Opinion ID: 2590211
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Exclusion of defendant's postarrest writings

Text: Through the testimony of defense investigator Ramsay, the defense sought to have admitted into evidence letters written by defendant to others during his incarceration in the Orange County jail pending his trial. Jail authorities had intercepted and copied the letters and then disclosed them to the defense during discovery. The prosecution objected to the admission of the letters on grounds of hearsay, and the trial court questioned their relevancy as well. The defense asserted the letters were not hearsay, in that they were offered not for the truth of the matters asserted therein but to show the defendant as a human being and a concern he has for other people and the concern for the welfare and sensitivity to other people's problems and issues. The prosecution characterized the letters as essentially telling all of his friends that he didn't do it; the defense contended the letters stood for more than that. The trial court viewed the letters as one hundred percent self-serving hearsay and found them unreliable, possibly having been written for presentation in the penalty phase. Accordingly, the court sustained the prosecutor's objection, but ruled the defense could introduce any poetry or drawings defendant had produced. We conclude the trial court did not abuse its discretion in so ruling. The letters were indeed hearsay, in that they possessed no probative value apart from the truth or sincerity of their contents. The trial court also reasonably could have entertained questions regarding their reliability, given the circumstances in which they were composed. In People v. Harris (1984) 36 Cal.3d 36, 70, 201 Cal.Rptr. 782, 679 P.2d 433, this court concluded the proponent of penalty phase evidence, consisting of poetry composed by the defendant, had the burden of showing it was reliable or trustworthy. We noted the defendant in that case had previously written poetry and the poems he sought to introduce had been seized when he was extradited to Kansas (and thus evidently had not been disseminated to potential witnesses). Comparable circumstances were not shown to exist in the present case. Indeed, the record contains a suggestion that defendant, during his pretrial incarceration, was concerned to assemble a persuasive case in mitigation: A jail correctional officer testified that, in a conversation with defendant about his planning for the penalty phase of his trial, defendant complained about a write-up he had received for an infraction of jail rules. Even were the ruling erroneous, however, we have no difficulty finding beyond a reasonable doubt defendant suffered no prejudice, as numerous witnesses testified defendant was a caring, sensitive individual.