Opinion ID: 2826316
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: la casella’s testimony.

Text: The threshold inquiry under Turner turns on the significance of the witness’s role at trial. The California Supreme Court concluded that La Casella “was not the principal or ‘key’ prosecution witness” and therefore did not come within the ambit of Turner. Cummings, 850 P.2d at 38. The trial court made no factual findings as to the significance of La Casella’s testimony. Turner is not limited to a case where the testifying bailiff is the “principal” or sole witness to a crime—or, as the dissent framed it, a witness “whose testimony is absolutely necessary to establish guilt.” O’Scannlain Partial Dissent at 43. The dissent mistakenly elevates “key” witness to linchpin witness. Instead, the bailiff need only be a “key” witness whose credibility is at issue, as opposed to a witness whose 14 CUMMINGS V. MARTEL testimony is “confined to some uncontroverted or merely formal aspect of the case for the prosecution.” Turner, 379 U.S. at 473; see Helmick v. Cupp, 437 F.2d 321, 322 (9th Cir. 1971) (per curiam) (declining to find Turner violation where the deputy’s testimony “did not concern the crime itself but was directed to matters about which there was no real issue—i.e., the authenticity of the signature on Helmick’s confession and the victim’s age”). Here, La Casella did not testify about an uncontested issue or a matter of administrative housekeeping. Rather, he told the jury that Cummings had confessed to shooting Officer Verna. This revelation directly contradicted Cummings’s defense. Cummings’s confession to pulling the trigger ranks as “probably the most probative and damaging evidence that can be admitted against him.” Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 296 (1991) (citation omitted). What could be more central or “key” to the case than a confession by Cummings that he shot the victim? In closing arguments, the prosecutor repeatedly hammered home La Casella’s testimony and labeled him “perhaps the most important witness in this case.” The prosecutor was not exaggerating. He went on to tell the jury, “His testimony alone should lead you to convict this man of murder with special circumstances.” Cf. United States v. Brandyberry, 438 F.2d 226, 227 (9th Cir. 1971) (noting that “the testimony of one witness entitled to belief is sufficient to convict”). The government argues that La Casella was not a key witness because other evidence showed that Cummings shot the victim. It points out that five other witnesses testified to self-incriminating statements made by Cummings. But La CUMMINGS V. MARTEL 15 Casella’s testimony stood out because it came from a reliable source and gelled with the prosecution’s theory of the shooting sequence—that Cummings fired the first shot from the back seat and then handed the gun to Gay, who stepped out of the car and fired the final five bullets. Cummings’s other self-incriminating statements—relayed to the jury by sheriff’s deputies and jailhouse informants—were either vague on this point or contradicted the prosecution’s theory of the case. Cummings, for example, purportedly bragged that he “put six” in the victim. To be sure, at least one eyewitness testified that the person in the back seat fired the first shot; other witnesses contradicted that version of events. At any rate, the inquiry here is not whether other evidence also supports the verdict. Under Turner, the question is whether a testifying bailiff is a “key” witness, not the only witness. Turner does not require, as the California Supreme Court wrote, that the bailiff be the “principal” prosecution witness. Cummings, 850 P.2d at 38. Even under AEDPA’s deferential standard of review, it is hard to credit the court’s application of Turner’s first prong. This error is not dispositive, however, because Turner requires both a key witness role and a special relationship with the jury.