Word: traynor
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...Traynor gave California another first when he ruled in People v. Riser that prosecutors ordinarily must allow defendants to "discover" (examine) evidence to be used against them at the trial. Characteristically, Traynor went on to enlarge the discovery privileges of prosecutors in 1961 (Jones v. Superior Court). Today, California probably tops all other states in liberal discovery rules. To deny such access, says Traynor, is "to lose sight of the true purpose of a criminal trial, to discover the facts...
...Traynor held for the court that California courts need not follow the federal "exclusionary rule" that bars evidence gathered in violation of the Fourth Amendment guarantee against "unreasonable searches and seizures...
...however, Traynor forthrightly overruled himself in People v. Cahan, as the court imposed the exclusionary rule because "other remedies have completely failed" to stop lawless police action. Six years later, the Supreme Court itself followed Cahan and applied the rule to all American criminal courts (Mapp v. Ohio...
Significantly, it was Traynor who also eased the furor over Mapp by arguing in 1961 that the exclusionary rule should not be made retroactive. Its purpose, he noted, was to deter lawless police action from then on-not to help free prisoners who had been convicted on previously admissible evidence. Last year the Supreme Court followed precisely that reasoning in Linkletter v. Louisiana, which ruled out Mapp's retroactivity...
...Essential. In the same pioneering vein, Traynor suggested in 1961 that a suspect is entitled to a lawyer as soon as the police are prepared to charge him. In 1964 the Supreme Court followed that path in Escobedo v. Illinois, the case that police now fear will eliminate all confessions. Indeed, California's Justice Mathew Tobriner amplified Escobedo last January by holding for the court in People v. Dorado that police failure to advise a suspect of his rights to counsel and to silence voids his confession, even though he may not have asked for a lawyer. Last spring...