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Filed 2/1/21 P. v. Luck CA3

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED

California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for 

publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication 

or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

THIRD APPELLATE DISTRICT

(El Dorado)

----

THE PEOPLE,

Plaintiff and Respondent,

v.

LAWRENCE LELAND LUCK,

Defendant and Appellant.

C087056

(Super. Ct. No. P17CRF0268)

Following a trial, a jury found defendant Lawrence Leland Luck guilty of one 

count of committing a lewd act upon a child under the age of 14 years and found true a 

special allegation that defendant engaged in substantial sexual conduct with the victim. 

Defendant’s sole contention on appeal is that the trial court erred in ruling that it would 

permit the prosecutor to cross-examine defendant’s wife, if she were called as a defense 

witness, about her reaction to prior accusations of sexual abuse against defendant. We 

will affirm the judgment.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
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Defendant was charged with committing a lewd act upon a child under the age of 

14 years (Pen. Code, § 288, subd. (a); count 1)1 and oral copulation or sexual penetration 

with a child under 10 years (§ 288.7, subd. (b); count 2). It was further alleged that 

defendant engaged in substantial sexual conduct with the victim. (§ 1203.066, 

subd. (a)(8)).

Defendant and S.L. were Jane Doe’s grandparents and the parents of Jane’s 

mother, L.D.2 When Jane was about 4 years old, she and L.D. moved into defendant’s 

and S.L.’s house in Salinas for about a year. In 2001 or 2002, when Jane was 8 years old, 

she moved with her siblings, L.D., and L.D.’s husband, G.D., to Placerville. L.D. asked 

her parents to move closer to be near her growing family. Defendant and S.L. moved in 

with L.D.’s family for nine months while their home was being built. During the nine 

months that defendant and S.L. lived there, L.D. and G.D. shared a bedroom, defendant 

and S.L. shared another bedroom, and each of the three children had their own bedroom.

Years later, in November 2015, Jane unexpectedly came home from college to talk 

to L.D. and G.D. She disclosed to L.D. and G.D. that defendant had molested her years 

before when he lived with the family. The family decided to file a police report. 

Sergeant Anthony Prencipe interviewed Jane after she made her police report. 

After interviewing Jane, Sergeant Prencipe had her make a pretext call to defendant 

accusing him of molesting her. The goal was to obtain an admission of the abuse. 

Defendant denied the allegations during this pretext call. A week later, L.D. made 

another pretext call to defendant. He hung up on her first call but answered a second call 

10 minutes later. In the second call, defendant admitted to L.D., “One morning I get up, 

she crawled over next to me and I just put my hand on her crotch. Simple as that, okay. 

1 Further undesignated statutory references are to the Penal Code.

2 The record refers to the victim by the pseudonyms Jane Doe or Jane. We will adopt 

this pseudonym and refer to other members of the family by their initials.
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And beyond that, whoever else is fucking dreaming up is a bunch of crap.” Defendant 

maintained that he did not have a problem: “It was—it happened . . . 15 or 16 years ago. 

That’s all. You think I need to go to counseling for. It’s just something stupid that had 

happened, simple as that.” Defendant then claimed that he planned to leave S.L. and 

move away so that the family would not have to deal with him. He went on, “I can’t feel 

any more guilty about it than now, and that’s the end of it. I don’t want to talk about it 

anymore. I’m—I’ll just—I’m out of everybody’s hair, simple as that.” Defendant asked 

L.D. to keep this information to herself.

At trial, Jane testified that prior to disclosing the abuse to her family, she told a 

friend in high school about what happened. She explained she did not want to tell her 

family out of fear that the family would break apart. The abuse occurred when Jane was 

8 and at a time when defendant lived in the same house as her. In her first memory, she 

woke up to someone touching her beneath her clothes; she could feel fingernails, large 

hands, and she was not able to move. Jane could not associate a face with the abuser in 

this memory, but she had clear memories that someone touched her vagina. In her 

second memory, Jane woke up to a man holding her hands on his penis and moving them. 

She testified that it was her grandfather, defendant. But she conceded that she told 

Sergeant Prencipe during her interview that she could not remember seeing the abuser’s 

face in this incident. She explained that she was “sorting out [her] memories with the 

detective at that time.”

In her third memory, Jane was awake when defendant came into her room, but she 

pretended to be asleep. She saw that it was her grandfather. By this point, Jane had 

begun wearing multiple pairs of sweatpants, tying them so tight that she cut off her 

circulation. She recalls it was a “struggle” for defendant to get his hands inside her pants, 

but she could not recall what else happened during that incident. Her mind went “black.”

