Opinion ID: 2639434
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Joanna's Recantation

Text: Dr. Frank Dougherty, a psychologist, conducted a portion of the interview of Joanna that took place on January 16, 1992. Joanna told Dr. Dougherty she did not see petitioner kill Denise. She claimed she had lied about witnessing Denise's murder because she felt ... pressure whether it be [from her] own self or from the fact that she felt she had to say something significant. She asserted she had not seen petitioner on June 12, 1984, the night Denise was murdered. Joanna claimed to remember an incident in which a cement block was thrown through the windshield of a police car (see People v. Cox, supra, 30 Cal.4th at pp. 928-929, 135 Cal.Rptr.2d 272, 70 P.3d 277), but after that point she was not sure what she did for the next ... hour or so, but recalled that she ended up sleeping at Bruce Nesthus's house. She said she was not frightened when she was with Nesthus and did not hide behind him when cars drove by. She said she made up the little details of the murder, like throwing up once she got out of petitioner's car at the murder scene, as I went along. Joanna also stated that in 1987, after the trial was concluded, she had a conversation with Sergeant Wilson in which she told him that she had lied at trial about getting a ride back from the scene of the murder with a person named Joe. She added that she may have told Sergeant Wilson that she lied about seeing Denise get stabbed, but she had heard Denise scream. Sergeant Wilson, she said, told her that these details were not significant. Dr. Dougherty pointed out that Joanna told him, back in November 1984, that on the night of Denise's murder, she had seen Denise at the Stancil's Toyota dealership and near the tunnel underpass. Joanna replied that she made that up. Dr. Dougherty asked why she made that up, given that she had not yet told him she was a witness to the murder. Joanna replied: I don't know. I don't really have a good reason for it. When asked why she told Fay Harnage and her husband, El Dorado County Sheriffs Detective Erol Harnage, that she knew something about the case when she now claimed she knew nothing, Joanna replied: I ... I really don't know the answer to that, except that I was a very confused teenager at the time and ... ah ... I ... I don't have a good explanation for it.