Opinion ID: 2586480
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Victim's Dying Declaration

Text: Defendant argues that the admission of Laborde's tape-recorded statements to police violated his federal constitutional rights under the United States Supreme Court's decision in Crawford v. Washington (2004) 541 U.S. 36 [158 L.Ed.2d 177, 124 S.Ct. 1354] ( Crawford ).
As stated above in part I.A.3., while Laborde was in the hospital, Officer Finney asked her what happened to her to cause her injuries, and he tape-recorded her answers. Near the beginning of the tape, an unidentified emergency room doctor informed Laborde that her chances of survival were very poor. She responded by asking, Am I going to die? The doctor said, You're going to die. [17] Laborde told the doctor, I want to die. She then recounted the facts of the crime and said that defendant threw gasoline on her and lit her on fire with a cigarette lighter. Subsequently, during the pretrial period when defendant represented himself, he filed a motion for discovery of a videotape of Laborde's statements that he believed the prosecution was withholding from him. In this motion, he asserted that the audiotape of these statements, which the prosecution had disclosed to him, had been altered and therefore was untrustworthy. At the December 8, 1995, hearing on the motion, the prosecution informed the trial court that no videotape of Laborde making her statements existed. Thereafter, the court addressed the issue of the reliability of the audiotape and found as follows: On the issue of reliability, the dying declaration is just that, the victim was apprised of the potential that she was about to die and there appears to be appropriate foundation ... [for application of the] exception to the hearsay rule. Defendant acknowledges that he did not object to the admission of the audiotape of Laborde's statements during the guilt or penalty phase.
Defendant contends that, even if Laborde's tape-recorded statements were admissible under the dying declaration exception to the hearsay rule, [18] the trial court admitted these statements in violation of his Sixth Amendment right to confrontation. [19] As a preliminary matter, defendant forfeited this claim by failing to object on this basis at trial. (See People v. Geier (2007) 41 Cal.4th 555, 609-611 [61 Cal.Rptr.3d 580, 161 P.3d 104] [the defendant's failure to object forfeited constitutional claims; constitutional claims were not of such magnitude that an exception to the forfeiture rule was warranted].) In any event, defendant's claim is without merit. (9) We begin our analysis with a discussion of the legal principles established in Crawford. Crawford ... held that testimonial out-of-court statements offered against a criminal defendant are rendered inadmissible by the confrontation clause unless the witness is unavailable at trial and the defendant has a prior opportunity for cross-examination. ( Crawford, supra, 541 U.S. at p. 59.) [¶] Under Crawford, the crucial determination about whether the admission of an out-of-court statement violates the confrontation clause is whether the out-of-court statement is testimonial or nontestimonial. ( People v. Geier, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 597.) Although the court in Crawford did not explicitly define a testimonial statement, it provided various examples: ` ex parte in-court testimony or its functional equivalentthat is, material such as affidavits, custodial examinations, prior testimony that the defendant was unable to cross-examine, or similar pretrial statements that declarants would reasonably expect to be used prosecutorially ... [citation]; extrajudicial statements ... contained in formalized testimonial materials, such as affidavits, depositions, prior testimony, or confessions ... [citation]; statements that were made under circumstances which would lead an objective witness reasonably to believe that the statement would be available for use at a later trial [citation].' ( Crawford, supra, 541 U.S. at pp. 51-52.) ( People v. Geier, supra, 41 Cal.4th at pp. 597-598.) In addition, the court said certain statements qualify as testimonial `under any definitionfor example, ex parte testimony at a preliminary hearing,' [ Crawford, at p. 52] and `at a minimum[,] ... prior testimony at a preliminary hearing, before a grand jury, or at a former trial; and ... police interrogations. These are the modern practices with closest kinship to the abuses at which the Confrontation Clause was directed.' ( Id. at p. 68.) ( Geier, at