Opinion ID: 2517801
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Hearsay objection to Reyna tape recording

Text: On August 7, 1992, prior to jury selection, the prosecution notified the defense it intended to offer in evidence Luis Reyna's April 5, 1988, tape-recorded interview with the police. In this interview, Reyna stated that, during a conversation between the two men, defendant had admitted his responsibility for the Mishell assaults; Reyna also indicated that defendant had attempted to enlist Reyna's help in establishing an alibi for those offenses. The notice asserted that the statement was admissible, as an exception to the hearsay rule, under Evidence Code section 1350. This statute provides a hearsay exception, in a serious felony case, for properly memorialized, authenticated, trustworthy, and corroborated statements made to a law enforcement officer by a declarant who thereafter became unavailable as a court witness because, by clear and convincing evidence, he or she was kidnapped or killed, with the defendant's participation or at his behest, for the purpose of preventing the defendant's arrest or prosecution. [15] Defendant moved in limine to exclude the tape, urging that it did not meet the requirements of Evidence Code section 1350interpreted in light of the federal confrontation clause's ban on untrustworthy hearsay [16] and was more prejudicial than probative (Evid.Code, § 352). The court denied the defense motion. Among other things, the court correctly noted that the corroboration requirement set forth in Evidence Code section 1350 applied only to the Mishell assaultsthe only charges as to which Reyna's statement was offered for its truth, and was thus subject to the hearsay rule (see Evid. Code, § 1200). [17] After confirming it had reviewed a transcript of the taped statement, and had read the preliminary hearing transcript, the court ruled that I am going to admit the recorded statement under [section] 1350 on the ground there is evidence, clear and convincing, [that] [Reyna's] unavailability was caused by the defendant and the statement which concerns the assault is corroborated by the evidence. Defendant renewed his objection prior to the prosecution's opening statement, this time explicitly invoking the confrontation clause as well as Evidence Code section 1350, and again in midtrial, before the introduction of the taped statement. Subject to certain redactions for other evidentiary reasons, these objections were again overruled. The tape recording of Reyna's April 5, 1988, police statement, as redacted, was played for the jury. On appeal, defendant again contends the prosecution failed to satisfy the prerequisites for the admission of Reyna's statement under Evidence Code section 1350. The claim lacks merit. We review evidentiary rulings, including those involving hearsay issues, for abuse of discretion. (E.g., People v. Waidla (2000) 22 Cal.4th 690, 725, 94 Cal. Rptr.2d 396, 996 P.2d 46 ( Waidla ).) Under that standard, the record considered by the trial court amply supports its conclusion that the statement was admissible under this statute. Defendant first insists that, at the time of the court's evidentiary ruling, there was not clear and convincing evidence defendant knowingly caused Reyna's death for the purpose of preventing defendant's arrest or prosecution. [18] But the taped statement itself was evidence of Reyna's status as a potential, and significant, prosecution witness in the Mishell assault case. [19] Moreover, the preliminary hearing disclosed evidence that defendant knew of the threat posed by Reyna. There Reyna's sister Yolanda testified, as at trial, that the night before he disappeared, Reyna told defendant on the telephone he was not afraid of defendant and intended to testify against him. [20] There was also strong evidence that, within a day after receiving this news from Reyna, defendant killed him. At the preliminary hearing, Reyna's mother Helen testified, as at trial, that on the morning after his telephone conversation with defendant, Reyna left the family home, with some trepidation, to meet defendant face to face, and that Reyna never returned. Other preliminary hearing witnesses recounted the discovery, days after Reyna's disappearance, of his decapitated and dismembered body in an isolated location, as well as physical and forensic evidence linking defendant to the homicide. This included testimony that bloodstains on the exterior and interior of defendant's abandoned truck included samples consistent with the victim's blood. Under these circumstances, a strong inference arose that defendant had murdered Reyna, and had done so to prevent the testimony Reyna threatened he would give. The trial court was amply justified in finding, by clear and convincing evidence, that defendant knowingly caused Reyna's death for this purpose. Defendant also asserts there were insufficient indicia of trustworthiness surrounding Reyna's police statement to satisfy either Evidence Code section 1350 or the confrontation clause. We discuss below (fn. 21, post ) any argument defendant may be understood to advance under the federal Constitution. For purposes of Evidence Code section 1350, evidence that the statement was trustworthy is very strong. At the time of his statement, Reyna was not in custody, nor a suspect in any crime, but a citizen witness. At the outset of the police interview, he agreed that he was at the police station of [his] own free will and that the police had not made [him] any promises or guarantees or set any conditions on his statement. Reyna indicated that he and defendant were friends and colleagues on the Berkeley Waterfront Commission. Reyna then gave a detailed account of his conversations and encounters with defendant over several months about the anonymous telephone calls defendant was receiving, his suspicions that a professor and his wife were responsible, his determination to handle the matter his way, his ultimate account of his attack on the Mishells, and his efforts to enlist Reyna's help in constructing an alibi. At one point, the interviewer, Detective Gustafson, observed that Reyna was consulting notes he had made of his contacts with defendant over this period. The record disclosed no motive for Reyna to lie about what his colleague and erstwhile friend had told him. Indeed, the preliminary hearing testimony of Reyna's mother and sister suggested that he later resisted defendant's efforts to dissuade him from testifying despite concern for his personal safety. Defendant urges Reyna's statement should have been deemed untrustworthy because Gustafson testified at the preliminary hearing that Reyna provided no significant new information, and that, prior to his statement, at least some details, contained in a previously sealed search warrant affidavit, had become public when the media obtained a copy of the affidavit. Defendant also notes from the preliminary hearing transcript that Reyna told several persons, including defense investigator Cramer, that defendant often teased him and he did not necessarily believe defendant's claim of responsibility for the assaults. But Reyna never varied from the substance of what defendant had told him. Moreover, his uncertainty, before going to the police, about what he should do with the information, and his subsequent effort to convince Cramer that newspaper reports had taken his statement out of context, actually support the statement's reliability. Reyna spoke to the police despite his deep conflict about his public responsibility, his friendship for defendant, his willingness to give defendant the benefit of the doubt, and his concern for his own safety. Ample evidence thus supports the trial court's implicit finding that the statement was made under circumstances indicating its trustworthiness. Finally, defendant disputes that, at the time of the evidentiary ruling, Reyna's statement was corroborated by other evidence linking defendant to the Mishell assaults. But such corroboration was present in the preliminary hearing testimony of Robert Mishell, who, as at trial, implicated defendant as his attacker. The trial court's finding on this issue was not an abuse of its discretion. [21] Defendant argues, confusingly, that he suffered prejudice insofar as the jury may have considered Reyna's statement both for its truth in the Mishell attempted murder case and as evidence of defendant's motive to kill Reyna. But having surmounted the hurdle of Evidence Code section 1350, the statement was admissible for its truth, despite its hearsay character, as evidence of defendant's responsibility for the attacks on the Mishells. Without regard to the hearsay rule, it was also admissible in the murder case, not for its truth, but to demonstrate defendant's motive to kill Reyna as a potential witness against him. Because the statement was thus admissible for all the purposes defendant cites, no possibility of juror confusion, or unfair prejudice, is shown. For similar reasons, there is no merit to defendant's argument that the undue risk of confusion and prejudice should have led to exclusion of the statement under Evidence Code section 352. [22]