Opinion ID: 1454621
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: The Accidental Playing of Excluded Portions of Defendant's Nebraska Confession and the Prosecutor's Question About One Such Portion

Text: Before the tape recording of defendant's prearraignment statement was played to the jury, the court and counsel listened to the tape outside the jury's presence. The trial court ruled that a certain portion of the tape, where defendant stated that he had left Sacramento because he was in some trouble with some underground people, would be excised. While expressing doubt that this portion of the tape was prejudicial, the court found it to be of no probative value. By mistake, the excised portion was played. Defendant's counsel moved for a mistrial. The trial court denied the motion and admonished the jury to disregard the excised references. Defendant claims that the inadvertent playing of this portion of the tape denied him a fair trial. (30) Initially, the erroneously played portion of the tape was conceivably relevant to the prosecution's case: defendant's desire to flee potential danger in Sacramento might explain why he stole Van Zandt's van. (See, e.g., People v. Perry (1972) 7 Cal.3d 756, 780-781 [103 Cal. Rptr. 161, 499 P.2d 129].) Moreover, contrary to defendant's argument, the taped references do not compel the inference that he was involved in drug dealing or organized crime. He may have been pursued by underground people for reasons other than his own criminal acts. In any event, the inference of prejudice is not so overwhelming as to justify reversal, because the offending passage was brief and the trial court admonished the jury to disregard it. (See People v. Rosoto, supra, 58 Cal.2d at p. 352.) (31) Defendant also complains that the prosecutor committed misconduct when he asked defendant whether he had said to Nebraska authorities: I won't cop to nothing I ain't done. The question and answer were stricken on defendant's objection; the jury was admonished and defendant's motion for mistrial was denied. Again, we find no reversible error. The trial court originally excluded the quoted portion of defendant's statement because it was made in response to a question about other offenses defendant had been charged with, and was, therefore, irrelevant to the pending prosecution. But, as the Attorney General observes, the statement was highly relevant to impeach defendant's testimony that his pretrial admissions of guilt were false and that he did not kill Rickey Van Zandt. Defendant's specific and emphatic assertion at the time of his confession that he would not admit to crimes he did not commit was entitled to be weighed by the jury in assessing the credibility of his recantation. Moreover, when confronted with the prosecutor's question and defendant's answer, the court ordered them stricken and admonished the jury. It found only inadvertence and not misconduct in the prosecutor's question, noting some ambiguity in its original ruling. Under these circumstances, we perceive nothing that deprived defendant of a fair trial. For the reasons stated above and as more fully explained in part XXIII, post, any asserted error with respect to the taped confession was also harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.