Opinion ID: 4521869
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Exclusion of defendant’s mitigating evidence

Text: To present a “full scope of the family’s life” and show that defendant had at one time loved Pamela, defense counsel sought to elicit testimony from defendant’s high school friend, Melanie Jackman. Defense counsel asked Jackman if defendant had called her for advice on how to make Pamela happy. The trial court sustained the prosecution’s hearsay objection. Even assuming the trial court erred in excluding this evidence, any error was harmless. (See People v. McDowell (2012) 54 Cal.4th 395, 434 [improper exclusion of evidence at penalty phase subject to harmless error analysis].) It is likely that the jury would have given little weight to Jackman’s testimony. The prosecution impeached Jackman’s credibility by refuting her assertion that defendant had never said anything negative about Pamela; the prosecution showed Jackman e- mails defendant had sent to her, in which he called Pamela a “sociopathic-lying-money-grubbing whore” and a “Super-Bitch.”