Opinion ID: 1172635
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Denial of Jury Visit to Crime Scene

Text: (21) Defendant argues the trial court erred in denying a defense motion that the jury visit the scene of the crime. The standard of review for a trial court's decision to grant or deny a request for a jury view is abuse of discretion. ( People v. Price (1991) 1 Cal.4th 324, 422 [3 Cal. Rptr.2d 106, 821 P.2d 610].) Defendant argues his motion for a crime scene visit would have enabled the jury properly to appreciate the distance and angle from which Patricia Lewis claimed to have witnessed him. When the purpose of [a jury] view is to test the veracity of a witness's testimony about observations the witness made, the trial court may properly consider whether the conditions for the jury view will be substantially the same as those under which the witness made the observations, whether there are other means of testing the veracity of the witness's testimony, and practical difficulties in conducting a jury view. ( People v. Price, supra, 1 Cal.4th at p. 422.) The trial court here, in denying defendant's motion, correctly reasoned that lighting and foliage conditions at the scene might be different than those prevailing at the time of the offense. Defendant's trial counsel conceded, in making the motion, that the only justification for undertaking a crime scene visit would be to illustrate relative distances as testified to by Lewis and to acquaint the jury with the trees at the scene. The jury ultimately was taken to a plaza in front of the courthouse and permitted to view there the distances involved. There was no reason to believe a visit to the crime scene would have afforded the jury an opportunity to view trees as they were on the day of the crime. Defendant fails to demonstrate that the trial court abused its discretion in denying his motion.