Opinion ID: 1058852
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Dr. Pasquale's Testimony

Text: Juniper posits two assignments of error regarding the trial court's refusal to permit certain testimony by Juniper's mental health expert, Dr. Thomas Pasquale. Initially, Juniper contends the trial court wrongfully excluded Dr. Pasquale's testimony as to Juniper's impulsiveness. Second, he argues the trial court erred in not permitting Dr. Pasquale to testify regarding Juniper's risk assessment related to his future dangerousness in the context of a prison environment.
Juniper first maintains that Dr. Pasquale's testimony about impulsiveness did not, as the Commonwealth alleges, relate to premeditation which had been decided at the guilt phase. Rather, Juniper contends Dr. Pasquale testified to his overall opinion that Defendant is an impulsive person and is possessed of an impulsive character. He argues that Dr. Pasquale did not testify that Juniper's actions with regard to the murder were an impulsive act. We disagree. Prior to the Commonwealth's objection, Dr. Pasquale made references to impulsiveness, which he described as a trait of the preadolescent stage of development, an indicator of characterological disfunction, and a characteristic of antisocial behavior, all of which he said applied to Juniper. However, defense counsel, near the end of his examination of Dr. Pasquale, moved from questions regarding a general evaluation of Juniper to Dr. Pasquale's opinion as to influences upon Juniper at the time of the offense. Q: Now, I want to direct your attention more specifically to the issues before us in this case. Specifically, sir, and I'm referring you to page ten of your report. Would you address the issue of . . . whether you have an opinion as to whether or not Mr. Juniper acted under extreme mental or emotional disturbance at the time of the offense ? A: What I had stated [in my report] are three questions that are being asked in reference to issues relevant to mitigation and risk. The first one [was] did this person have a lot of stress, mental, emotional disturbance at the time of offense. And I said [in my report] that . . . he was in a highly emotional, abusive and troubling relationship with Ms. Stephens over a period of many months; that when you combine his attachment problems, his rage reactions, his need to control with a person that he's embroiled with, that a foundation for violence becomes built. Now, I went on to look at something else as well. . . . [T]hat . . . the issue of premeditated aggression may be questioned in contrast to an act of impulsivity. Q: Explain that if you would, Dr. Pasquale. A: Well, it's the notion of how do I view Mr. Juniper behaving violently, being aggressive. And . . . my interpretation was that he was a very impulsive person who might not put a lot of thought at all into doing something. (Emphasis added). The Commonwealth then objected, arguing that [premeditation] has already been resolved with the guilt phase. Juniper responded that Dr. Pasquale was not testifying that [Juniper] lacked premeditation, but perhaps just putting it in context of the impulsivity that Dr. Pasquale has already testified to, [20] not that there was an absence of [premeditation] in context. Dr. Pasquale testified that there was a difference between premeditated aggression and an act of impulsivity. However, any contrast between Juniper's alleged mental state at the time of the crime and the required element of premeditation is applicable only as it relates to Juniper's culpability, not his sentence. We agree with the Commonwealth that Dr. Pasquale's testimony on this point would have been properly admissible only if Juniper were advancing a defense based upon mental disease or disorder in the guilt phase, which he did not. See generally, Dandridge, 267 Va. at 596-97, 594 S.E.2d at 581-82; Bailey v. Commonwealth, 259 Va. 723, 734, 529 S.E.2d 570, 576, cert. denied, 531 U.S. 995, 121 S.Ct. 488, 148 L.Ed.2d 460 (2000). The trial court ruled that Dr. Pasquale could not render opinions on premeditation during the commission of the offenses. We agree. The trial court's exclusion of Dr. Pasquale's impulsiveness testimony regarding Juniper's state of mind at the time of the offense was not erroneous.
Citing no case authority in the trial court or on appeal, Juniper contends the trial court abused its discretion when it refused to permit Dr. Thomas Pasquale to testify regarding Juniper's risk assessment related to his future dangerousness. This claim of error goes to the trial court's prohibition of proffered testimony from Dr. Pasquale, Juniper's court appointed psychologist, that Juniper's risk assessment for future dangerousness was different in a prison setting from that in an open community. Juniper asked the trial court to allow Dr. Pasquale to give his opinion on [Juniper's] future dangerousness in the penitentiary. The Commonwealth had objected to this line of questioning arguing that the question is in general terms would the defendant exhibit violent conduct in the future as opposed to the question of could. (Emphasis added.) Counsel argued the issue and Dr. Pasquale was examined by both parties and the trial court outside the presence of the jury. Juniper represented that Dr. Pasquale would testify there is a difference in risk assessment which is to say future dangerousness or the prediction of future dangerousness in an open community such as the one we live in and in a prison environment such as the one Mr. Juniper will live in. The trial court responded by noting that I would think the jurors could determine that without the need of expert testimony. I think common sense would tell people that. The Commonwealth argued that in the context of future dangerousness whatever is said by [the] expert has to refer to the character of the defendant, not the character of the prison or anything else. In response to voir dire, Dr. Pasquale explained that his assessment of a defendant to evaluate future dangerousness would involve a number of factors. [W]hen you do the actuarial for the open community, you're asking about the person. Did they live with their biological parents? How did they go to school? Do they have a personality disorder? However, Dr. Pasquale then explained that [t]here have only been two variables that I have described that have been shown to demonstrate some issue about workability in prison[:] age and past performance in incarceration. While Juniper agreed he