Opinion ID: 2587254
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Ineffective assistance of counselโ admission of prior assault conviction

Text: Defendant contends that defense counsel rendered ineffective assistance both in stipulating at the guilt phase to the prior conviction of assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer and in failing to object when the prosecutor argued at the special circumstances phase that defendant had stipulated to that conviction. In fact, during the guilt phase defense counsel merely stipulated to defendant's having committed an unspecified felony on a certain date. During closing argument at the special circumstances phase, defense counsel referred to defendant's previous stipulation to a felony that, as the prosecutor had noted, occurred on the same date as the documentary evidence of the assault conviction, while suggesting that, by contrast, the evidence failed to establish that defendant was the same person who committed the prior murder. On the present record, we cannot find that defense counsel's admission of the assault conviction that clearly was established, while questioning the proof of the more serious prior murder conviction, did not fall within the permissible range of trial tactics of a reasonably competent attorney. ( People v. Jones (1991) 53 Cal.3d 1115, 1150, 282 Cal.Rptr. 465, 811 P.2d 757; see People v. Mayfield (1993) 5 Cal.4th 142, 176-177, 19 Cal.Rptr.2d 836, 852 P.2d 331.) Accordingly, the claim of ineffective assistance of counsel lacks merit.