Opinion ID: 2600070
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Evidence of threat to plainclothes officer

Text: Over defense objection, the prosecution presented evidence of an encounter between defendant and Officer John Cherski. On August 11, 1994, less than one year before committing the capital crimes, defendant was in downtown San Diego cleaning up the sidewalk with his coworkers from an urban renewal project. Officer Cherski was in the vicinity working on a plainclothes detail. As the urban renewal group passed the officer, defendant stopped and began to stare at him. When Cherski looked back and made eye contact with defendant, defendant asked what Cherski was staring at. Cherski responded that he was not staring at anything. Defendant approached Cherski and told him, I will fuck you up. Cherski then identified himself as a police officer and arrested defendant. Characterizing the encounter involving Officer Cherski as nothing more than a non-specific future threat, defendant contends the evidence was not admissible under factor (b) as criminal activity involving the use or attempted use of force or violence or the express or implied threat to use force or violence. The record shows otherwise. (See §§ 240 [defining crime of assault], 422 [elements of criminal threats].) As he did in challenging the evidence concerning the county jail incident, defendant asserts it was error to allow the jury to consider evidence of the encounter with Officer Cherski when the actual crime was not identified and the jury was not instructed on its elements. As previously discussed, ante, in part II.D.4.c., these omissions neither rendered the evidence inadmissible nor constituted instructional error.