People v. Coronado

PETERS, P. J.

I concur and dissent.

This case presents a most peculiar situation. The appellant is charged with “placing” or “permitting the placing” of his “wife” in a house of prostitution. The evidence produced at the trial supports the implied finding of the jury that appellant committed the offense charged, in the sense that he permitted the placing in such a house of the woman to whom he had been married, and with whom he was living. But, after verdict, and before sentence, a judicial annulment of respondent’s marriage to that woman was secured on the ground that he was lawfully married to another when he married the woman in question. The first wife had secured a divorce from defendant subsequent to his second marriage. The record shows that the same judge who presided at the criminal trial granted the annulment, and, further, that the prosecuting officials knew of the pending annulment proceedings. No contention is made, nor is it even suggested, that the annulment was secured improperly. In other words, had the facts upon which the annulment was secured been disclosed at the criminal trial, appellant could not have been convicted lawfully of the offense of which he now stands convicted. We now know, as a matter of law, by virtue of the unchallenged annulment decree, that appellant did not commit the offense of which he stands convicted.

. I agree that, under the circumstances here disclosed, the second motion for a new trial was improper. The trial court had exhausted its jurisdiction over such a motion when it ruled on the first such motion and an appeal was taken therefrom. For that reason, the appeal from the second order denying the motion must be dismissed.

So far, I agree with the majority opinion. But that opinion does not stop there. It goes on to hold that, on its merits, the second motion did not present a proper case for granting the motion for a new trial on the ground of newly discovered evidence. That holding, in my opinion, is unsound. While it is. true that litigants should not be permitted to sit back and allow a court to go on with the trial and to take their chances with a jury, and then, after they have lost that gamble come forward with the claim of newly discovered evidence to secure a new trial when they knew of the existence of such evidence during their trial, and while I agree that, normally, knowledge of the existence of facts without realization of their legal significance is sufficient ground to deny the motion, this is not an ordinary case. The present case is not one where the facts, if relied upon during the trial, would depend for their effectiveness on the credibility of witnesses. Here, it has been conclusively established by a judicial decree as a matter of law that appellant is not guilty of the offense charged. Under such circumstances, where the alleged “newly” discovered evidence is of such a nature that as a matter of law it demonstrates the impropriety of the conviction, it is my opinion that if a proper motion for a new trial is made, it should be granted. If this is not the law, it means that the trial court, while still possessing jurisdiction, is impotent to correct a situation where it knows, as a matter of law, that a convicted defendant is innocent of the charges upon which he has been convicted. I am not willing to agree that trial courts lack the power to correct such an injustice.

The difficulty in the instant case is, that the trial court had no jurisdiction to consider the second motion for a new trial, and this court cannot consider matters which appear only in proceedings on a void motion. It is not even intimated that the prosecuting officials connived in preventing the production of the evidence. Orderly administration of criminal procedure requires the defendant to urge his defenses, if any, in the manner provided by law. Not having done so, redress for any miscarriage of justice, if any occurred, must be had from the executive under his pardoning power.