Opinion ID: 2584893
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Instruction Concerning Defendant's Untimely Disclosure of Alibi Witnesses

Text: Defendant did not disclose to the prosecution the fact that he intended to present Ina Ross and Minnie Hill as alibi witnesses until June 30, 1994, over one month after the guilt phase of the trial had commenced, three weeks after the prosecution had completed its guilt phase case-in-chief, and only five days before these witnesses testified. After Ross's testimony and before Hill's, the prosecutor requested a hearing outside the presence of the jury concerning defendant's failure to disclose these witnesses in a timely manner. The prosecutor requested sanctions for the late disclosure, arguing that if the alibi evidence were true, defendant obviously knew of these witnesses years before the trial but had never included them on a witness list (or otherwise indicated that he had an alibi). Defendant stated at the hearing that he had not disclosed the witnesses because they had moved and he had only recently learned where they were residing. The court declined to exclude the witnesses' testimony as a sanction but stated it would entertain requests from the prosecution for a continuance to prepare for cross-examination and for a jury instruction concerning the apparent discovery violation. The prosecutor did not request a continuance but did submit a proposed instruction for the jury regarding the late disclosure. Defendant objected to the giving of the instruction. The trial court, after finding that defendant had committed a discovery violation under section 1054.7 by failing, without good cause, to disclose these witnesses 30 days prior to trial, gave a modified version of the proposed instruction as part of the guilt phase jury instructions, as follows: California Penal Code Section 1054.7 requires that each side in a criminal action provide names and addresses of witnesses that it expects to call at trial at least 30 days prior to the trial unless good cause is shown for this not to be done. [¶] There has been evidence presented to you from which you may find that there was a failure by the defense to provide timely notice to the prosecution of the names and addresses of witnesses Ina Ross and Minny [ sic ] Jean Hill. [¶] You may consider such failure, if any, in determining the weight to be given to the testimony of such witnesses. The weight to be given such failure is entirely a matter for the jury's determination. On appeal, defendant contends that giving this instruction to the jury was error and violated various of his constitutional rights because it unfairly punished the defense for a procedural irregularity and failed to provide adequate guidance to the jury in how it should consider the discovery violation in its deliberations. (12) Section 1054.3, subdivision (a), requires in part that the defendant (and his or her attorney) disclose to the prosecution the names and addresses of persons, other than the defendant, he or she intends to call as witnesses at trial, together with any relevant written or recorded statements of those persons, or reports of the statements of those persons.... The requirement that the defense timely disclose persons whom it intends to call as witnesses at trial applies to `all witnesses it reasonably anticipates it is likely to call.' ( Izazaga v. Superior Court (1991) 54 Cal.3d 356, 376, fn. 11 [285 Cal.Rptr. 231, 815 P.2d 304] ( Izazaga ).) In addition, section 1054.7 provides in relevant part that the disclosure of witness names and addresses must be made at least 30 days prior to the trial, unless good cause is shown why a disclosure should be denied, restricted, or deferred. If the material and information becomes known to, or comes into the possession of, a party within 30 days of trial, disclosure shall be made immediately, unless good cause is shown why a disclosure should be denied, restricted, or deferred. `Good cause' is limited to threats or possible danger to the safety of a victim or witness, possible loss or destruction of evidence, or possible compromise of other investigations by law enforcement. Finally, section 1054.5, subdivision (b), provides in part that Upon a showing that a party [here, the defense] has not complied with Section ... 1054.3 and upon a showing that the moving party complied with the informal discovery procedure provided in this subdivision, a court may make any order necessary to enforce the provisions of this chapter, including, but not limited to, immediate disclosure, contempt proceedings, delaying or prohibiting the testimony of a witness or the presentation of real evidence, continuance of the matter, or any other lawful order. Further, the court may advise the jury of any failure or refusal to disclose and of any untimely disclosure. Defendant does not contend that the trial court erred by finding that he had violated the disclosure requirement, and we conclude that substantial evidence supports the trial court's decision. The trial court could reasonably find that defendant, charged with capital murder, would reasonably anticipate that it was likely he would call as witnesses family members who purportedly knew that he was several hundred miles away from the scene of the crime when the murder was committed. The discovery statute requires disclosure of the names of intended witnesses; thus, even if it were true that defendant had only recently ascertained the addresses of Ross and Hill, the trial court could reasonably find that defendant should have disclosed their names at least 30 days before the trial began. Finally, defendant did not make any showing of good cause as defined by the statute for deferring disclosure, e.g., that disclosure of the witnesses' names raised concern about the witnesses' safety or the loss of evidence; he merely asserted in his unsworn statements to the court that he had not been able to locate his own sister and niece in the years since he had been arrested because they had moved at some point in time. Accordingly, the