Opinion ID: 2518586
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Restriction on direct examination of defense expert toxicological witness

Text: Defendant argues the trial court erred under state evidentiary law by arbitrarily preventing his trial counsel from asking a defense expert witness, Toxicologist Ernest Lykissa, Ph.D., a hypothetical question that assertedly was not supported by the evidence, while permitting the prosecutor (over defense objection) to ask the same witness a different hypothetical question that was similarly unsupported by the evidence. The Attorney General argues this contention was not preserved by a sufficiently specific objection below. Although defendant did not cite any specific ground for his objection to the prosecutor's hypothetical, his objection clearly related back to the earlier discussion the parties had about the propriety of the hypothetical questions the defense had tried to ask Dr. Lykissa, and we are satisfied defendant has preserved the state evidentiary claim for appeal. Defendant's argument, however, lacks merit, for the prosecutor's question, unlike defense counsel's, did not assume a fact not in evidence. The defense called Dr. Lykissa, chief toxicologist at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, to testify about the effect of alcohol consumption on blood-alcohol levels and behavior, in order to suggest that defendant had committed the charged offenses with a diminished mental state. Dr. Lykissa testified that at 7:40 p.m. the night of the shootings, defendant gave a blood sample that contained .154 percent alcohol. Based on a theoretical model male weighing 150 pounds, Lykissa testified it would take in excess of seven drinks consumed over a two-hour period before testing for the model male to register .154 percent. Defense counsel asked Dr. Lykissa: Let's say we are talking about a male in his mid-forties who weighs approximatelybetween 180 and 190 pounds in weight, do you have any opinion asin assuming that he hadhe had his last drink approximately an hour and a half to two hours before a test was run on him, would you have any opinion as to the blood level at that point? The prosecutor then objected on the ground that no evidence supported the hypothetical. At a sidebar conference, the court said: The part that bothers me is unless [defendant] testifiesI don't know how you are going to get into the record when he had his last drink. [¶] That's a part of your hypothetical. Defense counsel responded that he would be presenting circumstantial evidence of when defendant had his last drink and that defendant had had nothing to drink from about 10 minutes to 7:00 p.m. until the time his blood was tested at 7:40 p.m. The prosecutor objected that no such evidence had yet been presented, adding: In fact, there is not necessarily any reason to believe there was any drinking until after the first two killings. [¶] ... He could have had everything after the killings, but before he shot Layton, and ... unless we get some evidence in this record, this hypothetical is unwarranted. The court ruled: You [defense counsel] can always bring him [Lykissa] back, if necessary, but I'll sustain the objection at this time to the hypothetical. Defendant acknowledges he failed to recall Dr. Lykissa to the stand. This circumstance suffices to defeat his claim of evidentiary error. Defendant argues, to the contrary, that recalling Dr. Lykissa would not have alleviated the harm the trial court had already caused by allowing the prosecutor to pose to the expert a hypothetical question that was not supported by the evidence, even after all the evidence had been presented. As will appear, the premise underlying this argument is flawed, as the prosecutor's hypothetical question, unlike defense counsel's, was based on facts shown by the evidence. (See People v. Ward (2005) 36 Cal.4th 186, 209, 30 Cal.Rptr.3d 464, 114 P.3d 717 [expert may render opinion testimony based on facts given in hypothetical questions, but such questions must be rooted in facts shown by the evidence].) To return to the examination of Dr. Lykissa: After the expert testified that defendant's blood-alcohol level was .154 percent at 7:40 p.m., the prosecutor asked: What, if anything, can you think of [that] is inconsistent with the following hypothesis? [¶] That the individual whose blood alcohol reading was .154 at 7:40 did not have anything to drink until after 6:15 or 18:15? The court overruled a defense objection, and Dr. Lykissa, after making some calculations on paper, responded: Nothing. As the Attorney General reasons, the prosecutor's question embraced facts already in evidence (the time of defendant's blood test and his blood-alcohol level) and simply asked Dr. Lykissa if those known facts were inconsistent with the possibility (or hypothesis) that the individual in question had nothing to drink until after 6:15 p.m. In contrast, the defense question to which the court sustained the prosecutor's objection asked Dr. Lykissa to assume a fact not yet in evidence, i.e., that defendant had nothing to drink after 10 minutes to 7:00 p.m. Therefore, the trial court properly excluded defendant's hypothetical and allowed the prosecutor's; hence, no differential treatment appears. Defendant further argues the restriction on his counsel's direct examination of Dr. Lykissa violated his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights to present a defense and to due process, as well as the Eighth Amendment's requirement of a reliable determination of penalty. The Attorney General contends defendant forfeited these constitutional issues for purposes of this appeal by failing to articulate these grounds at trial. We concluded above that defendant preserved his related claim of state evidentiary error, but because the constitutional claims defendant now asserts do not simply restate his evidentiary claim on alternative legal principles, but instead require consideration of different circumstancesnamely, the court's assertedly asymmetrical treatment of the parties' use of hypothetical questionshe has forfeited the constitutional arguments for appeal. (See ante, fn. 7.) In any event, for the reasons discussed above, the trial court did not err in its rulings concerning the scope of the parties' examination of Dr. Lykissa.