Opinion ID: 2624500
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 12

Heading: Prison violence

Text: Defendant next argues the prosecutor erred when he asked a series of questions of defense witness James Park about specific incidents of violence in California prisons. During cross-examination of Park, a former associate warden at San Quentin State Prison, the prosecutor asked, You know who George Jackson was, don't you? . . . [¶] . . . He was a killer, wasn't he? When the prosecutor asked, Let's go back to George Jackson's days at Soledad, defendant objected on grounds of relevance. Out of the presence of the jury the prosecutor explained that at San Quentin State Prison in 1971, when Park was responsible for the security of visitors coming into the prison, an attorney allegedly smuggled a gun to inmate Jackson, who used it later that day to murder three guards and two fellow inmates before being shot to death in the prison yard. The court excluded the proffered evidence under Evidence Code section 352. Shortly thereafter, the prosecutor asked Park, [Did you] have a stress problem in ... late 1971? Park replied, Well, I think the incident you referred to was stressful. I was not incapacitated, I was stressed out, as they say. The prosecutor asked, As a result of that incident in 1971 there was a lot of disruption in the prison system, wasn't there? The court sustained defendant's relevance objection. The prosecutor returned to the area of inquiry several minutes later, asking, without further objection by the defense, August 21, 1971, three guards were killed at San Quentin Prison, right? . . . And two white prisoners were killed the same day, right? . . . That last one was San Quentin while you were there? The prosecutor then asked Park if he knew that a civilian laundry worker was killed at Folsom [State Prison] [in September, 1971], that same month, September, 1971, two guards were attacked at [Deuel] Vocational Institute, right, one of them stabbed almost fatally, and at Soledad State Prison in 1969 . . . a prison guard was thrown off the cell block to his death below by some members of the Black Guerrilla Family? Park acknowledged he was aware of these incidents, but to his knowledge, members of the Black Guerrilla Family were not involved or charged with the killing of the guard at Soledad State Prison. Defendant then objected to the area of questioning on grounds of relevance. The court sustained the objection. Defendant now argues the prosecutor engaged in misconduct in raising the issues surrounding the 1971 murders at San Quentin State Prison in spite of the court's initial ruling, thereby inflaming the jury against him and Park. Defendant also argues the prosecutor introduced impermissible racial factors into the jury's consideration and diverted the jury's attention from its proper function. We disagree. The court's initial ruling prohibited the prosecutor from asking specific questions about the details surrounding the 1971 San Quentin State Prison murders, not general questions about incidents of prison violence. Further, the record does not support defendant's argument that the prosecutor's questions introduced racial factors into the jury's consideration. With the exception of the description of the two prisoners killed at San Quentin State Prison as two white prisoners, and the killers at Soledad State Prison as members of the Black Guerrilla Family, which Park directly refuted, the prosecutor did not identify the race of any of the killers or victims in his list of other violent prison incidents, did not improperly suggest to the jurors that black prisoners were particularly dangerous, as defendant suggests, and did not argue or infer that defendant was in any manner associated with these incidents of prison violence or with the Black Guerrilla Family.