Chapter 2 More on Charging Documents

• Jurisdiction: United States

Chapter 2 More on Charging Documents

Joinder or Severance of Parties

A complaint, information, or indictment can list a single defendant or multiple defendants to a crime. The document can be changed to add or join a defendant to an existing charging document, or to split up or sever parties on an existing document. California Penal Code §1098 states: "When two or more defendants are jointly charged with any public offense, whether felony or misdemeanor, they must be tried jointly, unless the court orders separate trials." The judge has discretion to split up the defendants and order separate trials in the interests of justice. There is no right to have separate trials. But if an Aranda/Bruton issue arises, the judge often considers separate trials as an appropriate remedy or using dual juries in a single trial (see Chapter 14).

Joinder or Severance of Counts

A complaint, information, or indictment can list a single defendant or multiple defendants to a crime. California Penal Code §954 states: "An accusatory pleading may charge two or more different offenses connected together in their commission, or different statements of the same offense or two or more different offenses of the same class of crimes or offenses under separate counts." In addition, if crimes are charged in separate charging documents, and the counts are connected in their commission or are two or more different offenses of the same class of crimes, a court may order the documents consolidated in the interests of efficiency.

A court has discretion to consolidate or sever counts based on "substantial prejudice" to defendant. In assessing possible prejudice, the court may consider:

• whether the evidence of the crimes to be jointly tried would not be cross-admissible in separate trials;
• whether certain charges are more likely to inflame the jury against the defendant;
• the spillover effect of weak case joined with another weak, or a strong case and how it will affect the overall outcome of charges; and
•

...