Jane testified that she had clear memories of defendant touching and penetrating 

her vagina during at least one of these incidents. However, Sergeant Prencipe testified 
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that during her interview, Jane said she was not sure whether she felt any penetration

during these incidents. Sergeant Prencipe called Jane after the initial interview to clarify 

whether she remembered any penetration, and she told him then that she recalled that 

defendant had put one finger in her vagina during one of the incidents. In another followup call, Jane said that after going to therapy, she remembered multiple instances of digital 

penetration.

Defense counsel cross-examined Jane regarding her inconsistent statements. 

Counsel asked Jane about her initial statement during her interview with Sergeant 

Prencipe, inquiring whether she told him at the time that she did not have any memory of 

digital penetration. She initially responded that she did not remember whether she told 

the sergeant about it during the interview but then said that she did recall telling him that 

she felt fingernails. Counsel also asked Jane whether it was true that she told Sergeant 

Prencipe she did not see the perpetrator during the first two instances, which she 

conceded. Further, counsel asked whether it was true that she wasn’t sure whether there 

was one or two people in the room during the second incident. Jane responded that she 

was “sorting out [her] memories” with the sergeant and conceded she told him that she 

believed her grandmother, S.L., was in the room during this incident and may have also 

touched her inappropriately. She did not make this claim at trial.

After Sergeant Prencipe testified, defense counsel announced its intention to call 

S.L. as a witness with a limited inquiry regarding “when she was in the room when these 

things happened” to Jane. The prosecutor responded that during an interview with 

Sergeant Prencipe, S.L. said she was aware of similar accusations against defendant from 

his daughter, K.N. S.L. was dismissive of those allegations during the interview, calling 

K.N. “crazy.” She was similarly dismissive of Jane. The prosecutor further explained 

that S.L. was also aware of similar allegations made by defendant’s sister against him, 

but again, “made a conscious choice to align herself with the defendant and against his 

accusers . . . .” The prosecutor thought this subject was “ripe for cross-examination” in 
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order to impeach S.L.’s credibility: “I don’t know how we get around the fact that she 

has been made aware of now for three decades similar allegations against this man and 

chosen not to believe them.”

Defense counsel responded that S.L.’s belief that defendant’s accusers were lying 

was irrelevant to the issues at trial, especially since there was no evidence before the jury 

regarding the other accusations. The defense clarified that it only wanted to elicit 

testimony from S.L. to establish that she was not in the room during an incident of Jane’s 

sexual abuse to show Jane’s inconsistent statements. The prosecutor responded that 

S.L.’s testimony would create a credibility battle: “If you believe [S.L.], then you can’t 

believe this victim and you must acquit this defendant.” Thus, the prosecutor felt that he 

should be allowed to attack S.L.’s credibility. Defense counsel responded that if S.L. 

testified that she was aware of the other accusations, the jury would “have no way to 

assess her credibility whether she’s making a good decision and that’s because there’s no 

credibility to the allegations or not.” 

The trial court observed that whether or not S.L. was in the room when these 

events occurred was not very probative of any issue in the case outside of impeaching 

Jane. The court reasoned that if S.L. was called to impeach Jane’s credibility, the 

prosecution should be allowed to impeach S.L.’s credibility and motive with her past 

reactions to other similar allegations. The court therefore agreed to allow this line of 

cross-examination should defense counsel call S.L. as a witness regarding Jane’s 

credibility. The defense did not call S.L. to testify as a result of the ruling.

The trial court dismissed count 2 on the prosecutor’s motion before the case was 

submitted to the jury (§ 1385). The jury convicted defendant on count 1 and found the 

special allegation true. The court sentenced defendant to a prison term of six years, the 

middle term.

DISCUSSION
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Defendant contends that the trial court erred in ruling that the prosecution could 

impeach S.L. by inquiring about her knowledge of and reactions to uncharged allegations 

of prior inappropriate sexual conduct against defendant. He characterizes the proposed 

line of questioning as designed to elicit a lay opinion. He contends the error prejudiced 

him because he was not able to call S.L. as a defense witness. We conclude there was no 

prejudicial error.

