Opinion ID: 2594480
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Trial Court Properly Denied Defendant's Motion to Exclude.

Text: Prior to trial, defendant moved to exclude certain items of evidence found in the carport behind the apartment complex where he and his victims lived. The evidence at issue was a shirt, a baby blanket, a black telephone, and a wristband from the county jail, bearing defendant's name. The motion, which defendant made orally, questioned the relevancy of the evidence and asserted that the danger of undue prejudice substantially outweighed the probative value of the evidence. (Evid. Code, § 352.) The trial court denied the motion without prejudice. Defendant now argues the trial court erred. It did not. Defendant did not provide the court with sufficient context by which to evaluatepretrialthe merits of his motion. The court had no means to measure the relevancy of the various items of evidence, and therefore it denied the motion without prejudice. Defendant did not renew his motion when the items of evidence were offered at trial, at which time the relevance of the evidence could have been better evaluated, and therefore he has not preserved the issue. ( People v. Morris (1991) 53 Cal.3d 152, 189-190, 279 Cal. Rptr. 720, 807 P.2d 949.) Moreover, defendant's motion lacked merit. Police found a knife on the carport roof, where the murderer may have thrown it in an effort to conceal it. The prosecution's experts concluded the knife could have been the murder weapon. If the prosecution could somehow link the knife to defendant, it would be an important piece of evidence tending to establish defendant's guilt. Therefore, it was very significant that police also found several items connected to defendant inside the same carport. The black telephone was particularly significant because it came from defendant's apartment and, according to prosecution witnesses, defendant offered to sell a telephone just hours before the murders. In other words, the items of evidence in the carport tended to show that defendant was in the vicinity of the carport shortly before the murder, which in turn tended to connect him to the possible murder weapon. Accordingly, these items were relevant, and their admission was not unduly prejudicial. Defendant argued in the trial court that, at least in the case of the county jail wristband, the danger of undue prejudice outweighed the evidence's probative value. The prosecutor, however, agreed not to mention the wristband in opening argument, and he never offered it into evidence at trial. Therefore, to the extent the trial court should have granted the motion as to the wristband, no prejudice arose. We conclude that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying defendant's motion to exclude certain evidence, and the court's ruling did not violate defendant's rights under the Fourth Amendment to the federal Constitution. ( People v. Cudjo (1993) 6 Cal.4th 585, 609, 25 Cal.Rptr.2d 390, 863 P.2d 635.)