Opinion ID: 2623595
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Asserted Prosecutorial Misconduct and Trial Court Error in Failing to Limit Cross-examination of Dr. Rath

Text: Coffman contends the prosecutor engaged in misconduct by, in effect, presenting, during his cross-examination of Dr. Rath, his own unsupported theory that Coffman was a sociopath and a serial killer. The trial court's failure to confine the prosecutor to the proper scope of cross-examination, she argues, constituted prejudicial error. Noting that the prosecutor, during his guilt phase cross-examination of Dr. Lenore Walker, had sought to demonstrate that Coffman fit the diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality disorder by eliciting examples of criminal conduct in which Coffman had engaged before she met Marlow, Coffman further maintains the prosecutor, during the penalty phase, continued this tactic of introducing evidence of her bad acts to prove a criminal disposition, contrary to Evidence Code section 1101, subdivision (a). Coffman acknowledges that her counsel attempted, in his case in mitigation, to counter the prosecutor's suggestion that she was a sociopath by eliciting from Dr. Rath the opinion that serial killers are almost exclusively male and that Coffman did not fit the profile of a serial killer. She then complains that the ensuing cross-examination was not rebuttal but a continuation of the themes which the prosecution itself had originally raised in the trial. In particular, Coffman argues, the prosecutor improperly examined Dr. Rath concerning the Rappaport article (see fn. 42, ante ) in order to reinforce the suggestion that she was of a criminal disposition. Coffman also contends the prosecutor improperly questioned Dr. Rath concerning whether a sexual sadist serial killer could be female and whether Coffman's bragging about the offenses, as testified to by jailhouse informant Robin Long, was consistent with the behavior of a serial killer. In this connection, she also complains that the prosecutor wrongly put before the jury, during the penalty phase, nonstatutory aggravating evidence including that she had carried a gun in Barstow before ever meeting Marlow and that, shortly after the murder of Lynell Murray, she behaved exuberantly in a Denny's restaurant in the City of Ontario. Coffman argues the above evidence was improper rebuttal, as her defense did not attempt to portray her as having a character incompatible with antisocial conduct. Although Coffman at one point objected to the cross-examination of Dr. Rath as going beyond the scope of the direct examination, she did not object to the evidence of her behavior before or after the Murray killing or other evidence of violent criminal conduct the prosecutor had introduced in aggravation. She thus failed to preserve these claims for appeal. In any event, we find the challenged cross-examination entirely proper as an exploration of the basis of Dr. Rath's opinion, and the evidence of Coffman's conduct was proper rebuttal to her penalty phase defense. The trial court, therefore, did not err in failing to confine the prosecutor's cross-examination of Rath, and the prosecutor did not engage in misconduct by probing into the basis of Dr. Rath's opinions. As no ground appears on which additional objections would have succeeded in limiting the scope of the cross-examination, Coffman's trial counsel cannot be faulted for failing to make them.