Opinion ID: 844217
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Admission of Defendant's Statements Regarding the Death of Andre Chappell

Text: Defendant contends the trial court erred in admitting without limitation evidence of statements he made to Bertrand Dickson, a witness to the killing of Carlos Adkins. As described earlier, Dickson testified at trial that in late September 1992, while waiting to testify at a preliminary hearing in the Adkins case, he was put in the same jail cell as defendant. According to Dickson, defendant said that he would do what he could for Dickson if Dickson looked out for him, and he offered Dickson $5,000 not to testify. They discussed that if Dickson testified, he would not be able to go back to the projects, where his daughter still lived. According to Dickson, defendant told me I didn't want to end up like Andre [Chappell]. Andre was dead. Following this conversation, Dickson told the deputy district attorney that he was mistaken about his identification of defendant and the case was dismissed. Defendant was released and he thanked Dickson. Dickson testified that defendant never said that he was responsible for the death of Andre Chappell. At a pretrial hearing on the admissibility of these statements, defense counsel agreed that defendant's statement regarding the death of Chappell was relevant to show Dickson's state of mind, but argued that it should be excluded under Evidence Code section 352 because the jury would inevitably speculate that defendant was involved in the killing of Chappell. The trial court overruled defendant's objection, finding the evidence to be relevant to establish both Dickson's state of mind and defendant's knowledge about the homicide of Adkins. On appeal, defendant argues that evidence of defendant's reference to Chappell should have been excluded because its probative value was outweighed by the possibility of prejudicethat is, by the possibility that the jury would conclude that defendant was responsible for the death of Chappell. A trial court's decision whether to exclude evidence under Evidence Code 352 if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the probability that its admission will... create substantial danger of undue prejudice is reviewed for abuse of discretion and will be upheld unless it exercised its discretion in an arbitrary, capricious, or patently absurd manner. (See People v. Williams, supra, 43 Cal.4th at pp. 634-635.) The trial court did not abuse its discretion in the present case. The trial court concluded that the statement was an admission by defendant from which the jury could infer that because he knew Chappell was a witness to the Adkins shooting, he must have been present when Adkins was shot. The statement was highly relevant not only to Dickson's state of mind, but also to defendant's. The risk that the jury might have misused defendant's statement to speculate that he had killed Chappell was not so significant or so potentially prejudicial as to warrant exclusion of the evidence. Defendant also complains that the statement was admitted without limitation, and argues that the reference to the death of Chappell should have been admitted only for the purpose of explaining why Dickson recanted his identification of defendant. Defendant contends that the jury should not have been permitted to consider the statement as an admission because it was also likely to conclude, despite the absence of evidence, that defendant had either killed Chappell or had him killed. Defendant did not request any limiting instruction at trial and he made a tactical decision to decline an instruction that would have directly addressed the risk of improper speculation. The trial court offered, and defense counsel rejected, an instruction advising the jury that there was no evidence that Chappell's death was related to the case. Such an instruction would have addressed the potential prejudice of which defendant complainsthe risk that jurors would conclude that Chappell had been killed because he was a witness to the Adkins homicide. Defense counsel responded to the court's offer by expressing concern that an instruction would have highlighted the matter, stating that he would think about it. Later, during the conference on jury instructions, defense counsel brought the matter up again and stated, Tactically I have to decide whether or not I would request the court to ... give an appropriate instruction or admonition or whether I just want to leave it alone. The court expressed its view that Dickson's testimony did not necessarily connect Chappell's death with defendant. Defense counsel ultimately chose not to accept the instruction offered by the court or to request any other form of limiting instruction. Under these circumstances, defendant has forfeited any claim that the purpose of defendant's statement should have been limited to Dickson's state of mind.