Opinion ID: 2515770
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: Evidence and Instruction Concerning Escape Attempts

Text: At the guilt phase, the defense requested an offer of proof from the prosecution on evidence of defendant's attempted escape from the Los Angeles County jail. After the prosecutor described the testimony he proposed to introduce on this incident, the defense objected to the proposed evidence, citing Evidence Code section 352 and objecting with particular vehemence to evidence of any statements defendant had made. The trial court ruled that the prosecution could introduce defendant's statement that he would have been gone by morning if the deputies had not stopped him, but the trial court ruled inadmissible at the guilt phase any statements by defendant threatening harm to the deputies. Otherwise, the trial court overruled the defense objection to evidence of the attempted escape. The trial court instructed the jury that an attempted escape, although not sufficient to establish guilt, could be considered in deciding the question of guilt or innocence. Defendant contends that the trial court erred in admitting evidence of the attempted escape from the Los Angeles County jail, that the trial court should also have excluded evidence of defendant's planning for an escape from the Orange County jail, and that the trial court should not have instructed the jury it could consider escape attempts in deciding his guilt or innocence. Recognizing that the defense did not object at trial to evidence of the Orange County jail incident, defendant contends that his trial counsel rendered constitutionally ineffective assistance by failing to make this objection. We apply the deferential abuse of discretion standard when reviewing a trial court's ruling under Evidence Code section 352. ( People v. Cudjo, supra, 6 Cal.4th at p. 609, 25 Cal.Rptr.2d 390, 863 P.2d 635.) Applying that standard, we discern no abuse of discretion in the trial court's guilt phase ruling allowing evidence of the Los Angeles County jail escape attempt but excluding evidence of defendant's accompanying threats against jail personnel. Defendant concedes that ordinarily an attempt or plan to escape from jail pending trial is relevant to establish consciousness of guilt ( People v. Morris (1991) 53 Cal.3d 152, 196, 279 Cal.Rptr. 720, 807 P.2d 949, disapproved on another ground in People v. Stansbury (1995) 9 Cal.4th 824, 830, fn. 1, 38 Cal.Rptr.2d 394, 889 P.2d 588; People v. Terry (1970) 2 Cal.3d 362, 395, 85 Cal.Rptr. 409, 466 P.2d 961), but he argues that any such relevance is diminished here to the point of insignificance because at the time of the attempted escape defendant was under a judgment of death for the Orange County murder of Antaya Howard, and so his desire to escape execution for that crime provided a complete and powerful motive for the escape attempt, quite apart from any consciousness of guilt on the capital charge for the murder of Tiffany Frizzell. We agree that the existing death judgment diminished the probative value of the attempted escape as evidence of consciousness of guilt on the charges at issue here, but we do not agree that the probative value was so diminished as to lack any practical significance. Defendant was not facing imminent execution. Rather, as defendant surely knew, his automatic appeal, petitions for habeas corpus in the state and federal courts, and application for executive clemency would prevent execution for a period of years and afforded defendant some reason to hope that the execution would never occur. In this situation, defendant's decision to attempt an escape might well have been significantly influenced by consciousness that he was guilty of the charged capital murder of Tiffany Frizzell and would likely incur a second death judgment. Balanced against this probative value, the risk of undue prejudice was slight. Apart from a brief resistance when defendant reentered his cell, the escape attempt involved no overt violence. The trial court could reasonably conclude, in the exercise of its broad discretion, that this evidence would not so inflame the jurors' emotions as to interfere with their fair and dispassionate assessment of the evidence of defendant's guilt. The trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the evidence or in instructing the jury that it could consider this evidence as one factor in deciding defendant's guilt or innocence of the charged offenses. Defense counsel's failure to object to evidence of defendant's earlier planning efforts for an escape from the Orange County jail does not establish ineffective assistance of counsel, because defendant fails to establish prejudice. Had counsel objected under Evidence Code section 352, the trial court could have overruled the objection, reasonably concluding, in the exercise of its broad discretion, that this evidence, like the evidence of the attempted escape from the Los Angeles County jail, had significant probative value and would not so inflame the jurors' emotions as to interfere with their fair and dispassionate assessment of the evidence of defendant's guilt. This escape never got beyond the planning stage, and the plans did not include any acts of violence. Thus, this evidence had even less potential to inflame the jurors' emotions than the evidence of the attempted escape from the Los Angeles County jail. Moreover, even if we assume the trial court would have exercised its discretion under Evidence Code section 352 to exclude evidence of the escape attempt at the guilt phase, it is not reasonably probable that the jury would have returned guilt verdicts more favorable to defendant. The evidence of defendant's guilt included his own admissions that he raped and killed Tiffany Frizzell, the presence of his fingerprint in her motel room and on her book inside the bag discarded in an alley, and his possession and sale of Frizzell's personal stereo and cassette player. Given the strength of the prosecution's case, and the absence of any affirmative defense evidence of innocence, the jury's knowledge of the escape would not have contributed in any significant way to the guilt verdicts. Defendant argues that counsel should at least have moved to exclude references to the planned participation of Linda Kipp's son in the escape attempt because evidence that defendant intended to involve a child was particularly inflammatory. We do not agree that counsel's failure to so move establishes a violation of the constitutional right to the effective assistance of counsel. Having reviewed the trial evidence and the prosecutor's argument on this point, we find nothing to indicate to the jury that Linda Kipp's son was a minor rather than an adult. Because the jury was never told that Linda Kipp's son was not an adult, and because there was no evidence that he was even aware of the planned escape, much less participated in the planning, there was no sound basis for a motion to exclude reference to his planned participation in the escape attempt, and trial counsel's performance was not deficient by reason of their failure to make this groundless motion. Defendant's claimed instructional error is contingent on his claim of error in admission of the evidence of the attempted escapes. In other words, he argues only that if the trial court had excluded the attempted escape evidence, the instruction concerning the jury's consideration of that evidence would not have been proper. Because we have found no error in the admission of the evidence, we reject the related claim of instruction error. The instruction correctly states the law. (See People v. Carrera (1989) 49 Cal.3d 291, 313-314, 261 Cal.Rptr. 348, 777 P.2d 121; People v. Williams (1988) 44 Cal.3d 1127, 1144-1145, 245 Cal.Rptr. 635, 751 P.2d 901.)