Opinion ID: 2508855
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Exclusion of Evidence of an Obscene Telephone Message

Text: Defendant contends the trial court erred in excluding testimony from Debbie Cimmino's friend Juanita Seibel that a few weeks before the killings, Seibel had heard an obscene telephone message left on one of the victims' telephone answering machines. We conclude the court did not abuse its discretion in excluding Seibel's testimony under Evidence Code section 352. In an offer of proof outside the jury's presence, Seibel testified that about three weeks or a month before the killings, Debbie had played for her a message from an answering machine. The recording was of a male voice Seibel did not recognize. Other than that the message was obscene and sexually disgusting, Seibel did not recall its contents. She did not recall either sister's name being used in the message and did not know on which machine it had been recorded or to whom it was directed. [10] The trial court sustained the prosecution's objection to this testimony, ruling that [i]f this evidence is relevant, it is extremely speculative. And if it has any probative value at all, its probative value is substantially outweighed by a substantial danger of confusing the issues and misleading the jury. Exclusion of evidence as more prejudicial, confusing or distracting than probative, under Evidence Code section 352, is reviewed for abuse of discretion. ( People v. Rowland (1992) 4 Cal.4th 238, 264, 14 Cal.Rptr.2d 377, 841 P.2d 897.) Defendant asserts the evidence would have supported an inference that Izear Bookman left the obscene message, but as Seibel did not recognize the caller's voice and recalled almost nothing of the message's contents, any such inference would have been entirely speculative. Though Zelma Cureton identified a photograph of Bookman as the man Booker who boasted of having killed two women in Sacramento, no evidence linked Bookman to a telephone message left several weeks earlier. On the other side of the scale, testimony about an obscene message from an unknown caller had substantial potential to distract the jury from the issues presented by the charges and to confuse their understanding of the facts. Its exclusion was within the trial court's discretion. Nor did the court's ruling, as defendant also claims, deprive him of the Sixth Amendment right to present a defense. As there was no rational basis for an inference that Bookman left the message, admission of Seibel's testimony could not have materially bolstered the defense attempt to show Bookman was one of the murderers.