Opinion ID: 2630926
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Failure to Provide Defendants with Criminal History of Prosecution Witness Jeanette Mayberry (Letner, Tobin)

Text: On January 25, 1990, during the presentation of penalty phase witnesses, Letner's attorney notified the trial court that the defense had discovered that prosecution witness Jeanette Mayberry had an outstanding warrant for her arrest on a misdemeanor petty theft charge from a neighboring county, and had two criminal matters pending in the Tulare County court. The arrest warrant stemmed from a misdemeanor charge of petty theft filed in 1986 in Fresno County. In May 1989, prior to the commencement of defendants' trial, Mayberry separately was charged in Tulare County with a felony for writing bad checks, and a misdemeanor for the theft of clothing from a department store. In July of that year she pleaded guilty to the Tulare theft charge and was sentenced to 30 days in jail. Also in July, the bad check charge was reduced to a misdemeanor, to which she pleaded guilty in August. She received an additional sentence of 30 days' incarceration. In August, execution of both sentences was stayed until January 3, 1990, and on that date was further stayed to February 6, 1990. Letner moved for a mistrial on the basis that he had been deprived of the opportunity to cross-examine Mayberry concerning these pending criminal matters and any influence they might have had upon her guilt phase testimony. The trial court observed it was impossible at that point in the trial to remedy the failure to disclose these matters, and therefore the court would revisit the issue after conclusion of the trial. Both defendants in their subsequent motions for new trial raised the prosecution's failure to disclose these matters. The trial court denied the motions, finding that Mayberry's testimony was not terribly material to establishing defendants' guilt, and further that the undisclosed matters were of extremely questionable character as to impeachment value. On appeal, defendants contend the prosecutor's failure to disclose these matters to the defense violated their federal constitutional rights under Brady v. Maryland (1963) 373 U.S. 83 [10 L.Ed.2d 215, 83 S.Ct. 1194] ( Brady ) and the parallel state constitutional provisions. Defendants, however, have failed to establish that their constitutional rights were violated. (28) In Brady, the United States Supreme Court held `that the suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution.' [Citation.] The high court has since held that the duty to disclose such evidence exists even though there has been no request by the accused [citation], that the duty encompasses impeachment evidence as well as exculpatory evidence [citation], and that the duty extends even to evidence known only to police investigators and not to the prosecutor [citation]. Such evidence is material `if there is a reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense, the result of the proceeding would have been different.' [Citation.] In order to comply with Brady, therefore, `the individual prosecutor has a duty to learn of any favorable evidence known to the others acting on the government's behalf in the case, including the police.' [Citations.] ( People v. Salazar (2005) 35 Cal.4th 1031, 1042 [29 Cal.Rptr.3d 16, 112 P.3d 14] ( Salazar ).) (29) `[T]he term  Brady violation is sometimes used to refer to any breach of the broad obligation to disclose exculpatory evidencethat is, to any suppression of so-called  Brady materialalthough, strictly speaking, there is never a real  Brady violation unless the nondisclosure was so serious that there is a reasonable probability that the suppressed evidence would have produced a different verdict. There are three components of a true Brady violation: The evidence at issue must be favorable to the accused, either because it is exculpatory, or because it is impeaching; that evidence must have been suppressed by the State, either willfully or inadvertently; and prejudice must have ensued.' [Citation.] Prejudice, in this context, focuses on `the materiality of the evidence to the issue of guilt and innocence.' [Citations.] Materiality, in turn, requires more than a showing that the suppressed evidence would have been admissible [citation], that the absence of the suppressed evidence made conviction `more likely' [citation], or that using the suppressed evidence to discredit a witness's testimony `might have changed the outcome of the trial' [citation]. A defendant instead `must show a reasonable probability of a different result.' [Citation.] ( Salazar, supra, 35 Cal.4th at pp. 1042-1043.) We independently review the question whether a Brady violation has occurred, but give great weight to any trial court findings of fact that are supported by substantial evidence. ( Salazar, at p. 1042.) Defendants have satisfied the first two components of the Brady analysis. As the prosecutor herself admitted at the hearing on the new trial motions, there was an obligation to disclose to the defense the information concerning the pending matters, even if she and the investigators were unaware of them or inadvertently failed to disclose them. And the circumstance that a prosecution witness faced pending criminal matters, some of which were being prosecuted by the same district attorney's office prosecuting the defendant, constitutes evidence favorable to the defense, in that a jury could view this circumstance as negatively impacting the credibility of testimony by the witness that was helpful to the prosecution. Like the trial court, we are not convinced, however, that the evidence was material. (30) The parties dispute the significance of Mayberry's testimony in view of the total sum of the evidence presented at the guilt phase of the trial. Defendants assert her testimony was very significant, whereas the Attorney General urges that the testimony primarily was cumulative of other evidence before the jury. A correct assessment lies somewhere between these two extremes. As the trial court observed, Mayberry's testimony provided some evidence establishing motivethat defendants were