Opinion ID: 2640086
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Skipper/Lockett Error

Text: At the penalty phase, defendant sought to introduce the testimony of Barbara Schochet, a psychotherapist Sonia visited several times in the weeks before the capital crime. Counsel argued that Sonia's statements to Dr. Schochet during therapy would blunt prosecution evidence that portrayed Sonia and her family in an unblemished light, and that suggested Sonia and her family were close. Counsel also argued that Sonia's distrust and insecurity toward her own family, and her belief that she could easily manipulate defendant, caused her to act in ways that pushed him over the edge and showed he was not the main actor in the crime. [23] The prosecutor objected on grounds the evidence violated the psychotherapist-patient privilege, the hearsay rule, and relevance requirements. The trial court granted the prosecutor's request for a hearing on the admissibility of the proffered testimony. At the hearing, Dr. Schochet took the stand and read out loud from 10 pages of handwritten notes that she made during Sonia's therapy sessions. Sonia reportedly made the following statements therein: As to her relationship with defendant, Sonia worried that she would lose her son to defendant, she viewed her relationship with defendant as volatile, and she found him to be unavailable when she needed him. As to her relationship with her own parents, Sonia feared becoming as dependent on defendant as her mother had become with respect to her father. Sonia recalled the trauma her mother experienced when her father left the marriage after 25 years and fathered a child with someone else. As to defendant's personality, Sonia described him as sweet and nice, and easily influenced to the point that she could tell him what to do. According to Sonia, defendant was not as smart as she was, and she preferred someone who could take more control. However, she also believed he was vindictive, short-tempered, and anger-prone. As pertinent here, the trial court sustained the prosecutor's relevance objection and excluded Dr. Schochet's testimony. The court reasoned that the feelings Sonia expressed to Dr. Schochet were irrelevant absent evidence that she communicated them somehow to defendant, and that his conduct was affected as result. Otherwise, the court said, any mitigating inferences were speculative. On appeal, defendant claims the trial court erred in not finding Dr. Schochet's testimony relevant and admissible on the theories he presented below. In his view, the jury could reasonably infer from Sonia's description of her own state of mind that she had started to detach from both defendant and her own family after giving birth to Michael, that she had turned to defendant's mother, Doris, for support in raising Michael, that she and Doris had colluded to alienate defendant from Michael, and that such actions sent defendant into a rage that caused him to kill both women. By preventing the jury from taking these inferences into account, the trial court's ruling allegedly violated defendant's right to present relevant mitigating evidence, and to due process and a fair penalty trial, under the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the federal Constitution. (18) As noted by defendant, the federal Constitution requires that the sentencer in a capital case not be precluded from considering relevant mitigating evidence. ( Skipper v. South Carolina (1986) 476 U.S. 1, 4 [90 L.Ed.2d 1, 106 S.Ct. 1669]; Eddings v. Oklahoma (1982) 455 U.S. 104, 110 [71 L.Ed.2d 1, 102 S.Ct. 869]; Lockett, supra, 438 U.S. 586, 604 (plur. opn. of Burger, C. J.) Such evidence includes any aspect of a defendant's character or record and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death. ( Lockett, supra, at p. 604; accord, People v. Easley (1983) 34 Cal.3d 858, 877-878 & fn. 10 [196 Cal.Rptr. 309, 671 P.2d 813].) However, while the range of constitutionally pertinent mitigation is quite broad ( People v. Whitt (1990) 51 Cal.3d 620, 647 [274 Cal.Rptr. 252, 798 P.2d 849]), it is not unlimited. Both the United States Supreme Court and this court have made clear that the trial court retains the authority to exclude, as irrelevant, evidence that has no logical bearing on the defendant's character, prior record, or the circumstances of the capital offense. ( Lockett, supra, 438 U.S. at p. 604, fn. 12; Coffman and Marlow, supra, 34 Cal.4th 1, 115-116; People v. Frye (1998) 18 Cal.4th 894, 1015 [77 Cal.Rptr.2d 25, 959 P.2d 183].) Here, the trial court properly determined in the first instance that the proffered mitigation was irrelevant. ( People v. Frye, supra, 18 Cal.4th 894, 1015.) Defendant sought to prove that Sonia's insecurities and distrust of her own family caused her to act in ways that estranged her from them and from defendant, and that drove her to form a close bond with Doris. Defendant also sought to prove that Sonia's view of defendant as someone she could easily influence[ ] caused her to act in ways that provoked him into killing both her and Doris. However, Sonia's personal thoughts and feelings, as expressed during psychotherapy, are not the same as actions. Defendant's contrary assumption defies common sense. Thus, the court properly determined that Sonia's state of mind had no tendency in reason to prove the occurrence of a chain of events triggering a lethal response on defendant's partevents necessary to raise the mitigating inferences he has argued here and below. (See Evid. Code, §§ 210, 351.) We find no constitutional violation or evidentiary error in the exclusion of Dr. Schochet's testimony.