Opinion ID: 2590211
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Modus Operandi Instructions Given and Refused; Alleged Prosecutorial Bad Faith

Text: Defendant contends the trial court committed several errors in instructing the jury concerning modus operandi. First, as he did in his claim of error in the denial of his motion for severance, he urges there were insufficient distinctive marks common to the various homicides. Hence, he argues, the giving of any modus operandi instruction was unjustified. Second, he contends the special instruction on modus operandi given his jury was legally flawed and compels reversal of eight specified murder counts (with ramifications that extend to the remainder of the charges). Third, he claims reversible error in the trial court's refusal of his requested special instructions concerning the Hall and Loggins homicides. Finally, he contends the prosecutor in this case acted in bad faith and presented a false picture to the jury by relying on a modus operandi theory despite his alleged awareness that the modus operandi of some of the homicides resembled that of William Bonin and his confederates. (See People v. Bonin (1988) 46 Cal.3d 659, 250 Cal.Rptr. 687, 758 P.2d 1217; People v. Bonin (1989) 47 Cal.3d 808, 254 Cal.Rptr. 298, 765 P.2d 460.) Defendant's contentions lack merit. Defendant criticizes the special instruction given the jury as not setting up a single standard against which to assess all of the charged offenses. No specific group of homicides, he argues, was offered as determining the pattern of characteristics making up [defendant's] modus operandi. Defendant's premise, that modus operandi requires one single set of distinctive marks common to all charged counts, is unsupported by authority. Indeed, one of the cases on which he relies, People v. Thornton (1974) 11 Cal.3d 738, 114 Cal.Rptr. 467, 523 P.2d 267, analyzes the admissibility, on the question of identity, of evidence of several different sexual assaults charged to the defendant in that case in precisely the manner defendant insists is error in this case. That is, in People v. Thornton this court enumerated various unusual characteristics of the crimes and noted those shared by the charged offenses, but we did not, as defendant apparently would have us do, look for characteristics not so shared by a particular offense and thereby disqualify that offense from consideration on modus operandi. Indeed, we noted that the probative value of the evidence of one uncharged offense [wa]s not significantly diminished by the presence of certain marks of dissimilarity between the uncharged and charged offenses. ( People v. Thornton, supra, at p. 758, 114 Cal.Rptr. 467, 523 P.2d 267, italics in original; see also id. at p. 759, 114 Cal.Rptr. 467, 523 P.2d 267.) As the Attorney General points out, even though various victims in this case were killed under different circumstances, certain unique circumstances nevertheless were common to two or more murders. We conclude that, given the commonality of certain features of the various offenses present in the record of this case, the task of determining the degree of distinctiveness and the number of such circumstances necessary to establish defendant's identity as the perpetrator of these offenses was a matter for the jury. Finding no error, therefore, in submission to the jury of the modus operandi theory, we likewise find no merit in defendant's related claim that the resulting judgment lacks the reliability required by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the federal Constitution. Defendant further contends the trial court erred in refusing his special instruction relating to the modus operandi of the Hall count. There was no error: The requested instruction was plainly argumentative, singling out particular pieces of evidence for the jury's consideration without attempting to explain any principle of law. (See People v. Wright (1988) 45 Cal.3d 1126, 1137, 248 Cal.Rptr. 600, 755 P.2d 1049.) The same infirmity afflicted the requested special instruction pertaining to the Loggins count, which for the same reason was properly refused. Defendant contends the prosecutor acted in bad faith in trying the present case largely on a modus operandi theory despite his asserted awareness that the method ascribed to defendant matched that employed by Bonin in the latter's numerous killings. [10] As the Attorney General correctly argues, however, the record in this case does not reveal the prosecutor's reasoning as to why the 16 charged murders were committed not by Bonin but by defendant. Defendant invites us to take judicial notice of the records in the Bonin cases, but he fails to explain how doing so would illuminate the prosecutor's thought processes in this case. In any event, for us effectively to augment this record with the records of the Bonin cases would be improper. (See People v. Sakarias (2000) 22 Cal.4th 596, 635-636, 94 Cal.Rptr.2d 17, 995 P.2d 152.) We therefore decline to consider the claim of prosecutorial bad faith in this proceeding. Defendant's citation to Napue v. Illinois (1959) 360 U.S. 264, 79 S.Ct. 1173, 3 L.Ed.2d 1217, in which the high court overturned a conviction obtained by the prosecution's knowing use of false evidence, is inapposite given the absence of any suggestion the prosecutor in this case engaged in such a practice. Likewise not on point are Pyle v. Kansas (1942) 317 U.S. 213, 63 S.Ct. 177, 87 L.Ed. 214, involving prosecutorial coercion of witnesses, and Alcorta v. Texas (1957) 355 U.S. 28, 78 S.Ct. 103, 2 L.Ed.2d 9, involving the prosecutor's failure to correct a witness's false testimony.