Opinion ID: 2581358
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Prosecutorial Vouching

Text: Defendant contends the prosecution elicited testimony from law enforcement officers, especially from Inspector Bruce Sabin, who worked for the San Mateo District Attorney's Office but was assigned as the investigating officer to this case, vouching for or to bolstering the credibility of prosecution witnesses, thus depriving defendant of his right to a fair trial under both the state and federal Constitutions. It is improper for a prosecutor to offer assurances that a witness is credible or to suggest that evidence available to the government, but not before the jury, corroborates the testimony of a witness. ( People v. Frye, supra, 18 Cal.4th at p. 971, 77 Cal.Rptr.2d 25, 959 P.2d 183; United States v. Necoechea (9th Cir.1993) 986 F.2d 1273, 1276.) In either case, prosecutorial comments may be understood by jurors to permit them to avoid independently assessing witness credibility and to rely on the government's view of the evidence. ( United States v. Young (1985) 470 U.S. 1, 18-19, 105 S.Ct. 1038, 84 L.Ed.2d 1.) Defendant cites three instances of testimony by Inspector Sabin about his interviews with Shawnte Early, Keith Johnson, and Steven Sims, in which Sabin stated that he believed that certain portions of statements made by those witnesses were incomplete or untruthful. Shawnte Early, who in a June 11, 1992 interview implicated defendant not only in the beating of Sadler but also in the shooting of Bettancourt, was at trial an extremely reluctant witness who claimed her pretrial statement was false. After she had been extensively impeached at trial with her pretrial statement, the prosecutor called Inspector Sabin and questioned him about the circumstances of the June 11 interview. Inspector Sabin had already been cross-examined by the defense about whether he believed Early had been truthful in all the statements she made on June 11, and Sabin had testified that he did not think Early initially revealed all that she knew. On redirect examination, the prosecutor revisited the subject, asking if Early's demeanor led Inspector Sabin to believe she was telling the truth. After the trial court overruled a defense objection made without a specified ground, Inspector Sabin testified that by the end of the interview he believed Early was being truthful, because she was cooperative and giving detailed information. Defendant does not argue that the trial court's evidentiary ruling was incorrect, and he has forfeited any statutory error by failing to state the specific ground for his objection. (Evid.Code, § 353, subd. (a); People v. Partida (2005) 37 Cal.4th 428, 435, 35 Cal. Rptr.3d 644, 122 P.3d 765.) Nor did defendant complain at trial, as he now does, that the prosecution offered Inspector Sabin's testimony for an improper purpose that undermined his due process right to a fair and reliable trial. [7] Even if defendant has preserved a due process claim, we reject it on the merits. The trial court did not err in admitting Inspector Sabin's explanation of why he believed Early was truthful in her June 11 statement, which was a proper area of inquiry by the prosecution once the defense had explored Sabin's opinion of Early's veracity. (Evid.Code, § 800.) We are not persuaded that admission of Inspector Sabin's opinion of Early's truthfulness denied defendant a fair trial. Because the defense conceded at the outset of trial that defendant killed Bettancourt, the effect of any impropriety in Inspector Sabin's testimony was necessarily harmless as to defendant's conviction for the murder of Bettancourt. And Early's identification of defendant as Sadler's murderer was substantiated by the trial testimony of prosecution witnesses Ernest Woodard, Velisha Sorooshian, and Shannon Senegal. Defendant also complains about testimony elicited by the prosecutor from Inspector Sabin about the credibility of witness Keith Johnson, who told the police on June 19, 1992, that defendant was Bettancourt's killer. On May 19, 1994, a few days before Inspector Sabin's testimony in question, the defense in cross-examination fully explored issues related to Johnson's credibility. On redirect examination by the prosecution, Johnson conceded that only as the June 19, 1992 interview proceeded did he offer a full account of Bettancourt's shooting. On May 24, 1994, the prosecutor recalled Inspector Sabin, who testified that at the outset of his June 1992 interview with Johnson the latter disclaimed being at the crime scene but later gave a fuller account of the Bettancourt shooting. When the prosecutor asked, Did he tell you what he saw?, Sabin responded, Yes. Defendant construes Inspector Sabin's answer to mean that Johnson truthfully related what he had seen. Although defendant now complains that the prosecutor's question invited Sabin to vouch for Johnson's veracity, he did not object at trial, and accordingly he has forfeited the claim. (Evid. Code, § 353, subd. (a).) Assuming the trial court would have sustained an objection, we reject defendant's due process claim. Even if Inspector Sabin had vouched for Johnson's testimony, a conclusion we do not reach, any error was unquestionably harmless because defendant had admitted killing Bettancourt. For the first time, defendant raises in his reply brief a similar claim as to Tomika Asburry, who was also a witness to the Bettancourt murder, and whose pretrial statement implicated defendant. At trial, she testified that she saw defendant approach Bettancourt's car. Eventually, she acknowledged hearing defendant yell, You took my dope, and seeing Bettancourt shot. Asburry then qualified most of her testimony and said that she had lied on June 16, 1992, in her detailed statement to Inspector Sabin about defendant's shooting of Bettancourt. Defendant complains that the prosecutor asked questions of Inspector Sabin designed to elicit answers from Sabin that vouched for Asburry's June 16, 1992, tape-recorded statement, which was played for the jury, when Sabin testified that on that day Asburry was a little apprehensive though not scared when she arrived for her interview. Defendant also points to Inspector Sabin's testimony that Asburry was a cooperative witness as additional evidence that Sabin characterized her as a willing witness who told the truth, and not what [Sabin] told her to say. Defendant did not object to the prosecutor's questions, and therefore has forfeited any claim of evidentiary error (Evid.Code, § 353, subd. (a)), and he cites no authority that it was improper for Inspector Sabin to testify to Asburry's demeanor. Lastly, it was the defense, not the prosecutor, who asked Sabin if he viewed Asburry as cooperative. Finally, defendant complains of the testimony the prosecutor elicited from Inspector Sabin about witness Steven Sims, who while in custody in April 1992 contacted Sabin, offering information about what proved to be the Bettancourt murder. Defendant argues that the prosecutor's questioning at trial validated Sims's story as being corroborated. Defendant points to the prosecutor's question to Inspector Sabin about whether other witnesses present at the Bettancourt shooting corroborated the fact that [Sims] was, in fact, at the [murder] scene. The trial court sustained defendant's objection, stating: That's for the jury to decide. The jury will disregard the question and the answer. The trial court properly disallowed the question, which called for hearsay, and reminded the jury of its duty to determine witness credibility. Because defendant did not object to the prosecutor's question on the basis of due process, and his objection was sustained ( People v. Partida, supra, 37 Cal.4th at p. 435, 35 Cal.Rptr.3d 644, 122 P.3d 765), we conclude defendant was not denied due process by the prosecutor's having posed the question.