Opinion ID: 2575864
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Required showing for conditional examination

Text: Defendant argues, next, that the prosecution should not have been allowed to conditionally examine Brian Johnsen because there was no evidence that his life was in jeopardy. Section 1335, subdivision (b), permits the prosecution to conditionally examine a witness if there is evidence that the life of the witness is in jeopardy. (Italics added.) Section 1336, subdivision (b), similarly requires the prosecution to produce evidence to support a claim that a witness's life is jeopardy. Section 1337 provides that an application for conditional examination shall be made upon affidavit stating among other things that the life of the witness is in jeopardy. Section 1338 requires that the application be made on three days' notice to the opposite party, and section 1339 provides that [i]f the court or judge is satisfied that the examination of the witness is necessary, an order must be made that the witness be examined conditionally, at a specified time and place, and before a magistrate designated therein. Here, the prosecution's application to conditionally examine Brian Johnsen was supported by evidence in the form of a declaration of Deputy District Attorney Pettine stating, in relevant part: I am informed that witness Brian Johnsen was directly involved with defendants Shigemura and Jurado in a plot to kill Doug Mynatt. According to Mr. Johnsen, the defendants, acting on their own and without the knowledge of Mr. Johnsen, killed victim Teresa Holloway so that she would not disclose the plan to murder Mr. Mynatt. Mr. Mynatt's current whereabouts is unknown. Mr. Johnsen, who was in custody on the date of the Holloway murder, is currently out of custody. [¶] Declarant believes that once this information becomes known, witness Brian Johnsen's life will be jeopardized by Mr. Mynatt, the defendants, and/or their associates. The trial court granted the application without allowing the defense the three days' notice specified in section 1338, but the court said that under section 1341 the conditional examination would not take place if, on the day set for the conditional examination, the defense was able to show to the magistrate's satisfaction that Johnsen's life was not in danger. [8] The conditional examination began a week later. Before it began, defendant offered no evidence that Johnsen's life was not in danger. The prosecution satisfied the requirements of sections 1335, 1336, and 1337 by submitting a declaration stating that Johnsen's life was in danger from Doug Mynatt, defendant and his codefendants, and their associates. In granting the prosecutor's application for a conditional examination, the trial court did not abuse the broad discretion with which the statutory scheme vested it. In particular, it was not necessary, under the circumstances of this case, for the prosecution to present evidence that anyone had expressly threatened Johnsen or conspired to harm him. Because of the evidence that defendant, Shigemura, and Humiston had killed Holloway to prevent her from exposing a plot to kill Mynatt, the trial court who both granted the application for conditional examination and served as magistrate in the taking of the examination could justifiably conclude that defendant and the persons with whom he associated would be likely to use deadly force against anyone perceived as a threat, and that the substance of Johnsen's proposed testimony made him an actual or potential threat to defendant and his codefendants, and also to Mynatt. Although defendant did not receive the three days' notice to which section 1338 entitled him, he was not prejudiced by the shortened notice because seven days elapsed before the conditional examination began during which, under section 1341, defendant could have presented evidence to contradict the prosecutor's declaration that Brian Johnsen's life was in danger. We conclude that defendant has failed to show that any prejudicial error occurred in the taking of Brian Johnsen's conditional examination.