trial court did not err in finding that defendant had violated the discovery statutes. Defendant's appellate challenge to the trial court's decision is focused, instead, on the propriety of its choice of remedy for the violationgiving the special instruction to the jury. Our examination of the instruction as given in the present case, as well as the circumstances of this trial, convinces us that there was no error, and in any event, if there were error, it was harmless under any standard. As defendant observes, the trial court's instruction is similar to a later-created standard instruction, CALJIC No. 2.28, which has been the subject of significant criticism in the Courts of Appeal. (See People v. Bell (2004) 118 Cal.App.4th 249 [12 Cal.Rptr.3d 808] ( Bell ); see also People v. Lawson (2005) 131 Cal.App.4th 1242 [32 Cal.Rptr.3d 634]; People v. Saucedo (2004) 121 Cal.App.4th 937 [17 Cal.Rptr.3d 692] ( Saucedo) ; People v. Cabral (2004) 121 Cal.App.4th 748 [17 Cal.Rptr.3d 456].) CALJIC No. 2.28 was subsequently revised to address these concerns to some degree, [26] and the newly adopted Judicial Council of California Criminal Jury Instructions (2007-2008) include an extensively revised instruction on this subject, CALCRIM No. 306. Because of the particular circumstances of the present case, we need not (and do not) address the propriety of either CALJIC No. 2.28 or CALCRIM No. 306; we discuss those instructions only as they relate to the propriety of the instruction given in this case. Two of the concerns regarding the original version of CALJIC No. 2.28 expressed in Bell are that the instruction allowed the jury to draw an adverse inference against the defendant based on a violation of the discovery statute committed solely by his attorneys, and, moreover, that it permitted the jury to draw from the discovery violation (as to which the defendant might be blameless) an adverse inference regarding defendant's consciousness of guilt, without also informing the jury that the violation itself was not sufficient to prove guilt. Neither of these circumstances is present here. First, defendant represented himself, starting with the preliminary hearing years before trial, and any discovery violation therefore was his responsibility, not an error of counsel. (Cf. Bell, supra, 118 Cal.App.4th at p. 255 [noting that [i]t was misleading to suggest that `the defendant' bore any responsibility for the failed compliance].) Second, the instruction given by the trial court limited the inferences the jury could draw by expressly directing the jury that it could consider a discovery violation in assessing the weight of the alibi testimony. In this latter regard, the trial court's instruction in the present case is congruent with the new CALCRIM No. 306, which provides in part, In evaluating the weight and significance of [the untimely disclosed] evidence, you may consider the effect, if any, of that late disclosure. Therefore, we do not believe, as defendant argues, that the trial court erred by not directing the jury that evidence of the discovery violation was insufficient to prove his guilt, because the instruction given in this case, unlike that in Bell, did not permit any direct inference leading from the discovery violation to defendant's guilt. (Cf. Bell, supra, 118 Cal.App.4th at p. 256 [in the absence of limitations on the inferences the jury could draw from the discovery violation, the jurors may have concluded they were free to find Bell guilty merely because he failed to comply with the discovery statute].) Another important concern voiced in Bell is that the instruction given in that case did not provide explicit guidance to the jury regarding why and how the discovery violation would be relevant to its deliberations. In the Court of Appeal's view, the instruction was faulty because, while it informed the jury that tardy disclosure might deprive an opponent of the chance to subpoena witnesses or marshal evidence in rebuttal, there was no evidence that such an eventuality transpired here. ( Bell, supra, 118 Cal.App.4th at p. 255.) As the court stated, if there were no diminution of the People's right to subpoena witnesses or present rebuttal, it is unclear how the jurors were to evaluate the weight of the potentially affected testimony. Certainly, in the absence of any practical impact on the factfinding process, the only sphere of jury responsibility here, the jurors were not free to somehow fashion a punishment to be imposed on Bell because his lawyer did not play by the rules. ( Ibid. ) Defendant observes that, as in Bell, there was no evidence in the present case that the prosecution's opportunity to rebut the alibi witnesses was negatively affected by the late disclosure. This circumstance, however, does not lead us to conclude there was error in defendant's case. (13) We do not read Bell as holding that the sole basis for giving an instruction regarding a discovery violation is an actual effect on the other party's ability to respond to the evidence, and we reject defendant's contention, to the extent he has raised it, that a trial court's decision whether to give an instruction on this subject must be restricted in such a manner. Were a jury to find a defendant had failed to disclose evidence to the prosecution in an attempt to hide the evidence until the last minute, the jury could reasonably infer from the fact that the defendant thereby violated his or her duty under the discovery statutes that even the defense did not have much confidence in the ability of its own evidence to withstand full adversarial testing. Whether or not the prosecution was actually impaired by the attempt to conceal the evidence would not change the circumstance that defendant tried to inhibit the prosecution's efforts. In other words, while not constituting evidence of the defendant's consciousness of his or her own guilt, the fact of a discovery violation might properly be viewed by the jury as evidence of the defendant's consciousness of the lack of credibility of the evidence that has been