p. 598.) The Crawford court clarified that `not all hearsay implicates the Sixth Amendment's core concerns,' ( Crawford, supra, 541 U.S. at p. 51) and ... acknowledged that certain exceptions to the rule against hearsay in existence at the time the confrontation clause was originally adopted fell outside the purview of the clause because `there is scant evidence that exceptions were invoked to admit testimonial statements against the accused in a criminal case. Most of the hearsay exceptions covered statements that by their nature were not testimonialfor example, business records or statements in furtherance of a conspiracy.' ( Id. at p. 56, italics & fn. omitted.) ( People v. Geier, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 597.) The high court acknowledged, however, that dying declarations, even those testimonial in nature, were recognized at common law, but left unanswered the question whether the Sixth Amendment incorporates an exception for such declarations. ( Crawford, supra, 541 U.S. at p. 56, fn. 6.) (10) We answered this question in People v. Monterroso (2004) 34 Cal.4th 743, 764-765 [22 Cal.Rptr.3d 1, 101 P.3d 956] ( Monterroso ), holding, in reliance on Crawford 's rationale, that admission of dying declarations, whether or not testimonial in nature, does not violate a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to confrontation. Dying declarations, we reasoned, were admissible at common law in felony cases, even when the defendant was not present at the time the statement was taken. (Peake, Evidence (3d ed. 1808) p. 64.) In particular, the common law allowed `the declaration of the deceased, after the mortal blow, as to the fact itself, and the party by whom it was committed,' provided that `the deceased at the time of making such declarations was conscious of his danger.' ( King v. Reason (K.B. 1722) 16 How. St. Tr. 1, 24-25.) To exclude such evidence as violative of the right to confrontation `would not only be contrary to all the precedents in England and here, acquiesced in long since the adoption of these constitutional provisions, but it would be abhorrent to that sense of justice and regard for individual security and public safety which its exclusion in some cases would inevitably set at naught. But dying declarations, made under certain circumstances, were admissible at common law, and that common law was not repudiated by our constitution in the clause referred to, but adopted and cherished.' ( State v. Houser (Mo. 1858) 26 Mo. 431, 438; accord, Mattox v. United States (1895) 156 U.S. 237, 243-244 [39 L.Ed. 409, 15 S.Ct. 337] [`from time immemorial they have been treated as competent testimony, and no one would have the hardihood at this day to question their admissibility'].) Thus, if, as Crawford teaches, the confrontation clause `is most naturally read as a reference to the right of confrontation at common law, admitting only those exceptions established at the time of the founding' ( Crawford, supra, [541 U.S. at p. 54], citing Houser, supra, 26 Mo. at pp. 433-435), it follows that the common law pedigree of the exception for dying declarations poses no conflict with the Sixth Amendment. ( Monterroso, supra, 34 Cal.4th at pp. 764-765; see also Giles v. California (2008) 554 U.S. ___, ___ - ___ [171 L.Ed.2d 488, 128 S.Ct. 2678, 2682-2683] [testimonial dying declarations were admitted at common law even though they were unconfronted].) Therefore, without considering whether the statements at issue were testimonial in nature, we concluded that admission of statements under the dying declaration hearsay exception does not violate the Sixth Amendment's confrontation clause. ( Monterroso, supra, 34 Cal.4th at pp. 763, 765, fn. 5.) Monterroso 's holding thus disposes of defendant's contention that admission of Laborde's dying declaration violated his Sixth Amendment right to confrontation. [20] Defendant asserts that Monterroso was wrongly decided. The essence of his complaint is that neither the language of the Sixth Amendment nor United States Supreme Court jurisprudence permits an exception to the Sixth Amendment confrontation requirement for dying declarations. That is, defendant disputes Crawford's suggestion that such an exception might exist based on historical grounds ( Crawford, supra, 541 U.S. at p. 56, fn. 6) because, in his view, dying declarations are inherently unreliable. Defendant, however, does not address the merits of our holding in Monterroso nor otherwise provide persuasive reason for us to revisit that decision, and we decline to do so.