Opinion ID: 844217
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Reenactments of the Crime

Text: During the examinations of eyewitnesses Gully, Polidore, and Jordon, the prosecutor had each of these witnesses conduct a demonstration of what they observed, with the witness posing as the shooter and the prosecutor posing as the officers. Defense counsel objected to the prosecutor's conducting a demonstration with Gully, the first of the witnesses to testify, but the objection was overruled. Defendant contends that these demonstrations were inadmissible under Evidence Code section 352, and that they violated his federal constitutional rights to due process and a fair trial. With witness Gully, the prosecutor portrayed Officer Burrell by lying facedown on the floor of the courtroom, in a position directed by the witness. Gully then stood over him, straddling his legs in the same manner as the shooter she witnessed, holding an unloaded gun in both hands aimed at his head and from a distance of three to four feet. The prosecutor conducted a similar demonstration with Polidore, in which the prosecutor portrayed Officer MacDonald lying down and the witness portrayed the shooter, standing over him and aiming a gun toward his head. Witness Jordon was at first reluctant to perform the demonstration, but agreed to do so after she was permitted to use her finger rather than a gun. She could not recall exactly how the officer had been positioned, but demonstrated how the shooter walked around the officer and shot him. (15) Under Evidence Code section 352, a trial court may exclude otherwise relevant evidence when its probative value is substantially outweighed by concerns of undue prejudice, confusion, or consumption of time. ( People v. Riggs (2008) 44 Cal.4th 248, 290 [79 Cal.Rptr.3d 648, 187 P.3d 363].) Defendant contends that these demonstrations should have been excluded under Evidence Code section 352 because the witnesses' testimony was sufficient without resort to the demonstrations; the demonstrations distorted the facts because the witnesses had only a fleeting glimpse of the scene in poor lighting conditions; and they were inflammatory. Reviewing the trial court's ruling for abuse of discretion ( People v. Riggs, supra, 44 Cal.4th at p. 290), we find no such abuse. The trial court could reasonably conclude that the demonstrations would be helpful to the jury in understanding the witnesses' testimony. The demonstrations were not misleading because they did not purport to reproduce the conditions under which the witnesses viewed the scene; they purported only to show the positions of the persons observed by the witnesses. (See Rodrigues, supra, 8 Cal.4th at p. 1115 [videotape of scene purporting to show only the witness's vantage point was not inadmissible despite the fact that it did not accurately portray the lighting conditions].) Although the use of an actual gun in these demonstrations had the potential for increasing their emotional impact, the prosecutor made clear that the gun was not loaded and the demonstrations were otherwise conducted in a manner that did not pose an intolerable risk of negatively affecting the fairness and reliability of the proceedings. ( People v. Riggs, supra, at p. 291 [trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting a videotaped reenactment of the crime in which the depiction of the murder was brief and did not show the victim actually being shot or the aftermath of the shooting].)