Opinion ID: 2804713
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Evidence Code Section 402 Hearing

Text: Before trial, the court conducted a hearing on defendant‘s motion to exclude from evidence the jailhouse letter defendant allegedly wrote to his fellow inmate, Cezar Pincock, about which Tony Saavedra, the reporter for the Orange County Register, later questioned defendant. The prosecutor explained that at his request, Saavedra, who had become aware of the letter and some of its contents, had held off writing a story about it until after the police had investigated whether, as the letter suggested, a ―hit‖ had been planned against defendant‘s grandfather. In gratitude for his cooperation, the prosecutor gave Saavedra a copy of the letter. The prosecutor represented that Saavedra questioned defendant about the letter on his own and not at the prosecutor‘s instigation. Although, as noted, the author of the letter denied having killed Edward, Dolores and Danny Charles, he described his discovery of the bodies, the cleanup efforts and the attempted disposal of the bodies by burning them. These descriptions largely tallied with what defendant told Deputy Sheriff Hyatt.5 The issue at the pretrial hearing was not the content of the letter but, as defense counsel put it, ―whether [defendant] confessed to writing‖ the letter. At the outset of the hearing, the parties stipulated that the letter was received by Sergeant Royer from inmate Pincock as well as to the circumstances under which Saavedra obtained it. They stipulated further that the defense‘s handwriting 5 Hyatt did not testify at the hearing regarding admissibility of the letter. He had, however, testified at an earlier Evidence Code section 402 hearing on the defense motion to exclude defendant‘s statements to him. The court denied that motion in part, permitting admission of some statements that defendant had voluntarily made to Hyatt, but not later statements Hyatt solicited from defendant. In arguing the letter corroborated defendant‘s statements to Hyatt, the prosecutor referred to Hyatt‘s testimony at this earlier hearing. Defendant did not object to the consideration of Hyatt‘s testimony by the trial court. 15 expert, William Hatch, had he been called at the hearing, would have testified none of the writing was in defendant‘s hand. As he would at trial, Saavedra testified that he held up pages of the letter to the glass partition that separated him from defendant in the jail‘s visiting room and asked him questions about certain passages. In doing so, he used language like ―I have a letter that you wrote,‖ and ―You said here,‖ or ―well, you wrote here.‖ In questioning defendant he ―hopscotched‖ around the letter. Saavedra testified that at no point did defendant admit or deny he wrote the letter, but he responded to Saavedra‘s questions about specific passages. Saavedra testified he was ―waiting‖ for defendant ―to disagree with what was in the letter,‖ to say, for example, ―I didn‘t burn my parents,‖ but ―it was quite the opposite.‖ The prosecutor argued that, in addition to Saavedra‘s testimony, the similarities between what was in the letter and what defendant told Deputy Hyatt, which the deputy had testified to at an earlier Evidence Code section 402 hearing, provided further evidence defendant had written the letter. The defense argued that the dissimilarities outweighed the similarities and that the letter was disjointed, ―as though someone is getting police reports and getting more information and then writing more letters.‖ The trial court observed the entire letter appeared to have been written by a single person, a point defense counsel did not dispute. In admitting the document into evidence the court said, ―[T]here has been no suggestion of tampering, other than speculation. Certainly, you would expect that if it is in the same handwriting, if [defendant] is shown the first page and he doesn‘t deny it is his handwriting, that that would include the whole document.‖ The court questioned whether, as the defense contended, there was a ―problem with the chain of custody.‖ Defense counsel replied there was no evidence defendant had given the letter to Pincock or anyone else. Defense 16 counsel conceded, however, that the letter the prosecution gave Saavedra was the same letter Royer said Pincock had given him. The trial court rejected the chain of custody argument, concluding, ―If the handwriting is the same person for all the 18 pages and . . . the defendant is shown one page of it by the reporter, and doesn‘t deny it under circumstances where a person ordinarily would say that, ‗That not‘s true, I didn‘t write that,‘ or ‗that‘s not my handwriting,‘ it seems that it is an implied admission as to the other 18 pages. [¶] Unless, you know, there is some evidence that there has been some tampering with those 18 pages.‖ The court denied the motion to exclude the letter without prejudice to a further showing ―that would justify excluding it.‖