Opinion ID: 1801800
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Exclusion of Newspaper Articles

Text: Defendant contends that the trial court abused its discretion and violated various constitutional provisions when it refused to allow into evidence various articles from The Fresno Bee about defendant's case because, had they been read by DeSoto, they may have provided him with information from which he could have concocted his testimony. The trial court rejected the articles on the ground that, in the absence of any evidence that DeSoto had seen the newspaper articles, defendant's use of them was speculative. (7) His claim is without merit. Because, as the trial court noted, there was no evidence that DeSoto had obtained his information about the case from any source other than defendant himself, admission of this evidence was not relevant to any disputed fact but would simply have invited the jury to speculate that DeSoto, from his jail cell in Los Angeles, had somehow come across these newspaper articles and used them to confabulate his testimony. The trial court properly excluded the evidence. ( People v. Morrison (2004) 34 Cal.4th 698, 711 [21 Cal.Rptr.3d 682, 101 P.3d 568] [Evidence is irrelevant. . . if it leads only to speculative inferences.].)