Opinion ID: 2630926
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Accomplice Testimony (Letner)

Text: Letner contends the trial court erred under state law and violated his state and federal constitutional rights by failing to instruct on its own motion concerning accomplice testimony to guide the jury in evaluating Tobin's guilt phase testimony. Primarily, Letner urges the trial court should have instructed the jury to view accomplice testimony with distrust, and examine it with care and caution in light of all the evidence presented in the case. [28] Although the trial court was required to give accomplice instructions in the present case to the extent that Tobin's testimony tended to incriminate Letner ( Coffman, supra, 34 Cal.4th at pp. 104-105), the error in failing to do so was harmless under any standard. The jury was aware that Tobin had every motivation to shift blame to Letner ( People v. Box (2000) 23 Cal.4th 1153, 1209 [99 Cal.Rptr.2d 69, 5 P.3d 130]), and in fact the jury evidently rejected the part of Tobin's testimony harmful to Letner (to the effect that when Tobin left, Pontbriant was unharmed, and that subsequently Letner appeared at the Murray Street apartment with the victim's car) without having been instructed to view Tobin's version of events with distrust. Moreover, there is no dispute that Letner was at Pontbriant's house on the night of the murder, and that he was detained while driving her car at midnight that night. This evidence provides sufficient corroboration of Tobin's testimony that Letner was present at the scene of the murder on the night in question. (35) Letner contends in his reply brief that the corroborating evidence was inadequate because the facts are entirely consistent with appellant's status as a bystander during the homicide. The corroboration required of accomplice testimony, however, need only connect the defendant to the crime sufficiently that we may conclude the jury reasonably could have been satisfied that the accomplice was telling the truth. Moreover, the corroborating evidence may be circumstantial, of little weight by itself, and related merely to one part of the accomplice's testimony. ( People v. Miranda (1987) 44 Cal.3d 57, 100 [241 Cal.Rptr. 594, 744 P.2d 1127].) Tobin's testimony placing Letner at the scene of the murder on the night in question was sufficiently corroborated; indeed, there was no dispute that Letner was present. The jury obviously rejected Tobin's testimony to the extent this testimony implicitly placed all blame for the murder upon Letner by relating that Tobin left Letner and Pontbriant alive and well and went home. Therefore we conclude that, with regard to that part of Tobin's testimony, the absence of accomplice instructions was harmless; the jury apparently found it incredible even in the absence of the accomplice instructions, and there is no need for us to evaluate whether there was adequate corroboration for the testimony in question. In sum, there is no likelihood that the absence of instructions directing the jury to view with distrust the portion of Tobin's testimony that incriminated Letner, and requiring it to find corroboration of Tobin's testimony, could have affected the jury's decision concerning Letner's guilt.