Opinion ID: 844235
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Exclusion of Proffered Mitigating Hearsay Evidence and Admission of Hearsay Evidence in Aggravation

Text: Defendant contends the trial court improperly excluded proffered mitigating evidence that she had been sexually molested by her cousin and father, as well as evidence that she helped a fellow inmate at the jail infirmary obtain needed medical attention. She contends that, [i]n contrast, the [trial] court admitted evidence of an alleged incident at the jail where [she] supposedly became angry during an organized game and made threats to a fellow inmate and a jail staff member. Defendant claims these rulings lacked balance allowing inflammatory hearsay in aggravation and denying, as unreliable, important mitigating evidence. We note that defendant contends that her penalty phase jury should not have been precluded from considering, as a mitigating factor, any aspect of her character that would permit the jury to return a sentence less than death. She relies on a capital case, Green v. Georgia (1979) 442 U.S. 95 [60 L.Ed.2d 738, 99 S.Ct. 2150], to argue that this court should dispense with traditional state rules of evidence when the death penalty is involved. In Green, although the statement was not otherwise admissible, the Supreme Court permitted the admission of a declaration against penal interest that the declarant shot the victim after ordering Green to leave because it was highly relevant to a critical issue in the punishment phase of the trial and substantial reasons existed to assume its reliability. ( Id. at p. 97.) We have repeatedly rejected the broad reading of Green v. Georgia that defendant urges. (See People v. Weaver (2001) 26 Cal.4th 876, 980-981 [111 Cal.Rptr.2d 2, 29 P.3d 103].) Here, as in Weaver, we conclude the proffered mitigating evidence bore no special indicia of reliability, so the rule [set forth in Green v. Georgia ] did not require the trial court to dispense with the hearsay rule. ( Weaver, at p. 981.) (15) Under our state rules of evidence, defendant had a right to present reliable mitigating evidence at her penalty trial. ( People v. Phillips (2000) 22 Cal.4th 226, 238 [92 Cal.Rptr.2d 58, 991 P.2d 145]; see also Green v. Georgia, supra, 442 U.S. at pp. 96-97.) With regard to defendant's attempt to introduce evidence that she was molested by her cousin Greg while she was a teenager, the trial court sustained an objection for lack of foundation after defense counsel asked Greg's father, Don, if an inappropriate relationship had developed between Greg and defendant while defendant was living with Don's ex-wife Rose. The objection was properly sustained because Don had testified moments earlier that he wasn't involved, with defendant, Greg, or Rose at the time in question, he didn't see them much at that time, and he didn't pay much attention to what they were doing. The trial court also excluded as unreliable hearsay the proffered statement by a career counselor that defendant had said she was molested by her father. The trial court reasoned that the statement was unreliable because defendant had confided in many people, including her psychiatrist and her psychologist, that she had been molested by a number of other people, but not her father, and because defense counsel conceded that defendant never had indicated that she had been molested by her father to any of the mental health professionals who interviewed her. In this instance, we agree with defendant that the fact she did not make the proffered statement to mental health professionals did not make the statement inadmissible. Nonetheless, we conclude any error in excluding the statement was harmless given the limited probative value of the proffered evidence. With regard to the proffered medical assistance mitigating evidence, there was no eyewitness available to describe what happened during the incident in which a jail nurse assertedly did not respond to an inmate's request for medical assistance and defendant helped the inmate obtain the necessary medical attention. The proffered evidence was in an investigative report written by a doctor who was not present during the alleged incident. When defendant's attorney gave the trial court that report, he noted that he expected a hearsay objection from the prosecutor. The trial court excluded the proffered testimony because it did not fall within a recognized exception to the hearsay rule and was not sufficiently reliable to be admitted during defendant's penalty trial. Assuming arguendo that defense counsel could have laid a foundation that the proffered report fell within the official record exception to the hearsay rule (Evid. Code, § 1280), [18] we conclude any error in excluding the report was harmless as its probative value as mitigating evidence was not substantial. (16) While [e]xclusion of hearsay testimony at a penalty phase may violate a defendant's due process rights if the excluded testimony is highly relevant to an issue critical to punishment and substantial reasons exist to assume the evidence is reliable ( People v. Phillips, supra, 22 Cal.4th at p. 238), we conclude the excluded evidence in question, namely the proffered statement by a career counselor that defendant had said she was molested by her father and the investigative report regarding defendant helping an inmate obtain medical assistance, was not highly relevant ( ibid. ). We next conclude the trial court properly admitted evidence from defendant's jail records to impeach defense witness James Esten's expert opinion that defendant would not be a danger to others in the future if sentenced to prison. Esten had interviewed defendant and reviewed her jail records. After Esten characterized a fight in which defendant was involved at Las Colinas Detention Facility in San Diego County as one in which she was confronted by another inmate and retaliated appropriately in defending herself by beating up that inmate, Esten was impeached by parts of the jail record that suggested it was defendant who confronted the other inmate, who spat at defendant in response. Esten also was impeached by parts of the jail record that described defendant as vindictive, full of loathing, and antisocial, and parts of the jail record that indicated, while defendant was playing a game with another inmate, defendant said she might hit the bitch and then threatened to hit a staff member who was refereeing the game. Finally, Esten was impeached by the part of the jail record that indicated that defendant had threatened to kill Eric and the women who had accompanied Eric to the children's funeral if they came to her preliminary hearing. Esten testified that none of this impeachment evidence changed his opinion regarding defendant's future dangerousness. (17) The prosecution is entitled to impeach a defense expert's testimony with acts that tend to contradict his opinion [s]o long as the People ha[d] a good faith belief that the acts or conduct about which they wish to inquire actually took place. ( People v. Siripongs, supra, 45 Cal.3d at p. 578; see also Ramos, supra, 15 Cal.4th at p. 1173.) Nothing in the record suggests otherwise. We conclude the trial court properly admitted the challenged evidence to impeach Esten's expert opinion testimony regarding defendant's future dangerousness. Here, as in Doolin, supra, 45 Cal.4th at page 439, [i]n the interest of complete review, we note that even if we were to assume evidentiary error, any error would be harmless, whether assessed under the federal constitutional ( Chapman [ v. California (1967)] 386 U.S. [18,] 24 [17 L.Ed.2d 705, 87 S.Ct. 824]) or state ( People v. Watson [(1956)] 46 Cal.2d [818,] 836 [299 P.2d 243]) standard of review. We conclude there is no reasonable possibility that admission of the excluded proposed mitigating evidence and the exclusion of the admitted impeachment evidence in aggravation would have altered the jury's penalty verdict in light of the overwhelming evidence that defendant deliberately murdered her four innocent young children out of vengeance and hatred toward her most recent boyfriend and the father of two of her sons.