine (People v. Dorado), the California Supreme Court has voided Martinez's confession on the ground that the police failed to warn him of his rights to silence and to counsel as soon as they had other solid evidence against him-his fingerprints at the scene of the crime. In effect, that reversal also destroyed the case against Aranda-and spurred the court to confront the whole problem of how confessions should be handled in joint trials...
Until last fall, Graves's conviction would have stood like Gibraltar. But in Escobedo v. Illinois, the Supreme Court ruled that the right to counsel begins when police shift from investigation to accusation. And in People v. Dorado, which the Supreme Court recently refused to review, California's highest state court went even further. It ruled that police failure to advise a suspect of his rights to counsel and silence invalidates his confession even if he does not ask for a lawyer...
Graves never "confessed" to anything; nevertheless his conviction has just been reversed under Dorado. In ruling for Graves, a state district appellate court said that he should have been protected from further self-incrimination as soon as he was arrested...
...court considered to be the equivalent of a confession-more telltale handwriting. "The defendant could not have made a more incriminating statement," said the court. In short, the police should have either delayed Graves's arrest to build their case, or they should have given him his Dorado rights when they did arrest...
California prosecutors are hotly attacking the Graves decision. To rule out handwriting as evidence, they say, implies a threat to the legality of fingerprints, photographs and police lineups. The Graves decision will be appealed to the California Supreme Court, which handed down the Dorado decision that started all the commotion. Along with an editorial blast at Dorado, the San Francisco Examiner last week ran a cartoon reducing the decision to its ultimate absurdity: a lawyer's claim that his client should be shielded even from the incriminating implications of a court appearance...