Opinion ID: 2551468
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Denying Motion to Introduce Statements of Deceased Persons

Text: The question presented in this claim is whether defendant had either a constitutional or a state law right to present exculpatory but unreliable hearsay evidence that is not admissible under any statutory exception to the hearsay rule. We hold that he did not. Defendant moved to introduce the hearsay statements of two individuals who were interviewed by his investigators but who died before they could appear at trial. The trial court denied the motion on grounds that he sought to introduce inadmissible hearsay evidence, and that some of the evidence was cumulative. He claims that this ruling violated his rights under the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and under state law. Defendant's moving papers explained that he wished to have Bill Papenhausen and Carlos Vasquez, both licensed private investigators, testify about statements made to them respectively by Arthur Stephen Castro and Ignacio Vejar Nogales, before they died. He stated that Castro's and Vejar's statements were critical to the defense in establishing his innocence of the crimes charged. Citing Chambers v. Mississippi (1973) 410 U.S. 284, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 35 L.Ed.2d 297, he argued that even if state law prohibited the testimony, due process required the trial court to let him present it. He also claimed in his motion that had the prosecution not improperly delayed its filing of notice of uncharged incidents in aggravation (§ 190.3) for almost two years, Castro and Vejar would have been alive and available to testify. He asserted that the prejudice caused by this delay could only be remedied by permitting him to have Papenhausen and Vasquez testify about the content of the decedents' statements. He attached death certificates showing that Castro died April 15, 1988, and Vejar died September 5, 1988. The two investigators filed affidavits describing what the decedents told them. According to Papenhausen's affidavit, he interviewed Castro in state prison. Castro told him he went to the body shop to buy heroin the day before the killings, and found Dominguez arguing in Spanish with three men about a large sum of money. They ignored him (Castro was of the view that they did not realize he understood Spanish) and he went across the street to buy a beer. When he returned, he saw the visitors driving away in a car with Mexican license plates. Castro could tell that all three were Mexican residents. Castro concluded that they represented Dominguez's heroin connection and that Dominguez was in trouble with them. Vejar, interviewed by Vasquez at Vejar's mother's house in Tijuana on August 24, 1988, related a version of events that varied markedly from others' accounts of the killings. According to Vasquez's affidavit, Vejar went to 999 South Forty-third Street on the day of the killings to pick up his brother. While waiting for him, he heard a shot and saw Castillo run into the street and collapse. Ten to fifteen minutes later, the police, who had arrived in the interim, and Vejar took Castillo to a patrol car. Vejar asked Castillo what had happened, and Castillo said he did not want to talk about it. After placing Castillo in the car, Vejar and the police heard three shots come from the direction of the body shop. Vejar suggested that the police open the garage door. The police acted scared, but one officer went with Vejar to open it. More police officers arrived, and they pulled Vejar away. In denying defendant's motion to introduce the statements, the trial court implied that they could be introduced if they showed aspects of trustworthiness, or other indicia of reliability. But it found that they did not have such indicia. The court also concluded that other witnesses had already provided evidence that Castillo did not want to discuss events immediately after being shot and stabbed, and so Vejar's statement would be cumulative in that regard. Evidence Code section 1200, subdivision (b), provides that Except as provided by law, hearsay evidence is inadmissible, and the parties do not point to any provision of the Evidence Code that would provide an exception to the hearsay rule for the purported witness statements. But `[l]aw' includes ... decisional law (Evid.Code, § 160), and California decisional law includes our own comment that exceptions to the hearsay rule are not limited to those enumerated in the Evidence Code; they may also be found in ... decisional law ( In re Malinda S. (1990) 51 Cal.3d 368, 376, 272 Cal.Rptr. 787, 795 P.2d 1244), and our affirmation of that principle in In re Cindy L. (1997) 17 Cal.4th 15, 26, 69 Cal. Rptr.2d 803, 947 P.2d 1340. Nevertheless, defendant cites no law of this state, whether constitutional, statutory, [or] decisional (Evid.Code, § 160), that would have required the trial court to permit the investigators to testify about Castro's and Vejar's statements. He relies on In re Carmen O. (1994) 28 Cal.App.4th 908, 33 Cal.Rptr.2d 848. Carmen O. applied the rule that the appellate courts of this state may recognize exceptions to the hearsay rule beyond those listed in the Evidence Code. It created an exception for the out-of-court statement of four-year-old Carmen O. that her father had sexually abused her. In In re Cindy L., supra, 17 Cal.4th 15, 69 Cal.Rptr.2d 803, 947 P.2d 1340, we approved Carmen O.'s creation of a judicially announced exception to the hearsay rule, and refined the rule ourselves. But we warned that in developing new exceptions to the hearsay rule, courts must proceed with caution. The general rule that hearsay evidence is inadmissible because it is inherently unreliable is of venerable common law pedigree. (Id. at p. 27, 69 Cal. Rptr.2d 803, 947 P.2d 1340.) And we stated that appellate