Opinion ID: 2508855
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Evidence of Prior Violent Act's Impact on Victim

Text: As described earlier, the prosecution presented evidence, pursuant to section 190.3, factor (b) (hereafter factor (b)), that in 1976 defendant, uninvited, entered the home of a neighbor, Linda Carter, in the early morning and, when discovered by Carter, struck her repeatedly in the face and head with his fist and a wooden club, causing physical injuries for which she received medical treatment. Carter further testified that as a result of the incident she received psychological treatment for fear and bought a handgun, which she still possessed at the time of trial. Over defense objections on the ground of irrelevance, Carter was allowed to further testify that she kept the gun under her pillow and carried it to investigate any noises she heard in the night; without such investigation, she observed, there is no way I could rest. Defendant concedes that under factor (b) prior violent acts may be shown in context, so as to fully illuminate their seriousness ( People v. Melton (1988) 44 Cal.3d 713, 757, 244 Cal.Rptr. 867, 750 P.2d 741), but contends the relevant context includes only direct and foreseeable results of the violence, not remote or idiosyncratic reactions of the victim, a category into which he argues Carter's testimony about her continuing fear falls. For this proposition he relies on People v. Boyde (1988) 46 Cal.3d 212, 249, 250 Cal.Rptr. 83, 758 P.2d 25, in which we held irrelevant to the aggravating factors in section 190.3 unspecified testimony by victims of other offenses about the impact that the event had on their lives. Acknowledging that in People v. Mickle (1991) 54 Cal.3d 140, 284 Cal.Rptr. 511, 814 P.2d 290 we held admissible, apparently under factor (b), the testimony of sexual assault victims that they continued to experience pain, depression, and fear ( Mickle, supra, at p. 187, 284 Cal.Rptr. 511, 814 P.2d 290), [12] defendant argues the two decisions may be reconciled through the foreseeability rule he proposes. He also contends the same proposed rule must limit admissibility under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the federal Constitution, for permitting unlimited victim-impact evidence under factor (b) would render that factor unconstitutionally vague and open the way to imposition of the death penalty in an arbitrary and capricious manner. [13] We need not decide here whether evidence of indirect or idiosyncratic effects of prior criminal violence is irrelevant under factor (b), or its use unconstitutional, for the evidence defendant complains of was neither remote nor unforeseeable. As the Attorney General observes: [V]ictim Carter's emotional trauma years later, resulting from [defendant's] assault with a deadly weapon that caused severe head injuries, after he surprised this single mother and her child in their apartment, was highly foreseeable. A victim's understandable reaction of arming herself at night and investigating strange noises at night while armed hardly seems unusual or disconnected from her experience as one of [defendant's] victims. Though a number of years had passed between defendant's attack on Carter and her testimony, the link between the attack and the emotions and actions to which Carter testified was direct and foreseeable, not causally remote or unforeseeable. Even under the limitation defendant urges, the evidence was admissible.