ready to leave Visalia because of their unemployment, and because of the fights that took place between Tobin and Mayberry on the day and night preceding the murder. Mayberry also provided evidence concerning defendants' relationship with each other, including, as mentioned above, the circumstance that Letner encouraged Tobin to continue striking her during the fight at the apartment, and testimony establishing that defendants lied when they told Officer Wightman where they were going when they were stopped in the victim's car. Although Mayberry's testimony had some significance at the trial, its importance is not comparable to those circumstances in which we have acknowledged that the suppression of possible impeachment evidence would be material under Brady. `In general, impeachment evidence has been found to be material where the witness at issue supplied the only evidence linking the defendant(s) to the crime, [citations], or where the likely impact on the witness's credibility would have undermined a critical element of the prosecution's case, [citation].' ( Salazar, supra, 35 Cal.4th at p. 1050.) Neither of these circumstances applies to Mayberry's testimony. Further, even were we to conclude that Mayberry's testimony concerned a critical element of the prosecution's case, we would agree with the trial court's assessment that the undisclosed information concerning her pending criminal matters would not have undermined her credibility to any significant degree. The inference defendants would draw from the circumstances that (1) Mayberry's felony charge was reduced to a misdemeanor, (2) the execution of her sentences was postponed until after her testimony, and (3) she was not arrested on the misdemeanor warrant from the neighboring county, is that in order to receive those (and possibly other) benefits from the prosecution, she chose to testify untruthfully. Initially, we observe that none of the charges against Mayberry was particularly serious, and therefore the jury might not have found compelling the theory that Mayberry perjured herself at defendants' capital trial in order to obtain some relatively minor benefit in her own pending matters. In addition, the possibility that the charges would have had material impeachment value is contradicted by Mayberry's declaration submitted with the opposition to defendants' motions for new trials, in which she stated she did not speak with the prosecutor about the pending charges, did not expect or receive any benefits for testifying, did not alter her testimony as a result of the pending matters, and had requested (and the court had ordered) that her jail sentence be suspended so she would not be in the jail while defendants also were incarcerated there. We presume that had she been questioned before the jury concerning these matters, her testimony would have been to the same effect. More importantly, the notion that Mayberry altered her testimony in return for favorable treatment in her criminal matters is belied by the circumstance that her preliminary hearing testimony, given several months prior to the theft and bad check charges filed in Tulare County, was consistent with her trial testimony. Indeed, had defendants attempted to impeach Mayberry by introducing her then pending matters, the prosecution could have presented her preliminary hearing testimony (and possibly other statements she gave to the police) as a prior consistent statement made before any motive to lie arose, pursuant to sections 1236 and 791, subdivision (b) of the Evidence Codea strategy that actually might have bolstered, rather than impeached, her credibility. Finally, the jury already had before it evidence that might have negatively impacted Mayberry's credibility: as the trial court observed, her personal bias against Letner was obvious, and defendants presented evidence demonstrating that the account of her fight with Tobin that she provided to the responding police officer was somewhat inconsistent with her trial testimony. Defendants, in a summary fashion, urge for the first time on appeal that Mayberry's convictions for petty theft and writing bad checks directly bear upon her credibility as a witness, because those offenses were traditional examples of crim [ i ] n [ a ] falsi [] (the crime of falsifying). At the time of defendants' trial, we had not yet decided in People v. Wheeler (1992) 4 Cal.4th 284 [14 Cal.Rptr.2d 418, 841 P.2d 938] that Proposition 8's truth-in-evidence provision eliminated the proscription against the use of misdemeanor offenses as impeachment evidence. ( Wheeler, at p. 295.) Assuming, nonetheless, that this holding had applied in defendants' trial, we also take note of our conclusion in Wheeler that misdemeanor convictions are inadmissible under the hearsay rule and furthermore, with reference to the underlying facts of misdemeanor offenses, that trial courts retain the authority to exclude such evidence under section 352 of the Evidence Code if presentation of those facts would create undue prejudice, delay, or confusion, substantially outweighing their probative value. ( Wheeler, at pp. 296-300.) In the present case, because defendants failed to raise this issue in the trial court, that court was not called upon to exercise its discretion to determine whether any part of such evidence should have been admitted, and the record fails to provide us with any information concerning the facts underlying Mayberry's offenses. Therefore, defendants' bare allegation that the offenses themselves would have had value in impeaching Mayberry's testimony is unsupported. In addition, as we observed in Wheeler, a misdemeanoror any other conduct not amounting to a felonyis a less forceful indicator of immoral character or dishonesty than is a felony. ( Id. at p. 296.) In sum, defendants have failed to demonstrate that there is a reasonable probability that had the prosecutor disclosed to defendants the then pending criminal matters facing Mayberry before the prosecution called her as a witness, the jury would have reached a result more favorable to defendants. Accordingly, defendants have not established that their constitutional rights were violated.