Opinion ID: 1233910
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: evidentiary rulings defense case

Text: F. IN LIMINE RULING AS TO PROPOSED DEFENSE WITNESS At the outset of the defense case, defense counsel advised the court outside the presence of the jury that he intended to call as a witness a police officer who had investigated the prior rape offense that had been described in detail by the rape victim during the prosecution's case-in-chief. Counsel indicated that he intended to establish that defendant, when apprehended for the prior rape, had told the officer that he had been drinking and had taken drugs in the hours before the rape. Defendant had called the police officer as a witness in the initial penalty trial, and at the prior trial the court had permitted the prosecution to elicit from the officer, on cross-examination, additional statements made by the defendant at the time of his arrest describing his participation in a residential burglary that same night. Anticipating that the prosecution would attempt to elicit the same testimony on cross-examination of the officer in the second penalty trial, defendant requested a pretrial hearing on his motion to preclude the officer from testifying as to defendant's statements regarding the burglary. At the conclusion of the hearing, the court ruled that the officer would be permitted to testify to defendant's statements concerning the residential burglary. The court explained that the jury could reasonably find defendant's description of the burglary relevant in judging the credibility of his additional statements that he was under the influence of alcohol or drugs when he committed the rape earlier that same night. Although the court recognized that defendant's admission of the burglary might conceivably be prejudicial to the defendant, it concluded that, in light of the gravity of the rape, any prejudice would be insignificant or de minimis. After the court's ruling, defendant did not call the officer as a witness. (12) Defendant now contends that the trial court erred in its in limine ruling, asserting that defendant's statements to the officer regarding the burglary were likely to be so prejudicial to the defendant and had so little probative value with respect to defendant's state of mind at the time of the rape that the trial court abused its discretion under Evidence Code section 352 in concluding that the statements should be admitted. [19] The Attorney General argues that the trial court properly exercised its discretion. We conclude that the trial court did not abuse its discretion under Evidence Code section 352. On this record, the court could reasonably find that because defendant was proposing to rely on a portion of a statement that he had made to the officer to show that he was under the influence of alcohol and drugs when he committed the rape, the prosecution should be permitted to put defendant's entire statement before the jury so it could decide whether other portions cast doubt on defendant's claimed intoxicated state. (See Evid. Code, § 356.) Although the admission of the statements concerning the burglary posed some potential of prejudice since they disclosed additional criminal conduct that would not otherwise be admissible, the trial court indicated that it would attempt to minimize the prejudice by giving the jury an appropriate limiting instruction and, in any event, we think the trial court could properly conclude that, in view of the extremely heinous nature of the rape, the additional prejudice that defendant would suffer from the disclosure of his admission of a burglary was not so substantial as compared to the relative probative value of the statements to justify exclusion under Evidence Code section 352. Accordingly, we find no error in the trial court's in limine ruling. G. CROSS-EXAMINATION OF DEFENDANT'S MOTHER Defendant's mother testified on his behalf with regard to his difficult childhood. Her testimony on direct examination related to a number of adverse circumstances that defendant faced from his birth in 1959 until his father's death in 1973. Defendant's mother testified that defendant's father was an alcoholic who frequently had difficulty providing for the family. When defendant was four, the family moved from Merced to Orange County in the hopes of improving their financial situation. After the move, defendant had a number of serious childhood illnesses, including a severe episode of red measles  accompanied by extremely high fever and hallucinations  which led to hearing and vision problems. Defendant's mother stated that the move to Orange County did not improve the family's economic situation. Her husband's drinking increased and he repeatedly beat her, often in front of their children. When defendant was nine years old, her husband's violent conduct towards her led her to file for divorce. Thereafter, she worked long hours outside the home to try to provide for her four children, leaving defendant and his siblings with little supervision. Although her husband often mistreated her, defendant had always had a very close relationship with his father. When defendant was 13, however, defendant's father learned that he had cirrhosis of the liver and had only a few months to live. After receiving the news, defendant's father returned to Merced, where his own family lived. Because of their close relationship, defendant went with his father and lived with him until his father's death. On cross-examination, defendant's mother first acknowledged that both she and her husband had always been particularly protective and loving of defendant, who was their youngest child, and that neither she nor her husband had ever physically abused defendant. Thereafter, over defense counsel's objection that the questioning was beyond the scope of the direct examination, the trial court permitted the prosecutor to question defendant's mother with regard to defendant's conduct from 1973 to 1977, after defendant's father's death. In response to the prosecutor's questions, defendant's mother admitted that, during this latter period, defendant became out of [her] control, went to juvenile court off and on, was not attending school, had