Opinion ID: 1715265
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Coperpetrator's Confession

Text: In his fourth claim, Caballero asserts that the trial court erred in ruling that, if Caballero were permitted to introduce evidence that his coperpetrator, Isaac Brown, was convicted at a separate trial of only second-degree murder, then the prosecution would be permitted to introduce Brown's confession in order to show the evidence on which Brown's conviction was based. Caballero argues that he should have been permitted to introduce the fact of Brown's conviction to support a proportionality argument to the jury, i.e., to argue that his own sentence should not exceed life imprisonment. However, Caballero simultaneously argues that the jury should not have been allowed to hear the evidence on which Brown was convicted since this evidence, Brown's testimony in particular, would constitute hearsay highly prejudicial to Caballero. [5] Caballero misstates the trial court's ruling on the issue and asks this Court to rule on an issue not presented by the record. At trial, when Caballero sought to introduce Brown's second-degree murder conviction into evidence to support a proportionality argument, the prosecutor argued that if Brown's conviction was introduced, then the State should be permitted to introduce Brown's confession to show the evidence on which the conviction was based. The court initially indicated that the proportionality issue could be raised before the court at a Spencer [6] hearing. Caballero insisted that he wanted the jury to consider Brown's conviction, though without being permitted to consider the confession underlying the conviction. The court explained that the problem with this approach would be that the jury would not know the factual evidence on which Brown's conviction was based, and thus could not appropriately assess the significance of the conviction. The court indicated that if Caballero introduced the conviction into evidence, the prosecution would have an opportunity to explain the facts on which the conviction was based. Since Caballero at that juncture abandoned his attempt to introduce Brown's conviction into evidence, this Court has no way of knowing what the trial court's evidentiary rulings on the substance of Brown's confession would have been. Caballero suggests that the trial court might have granted the prosecution an unfettered right to introduce prejudicial and inflammatory aspects of Brown's confession, but this is not what happened at trial. This Court cannot rule on assertions of errors which did not in fact occur. Caballero is not entitled to relief on this claim.