Opinion ID: 2584939
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Refusal to Admit Evidence of Police Brutality

Text: Defendant argues the trial court erred by excluding from his case in mitigation of penalty evidence he sought to develop through the testimony of his mother and his defense expert, Dr. Jose LaCalle, to the effect that, as a boy, he had been mistreated by local police in his hometown of Antiguo Taumin in Mexico, and that the reputation of the police among the people of that town was bad. We do not read the record as reflecting that the trial court imposed severe restrictions or limitations on such testimony, as defendant would have us conclude. Instead, we find the court was simply and properly sustaining prosecution objections to specific defects in the evidence offered by the defense. With regard to the first complained-of evidentiary ruling, defendant's mother testified that when defendant was 14 years old he was taken away in handcuffs by the Mexican police and held for several days. When he was returned home, his head was shaved and he had been badly beaten. Although she claimed defendant had been beaten with a rifle and a bat, she also revealed she had no personal knowledge of such facts. Accordingly, the court granted the prosecution's motion to strike the references in her testimony to defendant having been beaten with a rifle and a bat, and the jury was instructed to disregard them. The trial court did not, however, as defendant here argues, exclude all evidence in connection with the testimony about this incident through which he sought to show that he had been brutalized by the Mexican police. The court expressly denied the prosecutor's motion to the extent it sought to strike the witness's testimony about [defendant's] being beaten by the Mexican police. With regard to the second complained-of ruling, the trial court let stand defendant's mother's testimony that the people in defendant's hometown of Antiguo Taumin in Mexico are generally afraid of the police. However, when she was further asked on direct examination why the people of Antiguo Taumin are afraid of the police, the trial court sustained the prosecution's objection, explaining, We [would] get into too many collateral matters with that subject. This ruling too was not in error, as the question sought to elicit an opinion from the witness on matters well beyond her personal knowledge. Finally, defendant argues the trial court erroneously prevented him from questioning his expert witness, Dr. LaCalle, on the impact of police brutality on his upbringing as a youth in Antiguo Taumin. Here too, there was no such blanket restriction on the formulation of the defense. The defense was permitted to ask Dr. LaCalle the following hypothetical question, without objection or restriction: Assuming the hypothetical question of a twenty-three year-old man of Mexican origin, who has been brutalized by the police in Mexico at an early age, and who was intoxicated at the time of his arrest and handled roughly by the arresting officer and finds a gun and uses it. What is your professional opinion about why he reacted as he did in shooting the officer? Dr. LaCalle gave his opinion that defendant made a primal response, a reaction exhibiting anger and hostility, not to the arresting officer specifically, but to the circumstances of police brutality having been suffered over the years. (21) Defendant argues he should have been permitted to incorporate the details from his mother's testimony noted abovespecifically, that he had been beaten with a rifle and bat into the hypothetical question directed to his expert witness. But as already noted, there was no competent evidence introduced to establish those details. Defendant was, however, permitted to characterize his treatment as a youth at the hands of the Mexican police in Antiguo Taumin as that of having been brutalized. Similarly, he was not permitted to include in the hypothetical question a reference that he grew up in an environment where the police are feared because of their frequent violent methods, again, because defendant's mother could not testify to such facts from her personal knowledge, and hence there was no foundational support for allowing the question to be so worded. This ruling was not in error. Nor did the trial court err in rejecting defendant's further argument that his mother's testimony about the feelings of the people of Antiguo Taumin toward the Mexican police, or the incorporation of that matter into the hypothetical question to Dr. LaCalle, should have been permitted under the reputation exception to the hearsay rule. (See Evid. Code, §§ 786, 1100, 1101.) The hearsay exception established in those Evidence Code sections fundamentally pertains to proof of the character of a person through external evidence, not the character of an entire police force.