Opinion ID: 1181110
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Combat Records of Defendant's Vietnam Marine Company.

Text: (5) Defendant complains that the court erred in excluding from evidence as not properly authenticated the four-volume combat history of his Vietnam Marine company obtained at defense counsel's request from the United States Marine Corps. Relying on Evidence Code section 1420, [6] defendant maintains that the cover letter bearing the signature of an appropriate United States Marine Corps official, and received in response to defense counsel's letter requesting the records, was sufficient to authenticate the records. Evidence Code section 1420, however, serves to authenticate only the cover letter, not the documents themselves. Defendant also contends for the first time on appeal that the records were properly authenticated under Evidence Code section 1421. [7] The record does not show, however, nor was any argument made below that the contents of the records were known only to the author, as required by section 1421. Moreover, any error in excluding the records was nonprejudicial. The record shows that defense counsel, acceding to the prosecutor's relevance objection to the four-volume history, ultimately sought to introduce only one page, a page showing that defendant had been wounded in Vietnam. There was a plethora of other evidence that defendant had suffered a head injury in Vietnam and the prosecutor conceded the point. The excluded page thus would merely have corroborated an undisputed fact.