Evidence impeaching a witness’s credibility is relevant. Evidence Code section

780 defines what a jury may consider to appraise the credibility of a witness: “[T]he 

court or jury may consider . . . any matter that has any tendency in reason to prove or 

disprove the truthfulness of [a witness’s] testimony at the hearing, including but not 

limited to any of the following: [¶] . . . [¶] (f) The existence or nonexistence of a bias, 

interest, or other motive.” “As with all relevant evidence, however, the trial court retains 

discretion to admit or exclude evidence offered for impeachment. [Citations.] A trial 

court’s exercise of discretion in admitting or excluding evidence is reviewable for abuse 

[citation] and will not be disturbed except on a showing the trial court exercised its 

discretion in an arbitrary, capricious, or patently absurd manner that resulted in a 

manifest miscarriage of justice [citation].” (People v. Rodriguez (1999) 20 Cal.4th 1, 9-

10.)

We conclude that we need not reach the issue of whether the trial court abused its 

discretion in ruling that the prosecutor’s proposed line of questioning S.L. was admissible 

because even if the trial court erred in its ruling, any error was harmless. Defendant

claims that the “harmless beyond a reasonable doubt” standard set forth in Chapman v. 

California (1967) 386 U.S. 18, 24 [17 L.Ed.2d 705, 711], applies because the error 

undermined his ability to present a defense and was “inextricably intertwined with the

outcome.” The People counter that the trial court’s evidentiary ruling did not infringe on 

defendant’s right to present a defense, and that the harmless error standard set forth in 

People v. Watson (1956) 46 Cal.2d 818 (Watson) applies. Under Watson, we determine 
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whether it is reasonably probable that, but for the error, the jury would have reached a 

result more favorable to defendant. (Id. at pp. 835-836.) “[T]he Watson test for harmless 

error ‘focuses not on what a reasonable jury could do, but what such a jury is likely to 

have done in the absence of the error under consideration. In making that evaluation, an 

appellate court may consider, among other things, whether the evidence supporting the 

existing judgment is so relatively strong, and the evidence supporting a different outcome 

is so comparatively weak, that there is no reasonable probability the error of which the 

defendant complains affected the result.’ ” (People v. Beltran (2013) 56 Cal.4th 935, 

956.) 

“ ‘As a general matter, the ordinary rules of evidence do not impermissibly 

infringe on the accused’s [constitutional] right to present a defense. Courts retain . . . a 

traditional and intrinsic power to exercise discretion to control the admission of evidence 

in the interests of orderly procedure and the avoidance of prejudice. . . .’ [Citation.]” 

(People v. Cudjo (1993) 6 Cal.4th 585, 611.) Defendant presented a vigorous defense 

based on Jane’s inconsistent statements, and defense counsel confronted and crossexamined her credibility on her inconsistencies. Thus, we conclude that the court’s 

evidentiary ruling that caused the defense not to call a witness to impeach the victim’s 

credibility cannot be said to have violated defendant’s right to present a defense. Thus, 

any error in the evidentiary ruling is subject to the Watson harmless error standard.

Notwithstanding the efforts of the defense to establish that Jane was not credible 

based on her inconsistent statements, we conclude that the evidence established 

defendant’s guilt. During the second pretext call, defendant admitted to L.D., “One 

morning I get up, she crawled over next to me and I just put my hand on her crotch. 

Simple as that, okay. And beyond that, whoever else is fucking dreaming up is a bunch 

of crap.” Defendant characterizes this statement as only an admission of “inadvertent 

touching” without lewd intent. Not so. Defendant did not claim that the touching was 

accidental or inadvertent at any time during the pretext call. Indeed, he admitted he felt 
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guilty about what he had done to Jane. He admitted it happened 15 or 16 years prior. 

While Jane’s testimony and police interview had several inconsistencies, and she had 

gaps in her memory about portions of the events, describing it as “go[ing] black” in her 

mind, she was adamant that her grandfather touched her vagina on at least one occasion. 

This is consistent with defendant’s admission, and this evidence is sufficient to support 

the verdict for one count of committing a lewd act upon a child under the age of 14 years. 

Accordingly, we conclude that even if the trial court abused its discretion in ruling that 

the prosecutor could cross-examine S.L. about her knowledge of and reactions to prior 

allegations of sexual abuse against defendant, there is no reasonable probability that had 

she testified without being cross-examined regarding her knowledge of other acts of 

misconduct, the jury would have reached a result more favorable to defendant. (Watson, 

supra, 46 Cal.2d at pp. 835-836.)

DISPOSITION

The judgment is affirmed.

 /s/

HOCH, J.

We concur:

 /s/

HULL, Acting P. J.

 /s/

MAURO, J.