Opinion ID: 2595083
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Admission of Evidence of Crime of Which Defendant Had Been Acquitted

Text: In a discussion in chambers before the penalty phase began, the prosecutor told the trial court he intended to offer evidence that defendant, while in custody awaiting trial, stabbed Deputy Sheriff William Legg. The prosecutor said defendant had been charged with assault with a deadly weapon on two personsDeputy Legg and inmate Kenny Mitchelland that a jury had acquitted defendant of assaulting Mitchell with a deadly weapon but found him guilty of the lesser included offense of assault on Legg. The Attorney General now concedes that this representation was untrue. The jury had actually acquitted defendant of assaulting Legg with a deadly weapon while convicting him of the lesser offense of assault on Mitchell. [3] Based on the prosecutor's inaccurate representation, the trial court permitted him to introduce evidence of defendant's assault on Deputy Legg. The latter testified to seeing defendant holding a fourto-six-inch-long piece of metal that had a piece of cloth wrapped around the middle, and receiving two small stab wounds from the weapon. In closing argument, the prosecutor told the jury: What's [defendant] like in jail? Well, ask Deputy Legg.... [Defendant] either acquires or makes what Legg defines for you as a shank, a jail-made knife, and Legg walks up and sees it in the defendant's hand. He confronts him about it and gets cut. Admittedly not major injuries, luckily. This is the man whose choice you have to send him to prison with other prisoners and guards for the rest of his life. What do you expect from him? What has he brutally taught you as part of this community that he is all about? ... He'll get himself some dope in prison and you know he can.... And if he accesses some of the ... gangs, that have a readily accessible reliable, repeated supply source to the ... dope, ... all he has got to do is pay the piper just like he has already paid Brenda Prado and Alfredo Padilla with services instead of money. [¶] It is nice, you've got a knack for acquiring or making jail-made knives, that's helpful. That's all he has got to do. Later, in his rebuttal, the prosecutor also mentioned the assault on Legg in response to defense counsel's reference to the educational programs in which defendant had participated while at the California Youth Authority: Contrast [the educational programs] with stabbing one of his guards, one of his jailers, cutting them with a shank. Which do you think is more significant? Which do you think tells you more about the individual? That ... he may ... have been cajoled ... into an educational program ...... [¶] Or a man ... facing a first degree murder charge and a special circumstance allegation ... and in the face of that, knowing that that's coming up ..., he's got a shank in his hand and he cuts his jailer. [¶] What tells you more about the man? Defendant contends the trial court should have excluded all evidence of his attack on Deputy Legg and the prosecutor should not have relied on that attack in his argument to the jury. We agree. Section 190.3 provides that in no event shall evidence of prior criminal activity be admitted for an offense for which the defendant was prosecuted and acquitted. This section applies here because defendant was prosecuted and acquitted of assaulting Legg. Defendant did not object to the evidence of the attack on Deputy Legg or to the prosecutor's argument. But his failure to do so was excusable, in light of the prosecutor's inaccurate representation to the trial court that defendant had been convicted of the assault. Thus, the Attorney General does not contend that defendant has forfeited the claim by lack of objection, and we need not consider defendant's alternative claim that counsel was incompetent for not objecting. We discuss the prejudicial effect of the prosecution's use of the evidence that petitioner stabbed Deputy Legg in part III. E., post