Opinion ID: 2551468
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: Issues Regarding Misdirected Phone Call from Mexico

Text: When Pedro Castillo was in the hospital, he received a phone call from Mexico. The caller said that she was trying to reach a Pedro Castillo, whom she believed to be in that hospital. Castillo testified that the caller was trying to reach someone with the same name either in the next bed or at least on the same floor. To challenge the veracity of Castillo's testimony and suggest his involvement with a Mexican heroin connection, the defense introduced evidence that there was no other patient named Pedro Castillo in that hospital at that time. In rebuttal, after the trial court overruled defendant's objection of improper rebuttal and improper failure to disclose to him certain evidence regarding the phone call, the prosecution called Castillo's wife Maria, who had answered the call. Maria Castillo testified that the caller was a Benita Gonzalez, and that she was looking for her son, a different Pedro Castillo. At the telephone operator's request, she wrote down Gonzalez's name and phone number in an address book, and she gave that information to the prosecution about six months before she testified. After Maria Castillo testified, defendant moved to bar any further rebuttal testimony on the question of the phone call from Mexico. Again the grounds for his motion were improper rebuttal and improper failure to disclose evidence regarding the phone call. [6] The trial court denied the motions. It ruled explicitly that the prosecution had not violated its discovery orders, and also ruled implicitly that further testimony would not constitute, in a categorical sense, improper rebuttal. The prosecution evidently gave notice that it intended to call Ernesto Castillo, the brother-in-law of Benita Gonzalez, to testify about her phone call from Mexico. In response to the trial court's request that the prosecution explain why Gonzalez herself was not testifying, it called Louis Richard Velasquez to testify at an in limine hearing about the authorities' investigation of the phone call. The clerk's transcript shows that Velasquez, an investigator for the district attorney's office, had interviewed Benita Gonzalez by telephone call to Ciudad de Valles, San Luis Potosi State, Mexico, on November 24, 1986. He prepared a written report on the call two days later. The report said that Gonzalez was trying to call her brother-in-law, the different Pedro Castillo, who she said was elsewhere in the United States. At the in limine hearing, Velasquez stated that he had recently tried to locate Gonzalez but without success, for she had left her husband and her residence in Ciudad de Valles. Velasquez reached Gonzalez's estranged husband, Plutarco Castillo, who referred him to his brother, Ernesto Castillo. The prosecution brought Ernesto Castillo (also possibly known as Ernesto Castillo Reyna) from Mexico. He testified before the jury that he was retired from his post of Commandant of the Police of San Luis Potosi State. He confirmed that his brother Pedro Castillo was in the United States in 1985, but he did not know where. He provided a photograph of his brother Pedro, and a birth certificate showing that his brother was born in 1951 in San Ciro de Acosta, San Luis Potosi, Mexico. At closing argument, the prosecution argued without refutation from the defense that there were two Pedro Castillos, that the person in the photograph Ernesto Castillo supplied was clearly not the same fellow as the prosecution's witness, and that the phone call was a coincidence. Defendant renews the claims he raised at trial: the testimony was improper rebuttal, and the prosecution violated the trial court's discovery orders in failing to alert him to Velasquez's memorialized evidence. He also claims that the failure to disclose it amounted to a violation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Before trial, the trial court had ordered the prosecution to disclose [a]ll notes or memoranda, handwritten or typed, by an investigating officer, peace officer, or deputy district attorney of their conversations with any witness which is relevant to said witnesses' credibility or upon the issues of defendants' guilt or innocence of the crimes or special circumstances charged in the complaint filed herein. The order is reasonably read as continuing in nature. Nevertheless, we disagree with defendant that the prosecution was required to disclose Velasquez's November 26, 1986, memorandum. We turn first to his constitutional claim. As is well known, the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution creates a duty in the prosecution to disclose certain evidence to a defendant. (See, e.g., United States v. Bagley (1985) 473 U.S. 667, 674-677, 105 S.Ct. 3375, 87 L.Ed.2d 481.) The evidence, however, must be both favorable to the defendant and `material' to either guilt or penalty. (Id. at p. 674, 105 S.Ct. 3375.) Favorable evidence is evidence that the defense could use either to impeach the state's witnesses or to exculpate the accused. (Id. at p. 676, 105 S.Ct. 3375.) Bagley held that ... favorable evidence is material, and unconstitutional error results from its suppression ..., `if there is a reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense, the result of the proceeding would have been different.' ( Kyles v. Whitley (1995) 514 U.S. 419, 433-434, 115 S.Ct. 1555, 131 L.Ed.2d 490.) A reasonable probability is one sufficient to undermine[ ] confidence in the outcome. ( United States v. Bagley, supra, 473 U.S. at p. 678,105 S.Ct. 3375.) Because there is no reasonable probability that had the evidence been disclosed to the defense the outcome would have differed, there was no due process violation. The question of the Mexican phone call was utterly ancillary to the question of defendant's guilt of three murders and to any question regarding penalty. The trial court opined that this whole area is collateral, and we agree. Even as a distraction, it was insignificant. We next discuss defendant's state law claim. We do not believe that the trial court's order was violated. `Relevant evidence' means evidence, including evidence relevant to the credibility of a witness or hearsay declarant, having any tendency in reason to prove or disprove any disputed fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action. (Evid.Code, § 210.) The entire question of the phone call from Mexico was of no consequence to the verdict in this case. To repeat: the matter was utterly collateral. We therefore reject defendant's claim. [7]