presented on his or her behalf. [27] In Bell, the trial court had found that no attempt to gain a tactical advantage was behind the failure to timely disclose the evidence at issue, so that inference was factually unavailable in that case. ( Bell, supra, 118 Cal.App.4th at p. 254.) No such finding was made in the present case, and the trial court therefore did not err by giving the instruction, despite there being no indication that the prosecution was actually affected by the late disclosure. Defendant challenges the instruction given in the present case also because it informed the jury that it may find a discovery violation occurred, but did not provide guidance as to how it was to make that determination. Defendant forfeited a challenge to the completeness of the instruction by failing to request clarifying or amplifying language. ( People v. Hudson (2006) 38 Cal.4th 1002, 1011-1012 [44 Cal.Rptr.3d 632, 136 P.3d 168] [`Generally, a party may not complain on appeal that an instruction correct in law and responsive to the evidence was too general or incomplete unless the party has requested appropriate clarifying or amplifying language.'].) In any event, any shortcoming in this regard was beneficial to defendant, and, therefore, if error occurred, it was harmless under any standard. We observe first that the instruction at issue in Bell (as well as the current CALJIC No. 2.28 and CALCRIM No. 306) informed the jury that a discovery violation had occurred. The trial court in the present case expressly rejected the prosecution's suggestion to instruct the jury along those lines, stating that, in its view, the Court needs to make a threshold ruling that there is evidence from which the jury might find that there was a failure, just as the Court needs to find that a confession was voluntary, and then the jury rules on that issue again. By providing that the jury may find a violation, the instruction in this case afforded defendant a second bite at the apple, to which he might not have been legally entitled. [28] In addition, because the jury was not instructed with the full text of section 1054.7, including the definition of good cause, the defense was able to make arguments to the jury that likely would not have satisfied that standard, or at least likely would have been disputed by the prosecution, had the trial court given a more complete instruction. [29] For these reasons, the lack of a more complete instruction to the jury regarding how to determine whether a discovery violation occurred in no way could have prejudiced defendant in this case. Finally, defendant contends that the instruction violated his state and federal constitutional rights to a fair and reliable trial. He is mistaken. The fact that defendant failed to comply with his obligations under the discovery statutes by presenting these surprise alibi witnesses near the end of the trial was relevant evidence the jury could consider in assessing the credibility of their testimony. The trial court was authorized by statute to advise the jury of this fact (§ 1054.5, subd. (b)), and its instruction to that effect properly explained that it was for the jury to determine what, if any, weight and significance the discovery violation carried in resolving the credibility of the alibi testimony. The trial court, in fact, proceeded even more deferentially by directing that it was for the jury to determine in the first instance whether a discovery violation occurred. The instruction was not a statement of judicially sanctioned doubt, as defendant contends, but rather a proper statement of the applicable law, from which the parties could argue inferences that might (or might not) be drawn from the evidence presented at trial. We discern no unfairness in these circumstances that could have operated to make defendant's trial fundamentally unfair. Even were we to conclude that the giving of this instruction in the present case was error under state law, or deprived defendant of his federal constitutional rights, we would conclude there is no reasonable probability that an outcome more beneficial to him would have been achieved in the absence of the instruction (see People v. Watson (1956) 46 Cal.2d 818, 836 [299 P.2d 243]) and that any federal constitutional error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt ( Chapman v. California (1967) 386 U.S. 18, 24 [17 L.Ed.2d 705, 87 S.Ct. 824]). The evidence indicating that defendant murdered Jamie Bowie, or at least was aware of and took part in the plan to rob her and was present when she was killed, was entirely overwhelming, especially in comparison to the exceedingly dubious alibi testimony provided by defendant's family members. (Cf. Bell, supra, 118 Cal.App.4th at p. 257 [noting that [t]he prosecution's case was not overwhelming, and included no physical evidence tying defendant to the scene or the victim, or statements by defendant concerning the crime].) Moreover, reliance on the instruction regarding the discovery violation was but a small part of the prosecution's devastating arguments concerning the credibility of the alibi testimony. (See Saucedo, supra, 121 Cal.App.4th at p. 944 [error in giving CALJIC No. 2.28 was harmless because [w]hether or not CALJIC No. 2.28 had been given, [defendant's] last-minute alibi and his witnesses were a credibility gold mine for the prosecution].) It was not the instruction that made the alibi defense implausible but its inexplicable materialization two and one-half years after defendant's arrest and one month after the trial had begun. Indeed, [n]ot only did [defendant's] alibi suddenly surfacelike Botticelli's Venus emerging fully formed from the seabut it also appeared with two family member witnesses telling an identical story, and no one satisfactorily explained the failure to come forward with this exculpatory evidence sooner. ( Saucedo, supra, 121 Cal.App.4th at p. 944.) In sum, there is no reasonable possibility or probability that the challenged instruction, even if erroneous, affected the outcome or fairness of defendant's trial.