Opinion ID: 1309215
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Defendant's Absence During Rereading of Testimony

Text: (36) Defendant contends that he was improperly excluded from proceedings convened to reread certain psychiatric testimony at the jury's request. Defense counsel purported to waive defendant's presence, but defendant now challenges the effectiveness of the waiver. As we previously observed in discussing a similar guilt phase contention, defendant is not entitled to be personally present during proceedings which bear no reasonable, substantial relation to his opportunity to defend the charges against him, and the burden is on defendant to demonstrate that his absence prejudiced his case or denied him a fair and impartial trial. ( People v. Jackson, supra, 28 Cal.3d at pp. 309-310.) The rereading of testimony ordinarily would not be an event which bears a substantial relation to the defendant's opportunity to defend, and nothing in the present record indicates that defendant's personal presence would have assisted the defense in any way. Defendant's suggestion that the jury might have been favorably influenced by defendant's reactions to the reread testimony (which involved psychiatric testimony regarding his mental state) is entirely speculative and fails to carry his burden of establishing prejudice. Defendant relies on Bustamante v. Eyeman (9th Cir.1972) 456 F.2d 269, but that case is not controlling. There, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals remanded for further proceedings to determine whether a criminal defendant was prejudiced by being excluded from the rereading of the court's instructions to the jury. The remand was deemed necessary because the appellate record was entirely silent as to what transpired during the rereading of the instructions  no transcript of the proceedings was provided. On remand, the trial court held an evidentiary hearing and determined that nothing further occurred during the session other than replaying the judge's tape-recorded instructions. Accordingly, both the district court and court of appeals ultimately concluded that any error in excluding defendant was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. (See Bustamante v. Cardwell (9th Cir.1974) 497 F.2d 556, 557-558.) In the present case, the record merely shows that various portions of testimony were reread to the jury, and defendant does not contend that any other exchanges between the judge and jury, or counsel and jury, took place. Accordingly, like the federal courts in Bustamante, we conclude that any error in excluding defendant from the proceedings was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. (See also People v. Conrad (1973) 31 Cal. App.3d 308, 323-324 [107 Cal. Rptr. 421] [neither defendant nor his counsel was present at rereading of district attorney's opening argument]; People v. Morales (1943) 60 Cal. App.2d 196, 200-201 [140 P.2d 461] [defendant absent from rereading of jury instructions].)