been arrested for burglary, and had used heroin and other drugs. (13) Defendant contends, on appeal, that the cross-examination of his mother both exceeded the scope of the direct examination and elicited testimony with regard to nonviolent criminal activity that was inadmissible under factor (b) or any other factor. The Attorney General argues, in response, that once the defense introduced evidence of defendant's background to be considered by the jury as mitigating evidence under factor (k), [20] the prosecutor was entitled to elicit evidence of other incidents in defendant's background to present a complete picture of [defendant's] character and background in order to permit the jury to determine whether defendant's character and background called for a sentence of less than death. The Attorney General relies on this court's decisions in People v. Boyd, supra, 38 Cal.3d 762, 775-776, and People v. Rodriguez (1986) 42 Cal.3d 730, 790-792 [230 Cal. Rptr. 667, 726 P.2d 113], to support the asserted propriety of the cross-examination. In Boyd, after explaining that the prosecution may not introduce evidence of a defendant's alleged bad character in its penalty phase case-in-chief unless the evidence bears on one of the specifically enumerated aggravating factors listed in section 190.3, we went on to observe that if the defense presents mitigating evidence under expanded factor (k), prosecution rebuttal evidence would be admissible as evidence tending to `disprove any disputed fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action.' ( Boyd, supra, 38 Cal.3d at pp. 775-776.) In Rodriguez, we relied on Boyd in holding that a prosecutor could properly refer, in his closing penalty phase argument, to an incident in which the defendant had allegedly reached for a shotgun in the backseat of his vehicle when stopped by a police officer, to rebut evidence the defense had presented suggesting defendant was a kind, loving, contributive member of his community, regarded with affection by neighbors and family. ( Rodriguez, supra, 42 Cal.3d at pp. 791-792.) The Attorney General suggests that under Boyd and Rodriguez, when a defendant opens the door by presenting any mitigating evidence relating to a defendant's background or character, the prosecution has broad discretion to present other evidence of the defendant's background to give the jury a more balanced picture of his personality. ( Rodriguez, supra, 42 Cal.3d at p. 791.) The Attorney General's argument overlooks a significant passage of the Rodriguez decision, in which we explained the appropriate limits of our holding in that case. After concluding that there was no impropriety in the prosecution's closing argument comment in the Rodriguez trial, we emphasized: Nothing in our discussion is meant to imply that any evidence introduced by defendant of his `good character' will open the door to any and all `bad character' evidence the prosecution can dredge up. As in other cases, the scope of rebuttal must be specific, and evidence presented or argued as rebuttal must relate directly to a particular incident or character trait defendant offers in his own behalf. Here, for example, appellant presented evidence through family members that he was gentle and in the habit of avoiding violent confrontations. The prosecutor's reference to the `shotgun incident' was thus proper rebuttal to this specific asserted aspect of appellant's personality. ( People v. Rodriguez, supra, 42 Cal.3d at p. 792, fn. 24, italics in original.) In the present case, unlike in Rodriguez, much of the evidence introduced by the prosecution on cross-examination of defendant's mother was not responsive to the evidence presented by the defense. As we have seen, on direct examination defendant's mother did not testify generally to defendant's good character or to his general reputation for lawful behaviors, but instead testified only to a number of adverse circumstances that defendant experienced in his early childhood  e.g., an alcoholic father who did not provide adequately for his family and who beat his mother, a number of serious illnesses leading to some disability, his parents' divorce and the early death of his father. Although the prosecution was very properly permitted to bring out, on cross-examination, a number of facts that helped place the mother's direct examination testimony in proper perspective  e.g., the fact that while his father had beaten his mother, he had never beaten defendant, and the fact that defendant had always been loved by both his mother and father  the trial court also permitted the prosecution to go beyond these aspects of defendant's background and to introduce evidence of a course of misconduct that defendant had engaged in throughout his teenage years that did not relate to the mitigating evidence presented on direct examination. As the Attorney General implicitly acknowledges, the incidents of misconduct that the prosecution elicited from defendant's mother  disclosing defendant's absences from school, his arrest for burglary, and his use of heroin  were not incidents of violent criminal activity that were properly admissible under factor (b) or any other statutorily designated factor. Because the defense had presented no evidence to suggest that defendant had not engaged in any such misconduct in his childhood, this evidence was not proper rebuttal evidence and went beyond the scope of permissible cross-examination. Accordingly, we conclude that the trial court erred in permitting the prosecution to question defendant's mother with regard to such incidents. Although we find that the trial court erred in this regard, for a number of reasons we also conclude that there is no reasonable possibility that the error could have affected the judgment in this case and thus that the error does not warrant reversal of the death penalty judgment. (See, e.g., People v. Brown (1988) 46 Cal.3d 432, 446-448 [250 Cal. Rptr. 604, 758 P.2d 1135].) First, although the trial court's error did permit the prosecution to bring to the jury's attention a number of incidents of criminal misconduct that should not properly have been admitted, the incidents in question were relatively innocuous in