Opinion ID: 2525107
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 12

Heading: The jacket

Text: Defendant first objects to the following statement: [W]e know that the defendant was wearing a Raider's jacket on January 22.[¶] Whether Mr. Montes believed it was a white jacket or silver jacket, it really doesn't matter, [¶] We also know that according to David Mandich, that the defendant or the shooter was wearing some kind of team jacket. Whether it was a silver jacket, a dark blue jacket or black jacket, I don't think really matters, because we don't know beyond any doubt really what color this jacket contained in People's 16 looked like to David Mandich the night the murder happened, [¶] And we don't know whether the defendant was really wearing the jacket in People's 16 the night of the murder. [¶] We just know that two nights later he was wearing. . . . The trial court overruled defendant's objection, and the prosecutor moved to a different subject. Defendant contends the prosecutor knowingly falsified facts to protect what defendant deems the Achilles' heel of the caseDavid Mandich's identification of defendant. Oscar Montes testified that defendant wore a white or silver Raiders jacket both on the night of the Castro murder and the day he was arrested. Mandich initially told Detective Coulter the shooter wore a dark athletic jacket with lettering on the back. According to defendant, Mandich's incorrect description of the color of the jacket threatened to undermine the People's case. The prosecutor, defendant argues, therefore mischaracterized the time when defendant was arrested, stating it was two nights after the shooting, on January 22, rather than the afternoon of January 21. This mischaracterization, defendant asserts, weakened the inference that Mandich had misidentified the shooter. This allegation fails for several reasons. First, the obvious import of the prosecutor's statement was that Mandich's correct observation that the shooter wore a team jacket with lettering was more significant than his error regarding its color, especially considering Detective Coulter's testimony that the satin-like jacket could have looked darker on the night of the shooting. Second, whether the prosecutor characterized the date of defendant's arrest as January 21 or 22 had little bearing on the accuracy of Mandich's identification. If defendant had access to only one Raiders jacket, Mandich's description was no more accurate if the date of the arrest were January 22 instead of January 21. If defendant had a second Raiders jacket, he could have just as easily worn it on January 21 as he could have worn it on January 22. Furthermore, there is no reasonable probability that defendant would have received a more favorable result absent this isolated comment. ( People v. Stansbury (1993) 4 Cal.4th 1017, 1057, 17 Cal.Rptr.2d 174, 846 P.2d 756 (Stansbury) .)