courts may not create evidentiary exceptions in conflict with statute. (Id. at p. 28, 69 Cal.Rptr.2d 803, 947 P.2d 1340.) We approved of the exception announced in Carmen O. because it was needed to effectively prosecute child sexual abuse cases with reticent very young direct witnesses. (See also In re Lucero L. (2000) 22 Cal.4th 1227, 1238-1239, 96 Cal.Rptr.2d 56, 998 P.2d 1019 (plur.opn.).) There is, by contrast, no proper exception to the hearsay rule that would have permitted defendant to introduce Castro's and Vejar's statements. There are no indicia of reliability surrounding those statements even remotely similar to those that have justified the exception for certain hearsay statements of very young children. Via cross-examination or further investigation the prosecutors might have discovered evidence, for example, that defendant had coerced Castro and Vejar into making them, just as they had introduced evidence that he induced Rafael Mendoza Lopez to perjure himself regarding the presence of Mexican men at the body shop on the day of the murders. Indeed, that part of Castro's statement referring to Mexican visitors buttressed aspects of Mendoza's initial testimony, which Mendoza himself later repudiated as having been fabricated at defendant's behest. Moreover, on cross-examination the prosecution could have questioned Castro about why Dominguez and the Mexican visitors would continue to discuss large sums of money in front of a total stranger, particularly if it involved sales of heroin, and about the basis for his view that they thought he could not understand Spanish. There was no state law error. Defendant urges, as noted, that the trial court infringed on various constitutional guaranties when it barred the jury from hearing potentially exculpatory evidence. But it did not. Few rights are more fundamental than that of an accused to present witnesses in his own defense. [Citations.] [But i]n the exercise of this right, the accused, as is required of the State, must comply with established rules of procedure and evidence designed to assure both fairness and reliability in the ascertainment of guilt and innocence. ( Chambers v. Mississippi supra, 410 U.S. 284, 302, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 35 L.Ed.2d 297.) Thus, [a] defendant does not have a constitutional right to the admission of unreliable hearsay statements. (Commonwealth v. Piper (1997) 426 Mass. 8, 11 [686 N.E.2d 191, 194]; accord, People v. Fudge (1994) 7 Cal.4th 1075, 1123, 31 Cal.Rptr.2d 321, 875 P.2d 36.) Moreover, both we ( People v. Hawthorne (1992) 4 Cal.4th 43, 56, 14 Cal.Rptr.2d 133, 841 P.2d 118) and the United States Supreme Court ( United States v. Scheffer (1998) 523 U.S. 303, 316, 118 S.Ct. 1261, 140 L.Ed.2d 413) have explained that Chambers is closely tied to the facts and the Mississippi evidence law that it considered. Chambers is not authority for the result defendant urges here. The foregoing principles were applied to a case with facts similar to the matter herein in ( State v. Bunyan (1998) 154 N.J. 261, 712 A.2d 1091.) In Bunyan, the defendant, convicted of murder, had sought to introduce the exculpatory hearsay statement of a witness who later died. The witness, shown a photograph of Bunyan out of court, told an investigator that he was not the killer. The witness refused to execute a written statement before dying. Moving for a new trial, Bunyan sought to introduce the investigator's affidavit memorializing his conversation with the witness. The New Jersey Supreme Court held that the statement was inadmissible hearsay under state law, and that relevant provisions of the federal Constitution (it emphasized the right to a fair trial) did not compel its consideration. There is no 'particularized guarantee[ ] of [its] trustworthiness.' [Citation.] Her statement was not against her interests. She made it years after the crime occurred. After making her statement to a private investigator, [she] immediately threatened to disavow it. Additionally, ... there will be no opportunity to cross-examine [her; she] is now deceased. And [her] statement ... was not spontaneous. On the contrary, she gave it in response to questions posed by a private investigator defendant hired. ( State v. Bunyan, supra, 154 N.J. 261, 271, 712 A.2d 1091, 1095-1096.) Not all of these factors apply to the statements of Castro and Vejar. Castro's statement may have been against his interest: he was admitting that he had gone to the body shop to buy heroin; but on the other hand, Papenhausen interviewed him in prison and double jeopardy might have barred any prosecution for Castro's act. As far as is known, neither witness disavowed his statement after making it; indeed, Papenhausen's affidavit declared that Castro later reaffirmed his statement. Nevertheless, other factors mentioned in Bunyan are significant: the statements were given to a person seeking exculpatory evidence, they were not spontaneous, and there was no opportunity for cross-examination. California has an interest in ensuring that reliable evidence is presented to the trier of fact in a criminal trial. ( United States v. Scheffer, supra, 523 U.S. 303, 309, 118 S.Ct. 1261, 140 L.Ed.2d 413.) Given the potential unreliability of Castro's and Vejar's statements and the evidence of defendant's attempt to supply false evidence to the jury that bore a similarity to Castro's statement, we are unable to discern any constitutional violation in the trial court's refusal to admit the investigators' accounts of those statements. Defendant also renews a claim that improper delays in bringing his case to trial caused the delay that in turn caused Castro and Vejar to become unavailable because of death. His claim is perfunctory, and he does not cite any statute, rule, or legal tenet that the prosecution may have violated. The claim is without merit.