Opinion ID: 2551468
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Denying Motion to Exclude Certain Testimony of Meza

Text: Defendant claims that the trial court violated his rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution when it failed to give him an adequate opportunity to try to prove, in an in limine hearing at which Juan Manuel Meza testified, that the People coerced the testimony Meza gave against him at trial. He argues that this court should either reverse his convictions or order a new hearing on the issue of the voluntariness of Meza's testimony. But the record shows that he was able to question Meza about whether he had been coerced, and he denied that he had been. In People v. Badgett, supra, 10 Cal.4th 330, 351, 41 Cal.Rptr.2d 635, 895 P.2d 877, we stated that if the issue is not litigated below because the defendant has been precluded by an erroneous ruling on standing from attempting to carry his burden of demonstrating that third party testimony is coerced, there will not be an adequate record for the appellate court to review. Defendant asserts that this error occurred in his case. But the record shows that the trial court gave him sufficient opportunity to show that Meza's testimony was coerced. Defense counsel was unable to establish any coercion in her examination of Meza, and in fact she established the opposite. The factual predicate of defendant's claim of constitutional error is faulty, and so the claim itself is unavailing. Defendant also claims that the trial court erred by ruling that he could not impeach Meza with evidence that he had once Med to a probation officer about owning a gun. We agree with defendant that the court erred in ruling that the gun evidence was inadmissible character evidence. It was evidence of dishonesty with which Meza could have been impeached. But we discern no prejudice: applying the reasonable probability test of People v. Watson (1956) 46 Cal.2d 818, 836, 299 P.2d 243 ( People v. Cudjo, supra, 6 Cal.4th 585, 611-612, 25 Cal.Rptr.2d 390, 863 P.2d 635), we find no such probability that had Meza been impeached with that evidence of dishonesty the outcome would have differed. Defendant also claims that the court erroneously excluded other impeachment evidence consisting of instances of Meza's misconduct. But we read the court's ruling on that point as excluding for impeachment, under Evidence Code section 352, instances of bad conduct that did not involve dishonesty or other moral turpitude. On this record, we find no abuse of discretion.