Opinion ID: 2625875
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Failure to Admit Expert Testimony or Provide Instructions on Eyewitness Identification

Text: The trial court excluded, as irrelevant, the defense's proffered expert testimony on the factors affecting the reliability of eyewitness identifications. The court also gave no jury instructions on this subject. Defendant contends that exclusion of the evidence and the court's failure, sua sponte, to instruct on this topic were error. No eyewitness identified defendant as the person who shot and killed Koll. Testifying at the preliminary hearing in the prior robbery case, however, Koll had identified defendant as one of the robbers. The expectation that Koll would again so testify at the robbery trial provided, according to the prosecution theory of this murder case, the motive for defendant to kill Koll. Defendant's knowledge of that likelihood, and his understanding of the strength or weakness of that expected identification, were clearly relevant to motive; indeed, defense evidence going to these points was admitted. (See ante, 132 Cal.Rptr.2d at pp. 283, 284, 65 P.3d at pp. 759, 760.) But a psychologist's testimony regarding the factors generally affecting the reliability of eyewitness identifications did not, in itself, have any tendency to show defendant's motive to kill or lack thereof. Nor was the reliability of eyewitness testimony a matter closely and openly connected to the facts before the court and ... necessary for the jury's understanding of the case ( People v. Montoya (1994) 7 Cal.4th 1027, 1047, 31 Cal.Rptr.2d 128, 874 P.2d 903), such that instruction on the topic was required of the court sua sponte. The proffered evidence being irrelevant, and the suggested instructions unconnected with the evidence, defendant's assertion that the claimed errors deprived him of due process, compulsory process, trial by jury, the right to present a defense, and subjected him to cruel and unusual punishment must also be rejected.