Opinion ID: 2508855
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: Exclusion of Testimony Regarding Public Disclosure of Victim's Sexual Orientation

Text: Over prosecution objection, Sacramento Sheriff's Lieutenant Ray Biondi was permitted to testify that he made a press statement regarding the Pencin-Cimmino killings but did not release any information regarding the condition of the bathroom. The trial court excluded his further testimony, offered by the defense to support the testimony of Zelma Cureton that she had heard from Booker the victims were lesbian, that he also did not say anything to the press about Debbie's homosexuality. The court apparently believed that evidence was irrelevant because there were people at the scene who knew of Debbie's sexual orientation and thus Biondi's proposed testimony could not show he was the only possible source of it. Any error in excluding the proposed testimony was harmless. It would not have significantly bolstered Cureton's credibility because the defense presented nothing, other than Cureton's own testimony, to show that she had learned any circumstantial details of the crimes  such as that the victims were sisters, and that one or both were lesbian  from the men she met in Reno. Between the weekend of the crime in 1983 and the time of her testimony in 1992, of course, Cureton could have learned of Debbie's sexual orientation in any number of ways. To the extent the jury found Cureton's testimony unbelievable, as they apparently did, it is not reasonably probable their assessment would have been changed by Biondi's offered testimony. ( People v. Watson, supra, 46 Cal.2d at pp. 835-837, 299 P.2d 243.) Nor, for the same reason, was the evidence so significant as to render its exclusion, if error, a deprivation of defendant's constitutional right to present a defense.