Opinion ID: 1237936
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 16

Heading: Deputy Walton's Questioning of Defendant

Text: The defense requested a protective order to preclude the prosecution from calling Richard Walton, a deputy sheriff for Humboldt County, to testify to his encounter with defendant on January 23, 1983. The defense argued that the evidence was irrelevant and unduly prejudicial (Evid. Code, § 352), and that it amounted to inadmissible evidence of general criminal character or propensity ( id., § 1101). After hearing Officer Walton's testimony out of the jury's presence, the trial court ruled that Deputy Walton could testify to his observations and could mention defendant's statement explaining why he had stopped, but that he was not to give his opinion that defendant was casing robbery targets, nor was he to name the businesses in the area or indicate the distance from defendant's vehicle to those businesses. Officer Walton then testified before the jury that on January 23, 1983, he was on patrol duty in McKinleyville at 4:30 p.m. when he observed a brown automobile with one occupant in the parking lot of a vacant building at the edge of a business district. The car was in the same place 30 minutes later, so Officer Walton pulled behind it and contacted the occupant, who produced a driver's license identifying him as defendant, with a Eureka address. Defendant said he was waiting because the wind was blowing too hard for him to drive. Deputy Walton had encountered no difficulty with wind resistance. There was a pair of binoculars on the front seat of defendant's car. The prosecution introduced photographs of the area showing that from the location where the brown car was parked defendant could conveniently watch a gas station and a mini-mart. Later during the trial, over defense objection, Detective Pat Freese of the Eureka Police Department testified that he discussed this incident with defendant after defendant's arrest and that defendant said he had been watching the hillside with the binoculars when Deputy Walton contacted him. Based on this testimony by Officer Walton and Detective Freese, the trial court instructed the jury in the language of CALJIC No. 2.03 (4th ed. 1979; all references to CALJIC instructions are to this edition unless otherwise stated) that it could consider false statements by defendant as a circumstance tending to prove consciousness of guilt, and the prosecutor argued to the jury that it was conceivable that defendant was checking out those two business establishments because he was thinking about another robbery. On appeal, defendant does not contend that the evidence of Officer Walton's encounter with defendant was completely lacking in relevance. He concedes that the prosecution could use the evidence at least to establish defendant's presence in Humboldt County close to the dates on which certain charged offenses were committed. (46) He does contend, however, that the evidence was not admissible to show that defendant was casing robbery targets, that the trial court should have excluded those portions of the testimony having no relevance other than to establish casing, that the trial court should not have permitted the prosecutors to argue to the jury that the evidence showed casing, and that the jurors should not have been permitted to infer that the statements defendant made to Deputy Walton and Detective Freese supported a finding of consciousness of guilt. One of the charges against defendant was conspiracy. Prosecution witnesses testified that, as part of the conspiracy, AB leaders instructed defendant to go to the northern part of the state to gather weapons and money, and that they authorized him to commit robberies if necessary to accomplish these tasks. Accordingly, evidence that defendant was casing robbery targets during the time the conspiracy was alleged to have existed was relevant to prove that defendant was following the instructions the AB leaders had given him, and thus to prove the conspiracy charge. Evidence that defendant gave Deputy Walton an implausible explanation for his presence, and that he gave Detective Freese a different and arguably inconsistent explanation, was admissible to prove defendant's consciousness of guilt  that is, that defendant was casing robbery targets as a part of a criminal conspiracy. Therefore, we reject defendant's claims of error.