Huggins

Defendant was charged with first degree burglary arising out of the forcible entry into a home and theft of money contained in a letter indoors. He pleaded no contest in the face of virtually conclusive evidence consisting of four fingerprints and the absence of a benign explanation for their presence in the house. Thereafter substitute counsel woke up to the fact that the issue defendant wished to raise on appeal would not survive such a plea, even with a certificate of probable cause, as the alleged error was not of constitutional dimension nor undermined the legality of the proceedings. (People v. De Vaughan (1977) 18 Cal.3d 889, 895-896 [ 135 Cal.Rptr. 786 , 558 P.2d 872 ].) He thereupon successfully moved to vacate the plea and submitted the cause on the transcript of the preliminary hearing, a so-called “Bunnell plea.” (Bunnell v. Superior Court (1975) 13 Cal.3d 592 [ 119 Cal.Rptr. 302 , 531 P.2d 1086 ].) Defendant was promptly found guilty.

The sole ground for appeal is the refusal of the magistrate at the preliminary examination and of the trial judge at a pretrial hearing to admit the hearsay declaration of Teresa Grace Nugent, a neighbor of the victim, offered…