Opinion ID: 2517841
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Detective Overley's Testimony

Text: Consistent with what he argued below, defendant claims that restrictions on his examination of Detective Overley violated state law rules governing third party culpability evidence. (See People v. Hall (1986) 41 Cal.3d 826, 226 Cal.Rptr. 112, 718 P.2d 99 ( Hall ).) The trial court's ruling allegedly resulted in the denial of his right to due process and to present a defense under the federal and state Constitutions. We disagree. As background, the defense filed a written offer of proof shortly before opening statements asserting that someone named Denny committed the capital crime, and that defendant acquired the murder weapon and Nguyen's stolen property from Denny afterwards. (See discussion, fn. 5, ante.) The court and counsel repeatedly debated the permissible scope of defense efforts to present this third party theory to the jury. For instance, the prosecution sought to bar reference to the theory in opening statements absent some showing it could be proved. After a long discussion, in which the trial court warned that defense evidence would have to satisfy Hall, supra, 41 Cal.3d 826, 226 Cal.Rptr. 112, 718 P.2d 99, the court denied the prosecutor's request. Critical here is testimony that defendant tried to elicit from Detective Overley after calling him in the defense case. Counsel asked whether Overley and Detective Shave went to Lake Arrowhead to interview Bianca St. James about her relationship with defendant. The prosecutor objected on relevance grounds. He sought to exclude Overley's testimony absent evidence that defendant was in Lake Arrowhead the night of the murder, and that the main part of his third party defense was true, i.e., that Denny committed the crime. Defense counsel explained that Overley would testify that Mink and St. James lived near one another, that each house had similar terrain, and that both lived in gated communities. The trial court sustained the objection, giving rise to the present claim on appeal. In general, third party culpability evidence is admissible if it rais[es] a reasonable doubt of defendant's guilt. ( Hall, supra, 41 Cal.3d 826, 833, 226 Cal. Rptr. 112, 718 P.2d 99.) This does not mean, however, that no reasonable limits apply. Evidence that another person had motive or opportunity to commit the charged crime, or had some remote connection to the victim or crime scene, is not sufficient to raise the requisite reasonable doubt. ( Ibid.) Under Hall and its progeny, third party culpability evidence is relevant and admissible only if it succeeds in linking the third person to the actual perpetration of the crime. ( Ibid; see, e.g., Gutierrez, supra, 28 Cal.4th 1083, 1136-1137, 124 Cal.Rptr.2d 373, 52 P.3d 572 [no evidence drug dealer named Pablo committed the murder]; People v. Bradford (1997) 15 Cal.4th 1229, 1325, 65 Cal.Rptr.2d 145, 939 P.2d 259 [no evidence victim was killed by some man who frightened her].) Contrary to what defendant claims, the trial court properly found that Detective Overley's testimony raised no reasonable doubt as to defendant's guilt. When defendant called Overley as a witness, testimony by Goodwin, Brown, and Mink had suggested, at most, that two men were in Nguyen's car in both Garden Grove and Lake Arrowhead on the night of capital crime, and that defendant might have been one of them. Overley's proffered testimony arguably corroborated these inferences by suggesting that defendant's friend Bianca lived near Mink in Lake Arrowhead, and that defendant was hunting for Bianca's house when Mink saw the car. However, even assuming defendant established that he was in Lake Arrowhead with a third party in the murder victim's car, such fact is not inconsistent with defendant killing, sexually assaulting, and robbing Nguyen earlier that night. In other words, Overley's proffered testimony did not tend to link anyone other than defendant to actual perpetration of the charged crime. ( Hall, supra, 41 Cal.3d 826, 833, 226 Cal.Rptr. 112, 718 P.2d 99.) We find no error under state or federal law. [14]