POWERS-MONACHELLO

Defendants in this case were charged with possession for sale of cocaine and conspiracy to possess cocaine for sale. The Sonoma County District Attorney contends that two different trial judges misapplied the governing law regarding the corpus delicti rule in dismissing the conspiracy count. Appellant urges us to hold that the corpus delicti rule’s limitation on the use of defendants’ extrajudicial statements has been eliminated from the preliminary examination stage of criminal proceedings. However, we conclude that although defendants’ statements might have been *404 introduced to determine whether they would be held to answer, such statements remained irrelevant until the corpus delicti rule had been otherwise satisfied. Our Supreme Court has not understood the 1982 constitutional amendment at the center of appellant’s argument to have fully abrogated the rule requiring independent evidence of the alleged crime. We agree with that conclusion. In the preliminary examination stage of criminal proceedings, the application of the classical corpus delicti rule in California remains unabated.

BACKGROUND

Beginning in May 2007, Santa Rosa Police Department detectives…

I respectfully dissent, and do so for four principal reasons: (1) I do not believe the majority’s opinion accurately sets forth the quantity of “independent evidence” adduced at a preliminary hearing which is sufficient to satisfy the corpus delicti rule; (2) nor, I submit, does the majority adequately deal with the principle that circumstantial evidence and inferences are both permissible types of “independent evidence” of a charge of conspiracy; (3) nor does the majority adequately deal with the very liberal standard of proof applicable at preliminary hearings; and (4) I believe that, considered under the combination of those three standards, there was ample “independent evidence” of a conspiracy adduced by the prosecution at the preliminary hearing. For those reasons, I would reverse the trial court and remand the case to it with instructions to reinstate the dismissed conspiracy charge against defendant and respondent, Frank Evan Powers-Monachello.

I.

Regarding the first point, the quantity of independent evidence necessary for the prosecution to present at a preliminary hearing, the majority cites and quotes from our Supreme Court’s recent opinion in People v. Alvarez…

Defendants in this case were charged with possession for sale of cocaine and conspiracy to possess cocaine for sale. The Sonoma County District Attorney contends that two different trial judges misapplied the governing law regarding the corpus delicti rule in dismissing the conspiracy count. Appellant urges us to hold that the corpus delicti rule's limitation on the use of defendants' extrajudicial statements has been eliminated from the preliminary examination stage of criminal proceedings. However, we conclude that although defendants' statements might have been introduced to determine whether they would be held to answer, such statements remained irrelevant until the corpus delicti rule had been otherwise satisfied. Our Supreme Court has not understood the 1982 constitutional amendment at the center of appellant's argument to have fully abrogated the rule requiring independent evidence of the alleged crime. We agree with that conclusion. In the preliminary examination stage of criminal proceedings, the application of the classical corpus delicti rule in California remains unabated.

Beginning in May 2007, Santa Rosa Police Department detectives conducted an…