California Supreme Court upholds police complaint law
By The Associated Press
12.06.02
SAN FRANCISCO — The California Supreme Court unanimously upheld a state law that makes it a crime for citizens to knowingly lodge false accusations against police officers.
The seven-member court said yesterday that the law, enacted in response to a flood of complaints against officers after Rodney King's 1991 taped beating, does not violate free-speech guarantees under the Constitution.
Civil rights groups said the ruling could chill people from making legitimate complaints against officers because they may fear police, who investigate themselves, would retaliate and press prosecutors to file criminal charges.
"I have no doubt it would have this effect," said Alan Schlosser, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which urged the court to strike down the 1995 law.
Ventura County prosecutor Michael Schwartz, who asked the court to uphold the law, said the decision should not hinder people from making legitimate complaints.
"It only prohibits deliberate lies," Schwartz said. "Before a person can be convicted, the prosecutor would have to be convinced that the person was not only wrong but was lying."
The court's decision from Justice Ming W. Chin reinstates the misdemeanor conviction of a Ventura County couple prosecuted in 1998 for falsely accusing an Oxnard police officer of exposing himself to about 50 at-risk teenagers at an awards banquet run by the department's Activities League.
The Oxnard Police Department said it investigated the couple's allegations and could not corroborate them. The Ventura County district attorney charged Barbara Atkinson and Shaun Stanistreet for filing a false complaint.
The two were convicted by a jury of a law carrying a maximum six-month jail term. They served a 30-day sentence and appealed. They have vigorously maintained the allegations against the officer were true and are being covered up.
"Just because they're the California Supreme Court, they cannot throw out the First Amendment to protect corrupt police officers," said Atkinson, who will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.
A state appeals court had reversed the conviction on grounds the couple had a guaranteed right of speech. The lower court ruled that barring speech against police officers was unconstitutional because false accusations targeting firefighters, elected officials or most anybody else is not a criminal violation.
But the state Supreme Court said free-speech guarantees take a back seat when it comes to police officers. The potential harm to them from false reports could damage an officer's credibility and even waste police resources investigating the complaints, the court said.
The damage that could be done to police officers, the court added, is akin to the potential harm of a terrorist threat against the nation's president, which is a violation of federal law.
"Just as the government may criminalize only threats of violence against a specific victim, the president, so too may the Legislature criminalize only knowingly false accusations against a class of victims — peace officers," Chin wrote.
The court's decision, meanwhile, may revive charges in a related Solano County case. Last year, a judge dismissed charges against two women who complained about a California Highway Patrol officer. The women were driving to Reno, Nev., and were stopped by an officer on suspicion of speeding. They complained the officer was discourteous. After reviewing a tape recording of the stop, the CHP said the officer had acted professionally and deemed the complaint false.
The case decided yesterday is People v. Stanistreet, S102722.