Opinion ID: 1113193
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 19

Heading: Use and sale of other drugs.

Text: In response to the prosecutor's questions, Dr. Siegel recited the extensive drug history defendant, then age 31, had given him in 1979. Dr. Siegel stated that at various times since age 13, defendant had used or experimented with glue, alcohol, LSD, amphetamines, cocaine, barbiturates, marijuana, Quaaludes, heroin, and PCP. When the prosecutor asked, What else did he tell you about this PCP?, Dr. Siegel replied that at age 29, defendant was smoking several PCP-laced joints per day and using heroin when it was around; that [defendant] also said ... he [would sell] slam and then he would use the dust. (14) Defendant has no valid hearsay complaint about this evidence. As his own extrajudicial statement, it fell within the hearsay exception for admissions by a party. (Evid. Code, ง 1220.) Defendant also claims, however, that the references to drugs other than alcohol and PCP, and the assertion that he sold slam, were irrelevant to Dr. Siegel's ultimate opinion about the effects of PCP and alcohol ingestion on defendant's mental state when he killed Gregorio. These disclosures, he urges, constituted nonstatutory aggravating evidence (see People v. Boyd, supra, 38 Cal.3d 762, 777-778) that he was a seller and hedonistic abuser of drugs. However, Dr. Siegel was entitled to place his conclusions in the context of defendant's overall pattern of drug use. When the prosecutor asked whether someone who starts out in this kind of lifestyle might ultimately require more PCP or alcohol to become intoxicated, Dr. Siegel confirmed that defendant's whole history was relevant; a chronic drug user who was trying to maintain a chronic state of intoxication might need more or less of a particular drug to achieve certain toxic effects. Dr. Siegel's reference to defendant's use of other drugs was thus not improper. Moreover, there was little danger that, by considering this evidence for its truth, the jury would come to irrelevant but prejudicial conclusions about his hedonistic drug abuse. The central theory of both defense and prosecution cases was that defendant was a lifelong abuser of drugs. The only dispute was the impact of this chronic abuse on his state of mind at the time of the capital crime. Similar considerations rebut defendant's claim that the disclosure about selling slam was prejudicial. Dr. Siegel's revelation on this subject may have been both nonresponsive and irrelevant, but the remark was brief, and the information it disclosed could hardly have come as a surprise to jurors already aware of defendant's drug-centered lifestyle. Hence, admission of evidence about defendant's drug history, even without a limiting instruction, does not undermine confidence in the penalty judgment.