Opinion ID: 1170931
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Duty to Preserve the Evidence.

Text: (26b) Shortly after selling the gun to undercover Officer MacIvor (Danny), defendant and his cousin were detained at the police station on suspicion of burglary. Officer Nichols testified the two were placed in a room and their conversation secretly monitored. Defendant was overheard to tell his cousin he would have to get the gun back from Danny, and that Danny should be offed. Nichols testified off was a street term for kill. At the start of the penalty phase, the district attorney for the first time learned that the conversation at the police station had been tape-recorded as well as monitored. Officer Nichols testified that the threats were audible on the tape, but its quality was very poor because defendant and his cousin had been whispering. A copy of the tape was forwarded to homicide detectives whose attempts to enhance it electronically proved unsuccessful. The homicide detectives thereafter informed Officer Nichols that the tape was of no value to them. He kept the original for five or six months and ultimately reused it, making no special effort to preserve it for trial. Neither the original tape nor the copy were ever made available to the defense or prosecution during trial. Defendant contends that under People v. Hitch (1974) 12 Cal.3d 641, 652-653 [117 Cal. Rptr. 9, 527 P.2d 361], the officers' negligent destruction of the tape should have precluded admission of evidence of the Danny threats at the penalty phase. (30) The United States Supreme Court has recently formulated its own duty-to-preserve-evidence test in California v. Trombetta (1984) 467 U.S. 479 [81 L.Ed.2d 413, 104 S.Ct. 2528]. Under Trombetta, the duty to preserve extends only to evidence which both possess[es] an exculpatory value that was apparent before the evidence was destroyed, and [is] of such a nature that the defendant would be unable to obtain comparable evidence by other reasonably available means. (467 U.S. at p. 489 [81 L.Ed.2d at p. 422].) (26c) Here it appears neither prong of the Trombetta test was met; defendant made no showing that the tape recording possessed any apparent exculpatory value, nor did he show why his opportunity to cross-examine Officer Nichols, who directly monitored the taped conversation, was inadequate to protect his rights. [9] In any event, as next shown, this claim is effectively mooted by our conclusion that evidence of the Danny threats was inadmissible for a more fundamental reason.