Opinion ID: 1175478
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 13

Heading: hearsay in testimony of defense experts on cross-examination

Text: (21) During the cross-examination of Dr. Podboy, the prosecutor asked if the witness had a report by a Dr. Dean. Defense counsel objected to questions based on material in the report concerning acts of violence as beyond the scope of the direct examination. The court sustained the objection as to questions of acts of violence referred to in the reports and told the prosecutor: Only ask him about his conclusion with regard to his [defendant's] conduct in relation to intelligence factors. Resuming the cross-examination, the prosecutor referred to a statement by Dr. Dean that defendant's behavior problem was โ seemed to have little relationship to the mental dullness, was more related to attitude and values; it was probable that he had attached positive values to aggressiveness and violence and to dominating others to enhance his self esteem. The prosecutor asked: Do you have any quarrel with that or disagreement? Podboy answered: No, just placing in context. He said in the sentence immediately preceding that, repeated psychometric tests show to be failing at high grade defective levels; further, he has a severe handicap in reading out of proportion to mental retardation. (Italics added.) The prosecutor, in cross-examining Dr. Aaron, also made a passing reference to Dean's impression of [defendant] as indicating aggressive behavior disorder. Finally, the prosecutor argued to the jury that Dean had indicated that defendant's behavior was related not to his intelligence but more to his attitude and values. Defendant now contends that since he did not have an opportunity to cross-examine Dean, the court should have either excluded the references to his report or should have given, sua sponte, an instruction that Dean's statements should be considered not for the truth of their contents but only to test the credibility of the witnesses on the stand (Evid. Code, ง 721). The contention must be rejected for two reasons. First, Podboy in effect adopted Dean's conclusion as his own. Second, the court was not required to instruct the jury to consider the Dean report for only a limited purpose because no such instruction was requested. (Evid. Code, ง 355; People v. Robertson, supra, 33 Cal.3d 21, 62, fn. 3; People v. Collie (1981) 30 Cal.3d 43, 63 [177 Cal. Rptr. 458, 634 P.2d 534, 23 A.L.R.4th 776].) Defendant also complains of certain institutional reports of defendant's adjustment or conduct in school or prison, which the prosecutor read to Aaron on cross-examination and referred to in arguing to the jury that defendant's criminality resulted not from lack of opportunity but from antisocial attitudes. Those reports too were properly disclosed to the jury as matter relied on by Aaron in forming his opinions (Evid. Code, ง 721). Similarly, no instruction to limit their use was required since none was requested. The jury argument related to issues addressed by the testimony of defendant's expert witnesses and thus would have been proper even if a limiting instruction had been given. (22) On cross-examination, the prosecutor asked Aaron what defendant had told him about the crimes he was charged with. Defense counsel objected that the question was beyond the scope of the direct examination (in which the circumstances of the crimes had not been mentioned) and would violate defendant's privilege against self-incrimination. During a hearing outside the presence of the jury, Aaron conceded that he had relied to some extent on all his interviews with defendant in forming an opinion as to defendant's personality. The objection was overruled, and Aaron described defendant's account of the crimes. In claiming error, defendant relies on decisions excluding statements of a defendant to a psychiatrist appointed by the court: People v. Arcega (1982) 32 Cal.3d 504, 520-523 [186 Cal. Rptr. 94, 651 P.2d 338], and People v. Lines (1975) 13 Cal.3d 500, 516 [119 Cal. Rptr. 225, 531 P.2d 793]. But those exclusionary principles do not apply to a defendant's statements made to an expert retained by the defense, if the statements were relied upon in forming opinions to which the expert testified when called as the defendant's own witness. To the contrary, such statements are not privileged and are a proper subject of cross-examination. ( People v. Mazoros (1977) 76 Cal. App.3d 32, 46-47 [142 Cal. Rptr. 599]; People v. Whitmore (1967) 251 Cal. App.2d 359, 366 [59 Cal. Rptr. 411].) Moreover, the testimony in question was not prejudicial. The only prejudice claimed by defendant is based on the words which Aaron testified were used by defendant to describe what happened while he was holding the shotgun aimed at Ms. Neidig's head: I just shot her. Defendant argues that these words are inconsistent with his testimony that the gun went off when Karen grabbed it, hitting Ms. Neidig with the barrel, because the jury could have concluded from that testimony, consistently with a first degree verdict based on felony murder and on a felony-murder special circumstance, that the killing was accidental. There are two answers to that argument. First, the remark to Aaron was not the only extrajudicial statement contradicting the accidental-killing theory. At the guilt phase, a deputy sheriff testified that while he was escorting defendant from the courtroom to a cell, defendant accused the previous evening's news broadcast of lying because I didn't rape no one. I shot the lady like they said but didn't rape no two women. (Italics added.) Secondly, the jury's finding of a special circumstance that the killing was for the purpose of avoiding or preventing a lawful arrest, though set aside herein because of the absence of any threat of arrest in the reasonably near future, is at least as inconsistent with any accidental killing as is defendant's statement to Aaron, I just shot her. There is no reasonable possibility that withholding that statement from the jury would have changed the penalty verdict.