Opinion ID: 1374541
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Sanchez Statement to Social Worker re .22 Caliber Handgun Found at Scene

Text: (6) Appellant called Sylvia Fernandez Boyle, an unlicensed clinical social worker. While employed at the University of California at Davis Community Health Center, Boyle had counseled Robert Sanchez concerning marital problems in late 1978 or early 1979. Defense counsel offered to prove, through Boyle, that during a counseling session Sanchez stated that the gun found at the scene of the highway patrol killings came from him and that he was fearful of being considered a suspect in the case. The court excluded the statement as privileged (Evid. Code, § 1014) and as remote and prejudicial ( id., § 352). We conclude that even if Sanchez's statement to Boyle was technically admissible, any error in excluding it was harmless. Sanchez had testified earlier that he had never before seen the.22 caliber handgun found at the crime scene (exhibit 6), and he had denied ever giving, selling, loaning, or transferring any handgun to appellant or Klaess before the highway patrol killings. On direct examination, Klaess testified that the gun used by appellant in the first robbery in which she acknowledged participating with him had been purchased by appellant from a stranger who offered it for sale outside Torey's restaurant, next door to the Bel Air Motel in West Sacramento. She also testified, however, that while she and appellant were staying with Sanchez and Mrs. Sanchez during the week or two before Klaess and appellant moved into the Bel Air Motel, appellant acquired a gun similar to exhibit 6 from Sanchez. She admitted that during a pretrial interview she had stated that exhibit 6 came from Sanchez, but her trial testimony vacillated between statements that appellant had acquired exhibit 6 from the man at Torey's and statements that she did not know whether appellant had acquired it from that man or from Sanchez. In light of Klaess's testimony, the likely effect of admitting Sanchez's statement to Boyle would have been only to indicate to the jury that appellant had acquired the gun from Sanchez, then left it at the scene of the crime. The offer of proof was that Sanchez said the gun came from him, not that he said it was his. Appellant argues that the offered statement would have impeached Sanchez's denial of any connection with the gun and permitted the jury to infer a consciousness of guilt on his part. Here, however, the far more likely inference from Sanchez's statement to Boyle would be not that he was conscious of any guilty connection with the crime but only that he was fearful of becoming a suspect because the gun that appellant left at the crime scene had been acquired by him from Sanchez. We see no reasonable possibility that admission of Sanchez's statement would have focused the jury's suspicion toward him. [3] Nor was appellant injured by loss of an opportunity to impeach Klaess's credibility. Her testimony regarding the origin of exhibit 6 was confusing and contradictory on its face. Nevertheless, she specifically acknowledged (1) that appellant had acquired a handgun similar to exhibit 6 from Sanchez, (2) that exhibit 6 itself might have come from Sanchez, and (3) that she had definitely linked Sanchez to exhibit 6 in a pretrial interview. The jury thus had ample opportunity to assess Klaess's believability on this issue and to draw its own inferences about the origin and identity of exhibit 6. Sanchez's own statement would have given little further assistance. We find no reversible prejudice in the trial court's ruling.