could not offer evidence on general prison conditions, he did not proffer from Dr. Pasquale or otherwise that there would be any testimony about how Juniper's personal and specific characteristics would be reflected in his ability to adapt in prison or whether there was any past incarceration performance to evaluate. Instead, Dr. Pasquale acknowledged his ultimate testimony is that . . . there is less risk of the defendant acting out violently in prison than it would be the defendant acting out violently in the open community. Upon completion of counsels' arguments and the examination of Dr. Pasquale, and still outside the presence of the jury, Juniper made a proffer of Dr. Pasquale's proposed testimony. [DEFENSE COUNSEL]: If I [were] to ask you the question and if the Court were to allow it, your opinion would be that his risk assessment in the open community is high and his risk assessment in the prison setting is low to moderate? [DR. PASQUALE]: Yes. The trial court then later permitted Juniper's counsel to ask Dr. Pasquale this question in the presence of the jury: [DEFENSE COUNSEL]: In your opinion is the risk assessment of Mr. Juniper's future dangerousness dependent on or related to the circumstances of his environment? [DR. PASQUALE]: Yes. However, the trial court did not allow any broader testimony from Dr. Pasquale on the subject of future dangerousness in a prison environment including the proffered question. In rejecting Juniper's request, the trial court observed a determination of future dangerousness revolves around an individual defendant and a specific crime. We do not find error in the trial court's ruling. We have held in our prior decisions that what a person may expect in the penal system is not relevant mitigation evidence. Cherrix v. Commonwealth, 257 Va. 292, 310, 513 S.E.2d 642, 653, cert. denied, 528 U.S. 873, 120 S.Ct. 177, 145 L.Ed.2d 149 (1999) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Walker, 258 Va. at 70, 515 S.E.2d at 574. We have also been plain in establishing threshold requirements of relevance for the admission of evidence in mitigation particularly as it relates to the statutory factor of future dangerousness: such evidence should concern the history or experience of the defendant. Cherrix, 257 Va. at 310, 513 S.E.2d at 653; see also Burns, 261 Va. at 340, 541 S.E.2d at 893-94. In Burns, we further delineated this concept while rejecting Burns' claim seeking evidence on daily inmate routine, general prison conditions. Id. at 338, 541 S.E.2d at 892. Burns wanted to show, in rebuttal to the Commonwealth's evidence of his future dangerousness, that his opportunities to commit criminal acts of violence in the future would be severely limited in a maximum security prison. However, in Cherrix, we reiterated the principle that the United States Constitution does not limit `the traditional authority of a court to exclude, as irrelevant, evidence not bearing on the defendant's character, prior record, or the circumstances of his offense.' Cherrix, 257 Va. at 309, 513 S.E.2d at 653 (quoting Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 605 n. 12, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978)). Thus, the relevant inquiry is not whether Burns could commit criminal acts of violence in the future but whether he would. Indeed, Code §§ 19.2-264.2 and264.4(C) use the phrase would commit criminal acts of violence. Accordingly, the focus must be on the particular facts of Burns' history and background, and the circumstances of his offense. In other words, a determination of future dangerousness revolves around an individual defendant and a specific crime. ... Unlike the evidence proffered by Burns, the evidence in Skipper [v. South Carolina, 476 U.S. 1, 4, 106 S.Ct. 1669, 90 L.Ed.2d 1 (1986)] was peculiar to that defendant's history and background. Id. at 339-40, 541 S.E.2d at 893-94. In Bell, 264 Va. at 201, 563 S.E.2d at 714, we reemphasized the necessity that relevant mitigating evidence on the issue of future dangerousness must be based on the specific characteristics of the defendant. In that context, evidence relating to a prison environment must connect the specific characteristics of the particular defendant to his future adaptability in that environment in order to be heard by the jury. It must be evidence peculiar to a defendant's character, history and background in order to be relevant to the future dangerousness inquiry... Id. We further observed that [t]he testimony that Bell sought to introduce through the expert concerned the conditions of prison life and the kind of security features utilized in a maximum security facility. That is the same kind of evidence that we have previously rejected as not relevant to the future dangerousness inquiry . . . . Nor is such general evidence, not specific to Bell, relevant to his future adaptability or as a foundation for an expert opinion on that issue. Id. The proffer of Dr. Pasquale's testimony on future dangerousness in a prison setting fails to meet the test of relevance established in our prior cases. Neither the actual proffer, counsel's argument, nor Dr. Pasquale's explanations on voir dire tie his proposed opinion testimony on future dangerousness in a prison environment to Juniper's history and background, and the circumstances of his offense, Burns, 261 Va. at 340, 541 S.E.2d at 893, to Juniper's character, history and background or was specific to [Juniper], relevant to his `future adaptability.' Bell, 264 Va. at 201, 563 S.E.2d at 714. While Dr. Pasquale may not have sought to offer specific evidence on a day in the life of a prisoner, as in Cherrix, he offered nothing to the trial court to support his opinion as being based on Juniper's individual characteristics that would affect his future adaptability in prison and thus relate to a defendant-specific assessment of future dangerousness. [21] The burden rested upon Juniper, as the proponent of Dr. Pasquale's testimony, to make a threshold showing, in conformity with Bell and Burns, that an assessment of future dangerousness was grounded on Juniper's specific characteristics in the context of his future adaptability in a prison setting. See Commonwealth v. Sanchez, 268 Va. 161, 165, 597 S.E.2d 197, 199 (2004) (party offering expert testimony must make proper proffer of testimony's admissibility). Juniper failed to carry that burden. The trial court thus correctly barred Dr. Pasquale's generalized testimony and did not abuse its discretion in doing so.