Opinion ID: 844263
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Restriction on Cross-examination of Gang Expert

Text: On direct examination, Detective Lusk, the prosecution's gang expert, testified that a gang member will sometimes brag to another gang member and take credit for a crime he did not commit. Lusk gave the following explanation: It goes back to respect or fear or one's ranking within the gang. The fact that you're there and maybe you're talking to somebody who was not there. It's like embellishing. You know, I was there; well, take credit for the shooting also. And your ranking will move up within the gang. Lusk's testimony on this point therefore helped support the prosecution theory that Soliz shot Skyles and Price despite the fact Gonzales claimed sole responsibility in his taped conversation with Salvador Berber. In an attempt to undermine Lusk's testimony, counsel for Soliz sought to question Lusk on the significance of the purported fact that Soliz in his recorded jailhouse conversations never took credit for any of the shootings. The prosecutor objected to this line of questioning, and the trial court sustained the objection. Soliz, joined by Gonzales, now contends the trial court improperly restricted Soliz's cross-examination of Lusk and thereby violated his constitutional right to present a defense. As we conclude below, the trial court did not err in excluding this line of questioning. (12) The line of questioning Soliz's counsel proposed raised both an admissibility and a relevance issue. The prosecutor had introduced several tape-recorded jailhouse conversations of defendants, including one between Soliz and his fiancée, Luz Jauregui. Counsel, however, was proposing to question Lusk about all of Soliz's recorded jailhouse conversations, not just those the prosecutor had introduced. Because Soliz's recorded jailhouse conversations were admissible under Evidence Code section 1220 only when offered against the declarant, that is, when offered by another party (Evid. Code, § 1220), counsel needed to articulate a theory of admissibility for those tapes not already introduced by the prosecutor. But neither at trial nor on appeal has Soliz done so. Rather, Soliz now frames the issue as whether the trial court improperly limited questioning on the tape that had already been admitted into evidence, namely, Soliz's conversation with Luz Jauregui. In his conversation with Jauregui, Soliz referred to a newspaper article on the Hillgrove Market robbery murder and stated: It says . . . they got two more suspects. They haven't found `em yet? Damn, they got one of `em right here. `But your honor, I'm a changed man.' Soliz acknowledges his statement implies his involvement in the Hillgrove Market robbery, but contends that he made no admissions about being the shooter in either set of murders. This claim presents the relevance issue. The court afforded Soliz latitude in questioning Lusk about his opinion that gang members sometimes take credit for crimes they did not commit, but properly sustained the prosecutor's relevance objection to questioning that attempted to prove a negative, i.e., that because Soliz never claimed to have shot Skyles and Price, he did not shoot them. The absence of a confession has no bearing on guilt or innocence.