Opinion ID: 2551468
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Effect of Evidence Suggesting Gang Involvement

Text: This claim contains many subparts, presented at length, but it may be distilled to contentions that (1) the prosecution, in various ways, exploited defendant's alleged affiliation with the Mexican Mafia prison-based gang to deprive him of a sufficient defense and improperly suggest his dangerousness to the jury, (2) the trial court erred in failing to exclude various types of evidence of gang affiliation or involvement, and (3) the court's failure to set out clear rules regarding the admissibility of gang-related evidence caused defense counsel to become gun-shy. Defendant claims that the result was a trial that violated his rights under the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Our interpretation of the trial transcript is quite different from defendant's. Various witnesses against defendant feared the Mexican Mafia, and that fear at times explained their prior conduct, their motivation to testify, or their accepting government protectionitems that bore on the witnesses' credibility, and thus items that they needed to explain. The trial court agreed that evidence of defendant's involvement in the Mexican Mafia would be unduly prejudicial, thus giving itself and the parties the task of excluding inflammatory references to the gang while enabling witnesses to explain the basis for their testimony. [5] The court made diligent efforts to try to achieve this balance, ordering that witnesses refer by various euphemisms to pressures from others unless the defense opened the door to naming the Mexican Mafia. The result was successful. We have already explored this issue at some length ante, 96 Cal.Rptr.2d at pages 712-714, 1 P.3d at pages 30-33, in our review of issues surrounding Richard Ortiz Savocchio and Rafael Mendoza Lopez. And as alluded to in the statement of facts, the prosecution needed to explain Pedro Castillo's reticence and evasions when the police first interviewed him, and why he changed his mind and decided to denounce the murderers. So it was also with other witnesses, such as Juan Manuel Meza, who needed to explain the consideration, in the form of protection for his family, that the state was extending him. There was no error in presenting such evidence, which affected the witnesses' credibility. And the parties and trial court succeeded in doing it without exposing the jury to testimony about the Mexican Mafia or about prison-based gangs in general the very thing about which defendant expressed concern before and during the trial. As a result of the trial court's efforts, the jury never heard the names Mexican Mafia or La Erne. As stated ante, 96 Cal.Rptr.2d at pages 712-714, 1 P.3d at pages 31-33, the jurors heard only sanitized references to other people or groups that might wish to influence a witness's conduct or testimony or retaliate against the witness for harming the defense. Assuming that defendant's reference to counsel's reticence in the face of the possibility of introducing references to the Mexican Mafia is a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, we see none. It was a reasonable tactical choiceindeed it was, as stated, probably a wise choicefor the defense to avoid jeopardizing its victory regarding mentions of gangs. In sum, defendant's claim is without merit. The trial court did not err, nor was any constitutional right violated.