Opinion ID: 1225502
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Disparaging defense witnesses.

Text: (14) Defendant's other claim of prosecutorial misconduct focuses on statements made during the People's closing argument at the guilt phase of the trial. In that part of his argument seeking to discredit defense expert testimony related to brain mapping and the use of the BEAM machine, the prosecutor made two statements that defendant asserts amounted to prejudicial misconduct. First, the prosecutor twice referred to the BEAM machine as the Marvel Machine. Anybody else can do the same thing. Go out and get your own data base and call it the Marvel Machine. Richard Gilmour's [the prosecutor] secret data base BEAM Marvel Machine. [¶] And everything is fine, as long as you trust that the data base is good. The prosecutor's reference to the BEAM machine as a marvel machine was based on the testimony of Dr. Adelberg, one of the People's medical experts. In the course of his direct testimony, Dr. Adelberg stated that his most serious concern about the specific device used to test defendant  the Nicolet version of the BEAM machine  was that it prints out interpretations based on secret data. He elaborated: The BEAM machine made by Nicolet differs from other types of brain mapping in that it contains a built-in test interpreter. That computerized function of the Nicolet device, Adelberg continued, is based on secret data. We have no secret data in medicine. We have no secrets in any scientific basis for any clinical medicine. And any sorts of conclusions based on secrets are, to my way of thinking, outside of medicine.... It was on the basis of that testimony that the prosecutor called the BEAM device used to test defendant a marvel machine. The trouble with this BEAM machine is not electronic mapping, it's that this particular entrepreneur ... made his own version of electronic mapping and computerized it. [¶] Anybody else can do the same thing. Go out and get your own data base and call it the Marvel Machine. Richard Gilmour's secret data base BEAM Marvel Machine. [¶] And everything is fine, as long as you trust that the data base is good. In context, the prosecutor's characterization was fair comment and a legitimate critique of the defense evidence on the point. It was not misconduct. The same is true of what defendant calls the prosecution's belittling of defense experts. The prosecutor did suggest to the jury in his closing argument that Dr. Bittle, a defense expert on the brain mapping issue, was biased because he had a financial interest in the BEAM machine. It appears from his own testimony, however, that along with Ms. Schade, Dr. Bittle in fact did have a one-fifth ownership interest in the mapping device. Both were part owners of the Sacramento neurodiagnostic laboratory whose chief physical asset is a BEAM machine.