Opinion ID: 1351510
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Exclusion of Dr. Meyers's Report

Text: Prior to the commencement of the penalty phase, defendant moved to admit a 10-year-old psychiatric evaluation of him by Dr. Thomas Meyers, a court-appointed expert who had examined defendant in connection with the 1972 Maruyama burglary. In the report, Dr. Meyers opined that defendant lacked the mental capacity to form the specific intent to rob, that he was intellectually subnormal, gravely disabled, had disturbed perceptive abilities, and that his reality contact is not good. In addition, Dr. Meyers concluded defendant cannot really differentiate the masculine and feminine roles. Defendant's investigator testified Dr. Meyers himself was elderly and was unable to testify because he had recently fallen seriously ill. The prosecutor objected to admission of the report, arguing that Dr. Meyers had not been a witness at the prior proceeding, that consequently the People never had an opportunity to cross-examine him, and that the report was inadmissible hearsay. The trial court agreed and excluded the report. (36) Defendant contends the trial court deprived him of due process of law by excluding Dr. Meyers's report. Conceding the report was hearsay, he contends it was nevertheless admissible under Green v. Georgia (1979) 442 U.S. 95 [60 L.Ed.2d 738, 99 S.Ct. 2150]. In Green v. Georgia , a capital defendant sought to introduce prosecution testimony from his codefendant's separate trial in order to establish that the codefendant, and not Green, alone had murdered the victim. The prosecutor successfully objected on hearsay grounds. Green was convicted and sentenced to death. (442 U.S. at p. 96 [60 L.Ed.2d at p. 740].) The high court concluded that: Regardless of whether the proffered testimony comes within Georgia's hearsay rule, under the facts of this case its exclusion constituted a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The excluded testimony was highly relevant to a critical issue in the punishment phase ... and substantial reasons existed to assume its reliability.... In these unique circumstances, `the hearsay rule may not be applied mechanistically to defeat the ends of justice.' [Citation.] ( Id. at p. 97 [60 L.Ed.2d at p. 741], italics added.) We find Green v. Georgia inapposite on these facts. Here there were no substantial reasons to assume the reliability of Dr. Meyers's report; it was 10 years old, Meyers had not been a witness and was thus never cross-examined at the prior proceeeding, and due to his illness he was no longer available to be cross-examined by the People in these proceedings to test the accuracy and validity of the conclusions drawn in his earlier report. Moreover, much of Dr. Meyers's report was cumulative to the findings of Van Vorast and Dr. Maloney, who testified defendant was of low intelligence, would need continual intensive supervision, exhibited deficiencies in certain perception areas, perceptual motor areas, and may have suffered from organic brain damage. The only arguably distinctive finding of Dr. Meyers not duplicated in the findings of the other experts was defendant's possible inability to differentiate masculine and feminine roles. But given the age of the report, and the circumstances which foreclosed any opportunity for the People to impeach or otherwise test the validity of the conclusions drawn therein, we conclude it was properly excluded.