California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Wright, 273 Cal.App.2d 325, 78 Cal.Rptr. 75 (Cal. App. 1969):
In this case appellant's first confession at the apartment was followed by the lawful search of that apartment which resulted in the finding of the contraband there. This event was followed immediately by the Miranda warnings to appellant and the requisite waiver by him. These last mentioned two events at the very least constitute factors to be considered in deciding whether appellant's subsequent testimony was induced by his first confession. (See People v. Johnson, Supra, 70 A.C. 577, 587, 75 Cal.Rptr. 401, 450 P.2d 865.) Then came appellant's detailed and quite damaging station house confession. By the time of the trial appellant, in deciding whether to testify, was confronted by not merely his first confession at the apartment that he, an admitted narcotice user, had narcotics in the apartment, but by as well the heroin and the injection kit themselves, which the officers had found there, and by his station house confession that he had bought this heroin himself earlier that vely afternoon and had then injected himself with it. As indicated earlier, of these three items of evidence tending to prove his guilt, his first generalized confession is by far the weakest in probative effect. Under these circumstances we have no hesitancy in declaring our belief beyond a reasonable doubt that the erroneous admission in evidence of appellant's first confession neither induced nor impelled his subsequent testimony.
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