CA5

INTRODUCTION

The People appeal from an order dismissing, with prejudice, a juvenile wardship petition (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 602, subd. (a)), which charged D.V. (the minor) with soliciting his mother, M.V. (mother), to commit and join in the commission of the murder of the minor’s father, P.G. (father), and stepmother, M.G. (stepmother), in violation of Penal Code,1 section 653f, subdivision (b). On appeal, the People contend the juvenile court erred in denying the People’s request to grant father and stepmother use immunity and compel their testimony under section 1324, after they invoked their Fifth Amendment privilege against self- incrimination during a pretrial hearing on the minor’s motion to exclude evidence of recordings of incriminating telephone conversations between the minor and mother on the ground they were secretly intercepted and recorded by father and stepmother in violation of state and federal law. We conclude the court’s denial of the People’s request to grant use immunity to father and stepmother was premised on an incorrect legal assumption that a grant of immunity would not adequately protect the witnesses’ Fifth Amendment privilege against…