comparison with the additional incidents of prior criminal activity that were properly admitted in the prosecution's case-in-chief  i.e., the prior forcible rape and the possession of a concealed weapon in a California Youth Authority facility  and the defendant himself presented evidence at the penalty phase of his past use of drugs. Second, the trial court specifically instructed the jury that it could not consider any prior criminal activity, other than the three crimes that the prosecution had presented in its case-in-chief, as an aggravating circumstance; this instruction minimized the danger that the jury would have used the evidence which was brought out on cross-examination for an improper purpose. Finally, the prosecutor did not dwell on this evidence or attempt to inflate its importance in closing argument. Under these circumstances, we cannot find there is a reasonable possibility that the error affected the verdict. (See, e.g., People v. Heishman (1988) 45 Cal.3d 147, 191 [246 Cal. Rptr. 673, 753 P.2d 629].) H. RAMOS CLAIM During its penalty phase case, the defense called a retired prison chaplain who had worked at San Quentin Prison to testify about the attitudes of prisoners on death row. The chaplain testified on direct examination that during their confinement some death row inmates became more integrated, more insightful and more perceptive about life and themselves. In the course of the prosecutor's cross-examination of the chaplain, the following colloquy occurred: Q [by the district attorney]: A number of people who you got to know on death row, subsequently their sentences were changed, true? A: Yes, many. Q: ... And some of those people were released, as a matter of fact, true? A: Yes. Q: Did you ever do any tracking of the people who you had gotten to know on death row, and you saw that they were religious, to determine whether or not their interest in religion was maintained when they were subsequently released into society? A: I haven't been intimately identified with people that have been on the row and then have left, to answer that with any specific case that I can recall. .... .... .... .... .... .... .... . Q: And after these people were once on death row, were released back into society, to be honest with us, you just don't have any idea whether they maintained any interest in religion or not? A: Right. No, of course. That one facet of it. But I know that many, many who have been on the death row have adjusted into civil life and have disappeared into the population so you never hear of them again. Q: Many have and a few have not, true? A: Right. On redirect examination, defense counsel began asking questions in an attempt to have the chaplain explain that the release of death row prisoners, to which the prosecutor had referred, occurred when an earlier death penalty law was invalidated. The trial court interrupted defense counsel and admonished the jury that we are talking about an entirely new and different sequence here. [¶] So, as I said, the fact that they did away with the death penalty back in 1960 or `62 and so forth, and the people were released back into the system, and so forth, you are to draw no inference that that is going to happen in this case. [¶] And you are admonished that death, as I emphasized to you, means that the defendant will be executed. And life imprisonment without possibility of parole means he will be in prison the rest of his life. [¶] So, as I said these questions are not asked in any context that you are to draw any inference that something other than what I have indicated to you. [¶] You have two possible acts. And those are what they are. So I think that clears it up. The jury was then dismissed for a recess, and defense counsel moved for a mistrial, contending that the prosecutor, in violation of this court's decision in People v. Ramos (1984) 37 Cal.3d 136 [207 Cal. Rptr. 800, 689 P.2d 430], had intentionally injected an impermissible consideration into the sentencing calculus, namely, the possibility that a person sentenced to life without possibility of parole might be released from prison. The prosecutor maintained that he was merely attempting to have the chaplain acknowledge that the character changes in death row inmates to which the chaplain had referred had not always been maintained when circumstances changed and may have been feigned. He insisted that he had not attempted indirectly to suggest that a life-without-possibility-of-parole sentence could result in defendant's release. The trial court denied the motion for mistrial, observing that while it was surprised that defense counsel had not objected sooner to the prosecutor's line of questions, it felt that its prompt admonition to the jury had cured any problem. (14) Defendant now claims that the prosecutor's questions constituted intentional misconduct that could not be cured by the trial court's admonition. In response, the Attorney General argues that there was no misconduct and, in any event, no prejudice. Although the record does not suggest to us that the prosecutor's questions were intended to inject an improper factor into the jury's sentencing calculus, the trial court properly recognized that the questions did at least have the potential of introducing an extraneous and possibly prejudicial consideration into the jury's penalty determination. In view of the trial court's prompt clarification of the matter, however, we conclude that the trial court did not err in refusing to declare a mistrial. As the trial court's quoted comments suggest, well before the quoted colloquy occurred the trial court had made a point of specifically advising the jurors during the pretrial jury voir dire that they were to decide the question of the appropriate penalty on the understanding that a sentence of death meant that defendant would be executed and that a sentence of life without possibility of parole meant that defendant would never be released from prison. The court's reiteration of that point in response to the prosecutor's questioning of the chaplain should have eliminated any potential misunderstanding. [21] Under these circumstances, we conclude that reversal of the judgment is not warranted.