Opinion ID: 1379313
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: instruction on right to reject entire testimony of witness who is willfully false on material point

Text: (11) At the request of both parties, the trial court gave the jury the following instruction, based on CALJIC No. 2.21: A witness willfully false in a material part of his testimony is to be distrusted in others. You may reject the whole testimony of a witness who willfully has testified falsely as to a material point unless from all the evidence you shall believe the probability of truth favors his testimony in other particulars. [¶] However, discrepancies in a witness's testimony or between his testimony and that of others, if there were any, do not necessarily mean that the witness should be discredited. Failure of recollection is a common experience and innocent misrecollection is not uncommon. The instruction has been approved by this court, as well as by intermediate appellate courts, as a correct statement of the law. ( People v. Lang (1989) 49 Cal.3d 991, 1023 [264 Cal. Rptr. 386, 782 P.2d 627], and cases cited therein.) Because the instruction could be applied to the testimony of defendant, he contends it erroneously shifted the burden of proof by allowing the jury to reject his entire testimony unless they believed from all the evidence that his testimony was favored by the probability of truth. He claims the instruction thereby increased his burden from that of raising a reasonable doubt of the sufficiency of the prosecution's evidence to one of affirmatively proving his defenses. He relies on dictum in People v. Lescallett (1981) 123 Cal. App.3d 487, 493 [176 Cal. Rptr. 687], that perhaps the instruction should be avoided where, under the circumstances of the case, it might appear to be directed principally toward a defendant's exculpatory testimony. Although the instruction does appear applicable principally to defendant's testimony, not all that testimony was exculpatory. Indeed, neither side urged the jury to reject the whole of his testimony, because most of it, together with his testimony in a prior proceeding and his statement to the police introduced by the prosecution, constituted the backbone of the case against him. The controversial parts of his testimony, as to which his credibility was put in question, pertained to his claims of being motivated by a fear of Rutherford and others, and his assertions of the belief that each victim was already dead when he fired the shotgun or used the knife. Thus, while the jury may well have applied the first sentence of the instruction (A witness false in a material part of his testimony is to be distrusted in others) to defendant's testimony, it was highly unlikely to apply the second sentence by reject[ing] the whole testimony of defendant. Yet it is only the second sentence to which defendant now objects. Even if the jury were to use the second sentence's criterion for rejecting the whole of defendant's testimony as a basis for rejecting some part of the testimony, defendant would not have been prejudiced. The instruction at no point requires the jury to reject any testimony; it simply states circumstances under which it may do so. ( People v. Johnson (1986) 190 Cal. App.3d 187, 194 [237 Cal. Rptr. 479].) The qualification attacked by defendant as shifting the burden of proof (unless from all the evidence you shall believe the probability of truth favors his testimony in other particulars) is merely a statement of the obvious  that the jury should refrain from rejecting the whole of a witness's testimony if it believes that the probability of truth favors any part of it. Thus CALJIC No. 2.21 does nothing more than explain to a jury one of the tests they may use in resolving a credibility dispute. ( People v. Blassingill (1988) 199 Cal. App.3d 1413, 1419 [245 Cal. Rptr. 599].) The weaknesses in [the defendant's] testimony should not be ignored or given preferential treatment not granted to the testimony of any other witness. As it has been aptly noted in other contexts, a defendant who elects to testify in his own behalf is not entitled to a false aura of veracity. ( People v. Beagle (1972) 6 Cal.3d 441, 453 [99 Cal. Rptr. 313, 492 P.2d 1] (impeachment with prior conviction); People v. Zack (1986) 184 Cal. App.3d 409, 415 [229 Cal. Rptr. 317] (impeachment with evidence of prior assaults on decedent).) ( People v. Goodwin (1988) 202 Cal. App.3d 940, 945 [249 Cal. Rptr. 430].) There was no error in giving the instruction in accordance with the parties' requests.