Opinion ID: 2633881
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Admission of Defendant's Suppression Hearing Testimony During Cross-examination at Trial

Text: Before defendant testified at the hearing on his motion to suppress his statements to the officers, his counsel clarified that defendant was making a limited waiver of his right not to be called as a witness, in that he would not be testifying as to the substance of any of his statements, but only regarding his Miranda waivers and the voluntariness of his statements. During cross-examination at the suppression hearing, the prosecutor asked defendant whether he had spoken with the officers at the Carson City jail and given them a full statement concerning the Garcia killing. When defendant answered that he had not given them a full statement, defense counsel objected and moved to strike the answer as nonresponsive, further objecting to the question because to the extent that the question calls for anything substantive, it is beyond the scope of the limited waiver of self-incrimination. The court struck the answer and asked the prosecutor to rephrase the question. The court also advised defendant to answer the prosecutor's questions without saying the actual things that you said. Soon thereafter, the following questions and answers were exchanged: Q [by prosecutor]: Were you cooperating with [the officers] because you thought that that was the right thing to do and you were going to just tell the truth? A [by defendant]: I was sure that's what you do when you are in that position. I had to do it before. Q: Did you decide to talk to them yourself? Did you make that decision that `I'll talk with them because I am going to tell them the truth'? A: Well, they come and asked me. They said they had all the evidence, so I yes, I guess so. Q: Okay. You decided on your own to talk to them, is that right? A: After they told me they had all the evidence, yes. Q: Okay. And did you want to tell the truth at that interview at the jail yourself? A: I did. At that point defense counsel objected to the prosecutor's question as substantive. The trial court described the question as mixed and stated, I think the question [sic ] will be admitted not for the substantive notion of wanting to tell the truth at which point the prosecutor interjected, stating the answer was offered for his state of mind. The court then stated, Yes. Accepted solely for that purpose, limited to it. The prosecutor then followed up with a reiteration of the question whether defendant wanted to tell the truth to the officers, and defendant answered, I didn't walk in voluntarily. I figured that that's what you do when you are caught by the law. Tell them what you know. At trial, defendant testified that the version of the Garcia and Sorensen killings he gave the officers during the interviews that he engaged in sexual activities with the victims and strangled them because he was frightenedwas not true, primarily because he now was stating that he had strangled the victims in fits of rage and did not decide to engage in sexual activities with them until after they were dead. He also testified he did not want to tell the officers what really happened because the truth was embarrassing; he did not want to talk about his problems with his mother; he thought it would be worse for him if he gave them a true account, and he thought that giving the untrue versions would cause the officers to stop questioning him. On cross-examination, the prosecutor sought to impeach defendant with the testimony from the suppression hearing set forth above, in which defendant said he wanted to tell the officers the truth. Defendant objected on the ground that use of his hearing testimony would mislead[ ] the jury, in that the purpose of any of those questions and answers didn't have to do with the substantive truth of the statements. [¶] They had to do with the Miranda warnings, the admissibility. The prosecutor disagreed, arguing some of the questions and answers concerned the substantive issue of whether the statements to the officers were true. The trial court stated, somewhat cryptically, that with regard to some of the questions, at least, the jury could find [they] went to substance, and I think those are arguably sufficient within the substance to be permissible. Defense counsel then expressed concern that the only way to avoid misleading the jury would be to disclose the, context in which defendant's prior testimony was given, but telling the jury that the hearing concerned defendant's motion to suppress those statements would unduly prejudice defendant. Accordingly, defense counsel argued, the testimony should be excluded under section 352 of the Evidence Code. The trial court, although not convinced disclosure of the full context of the testimony would be prejudicial, agreed that disclosure of these circumstances was unnecessary and could be avoided through certain precautions, and therefore permitted the prosecutor to make use of the prior testimony during cross-examination. The prosecutor then cross-examined defendant primarily by reading the suppression hearing questions and answers and asking defendant whether his testimony at the hearingthat he wanted to tell the truth to the officerswas itself truthful. Defendant responded essentially that he wanted to tell the truth in partthat he killed Garcia and Sorensenbut did not want to tell the whole truth, for example the details of the murders. Defendant did not request any clarifying admonition to the jury or revisit his prior testimony during the subsequent redirect examination. On appeal, defendant contends that the trial court erred by allowing the prosecutor to impeach him with this testimony from the suppression hearing, and that this error denied him his rights to a fair trial, confrontation, due process, effective assistance of counsel and a reliable and non-arbitrary sentencing process under the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Defendant argues use of the prior testimony was improper because it was limited specifically to his state of mind and should not have been used to impeach his testimony about the actual truthfulness of his confessions. Allowing the prosecutor to do so, defendant contends, changed the rules in the middle of the game, depriving him of a fair trial and effective assistance of counsel, and, in effect, retroactively depriving him of a fair opportunity to challenge the admission of the statements in the first instance. We are not persuaded. Preliminarily, defendant's arguments on appeal are not the same as those he raised in the trial court. Defense counsel did not argue the hearing testimony was inadmissible per se, as defendant does now; rather, he argued that its use was misleading without its being placed in context, and that providing the jury with this context would be unduly prejudicial. [19] Defendant does not renew this argument on appeal. He therefore has forfeited the new claims he now raises on appeal. (See Partida, supra, 37 Cal.4th at pp. 434-435, 35 Cal.Rptr.3d 644, 122 P.3d 765.) Even if defendant had preserved these claims, we would find them to be without merit. At the suppression hearing, defendant testified he wanted to tell the authorities the truth, which in the context of the motion to suppress was relevant evidence on the issue whether his confessions were voluntary and his Miranda waivers were valid. (Evid.Code, § 210 [relevant evidence is that having any tendency in reason to prove or disprove any disputed fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action].) At trial, defendant testified he did not want to tell the truth to the officers, and he was impeached with his hearing testimony on that issue. In addition, defendant's own trial testimony put in issue not only whether he wanted to tell the truth to the officers, but also the very truthfulness of his confessions. Defendant, however, never testified at the suppression hearing that he actually told the truth to the officers, and therefore no such statement was admitted as evidence at trial. Indeed, whether or not he actually told the truth to the officers was not germane at the suppression hearing, where the only issues were whether his statements were voluntary and his Miranda waivers were valid. Nevertheless, once defendant at trial also put at issue the veracity of his confessions, the same testimony regarding his state of mind admitted at the suppression hearing took on threefold significance: it tended generally to impeach his credibility as a witness; it tended directly to prove he did want to tell the truth to the officers (see People v. Crew (2003) 31 Cal.4th 822, 849, 3 Cal. Rptr.3d 733, 74 P.3d 820); and it tended circumstantially to prove he did, in fact, tell the truth to the officers. On appeal defendant takes issue with this third use, but, notably, this was not the concern he raised at trial. There he argued, in essence, that the jury would not recognize the thin line between his stating he wanted to tell the truth and his not saying he told the truth, without some explanation of the context in which his suppression-hearing statements were made. In other words, at trial defendant contended the jury improperly might view his hearing testimony as an admission that he told the truth to the officers when, in fact, the truthfulness of the confessions was not in issue at that time. Defendant did not argue at trial, however, that it would be improper to view his wishing to tell the truth as circumstantial evidence he told the truth, perhaps because, as we shall explain, this inference was proper. In using the prior testimony in cross-examination at trial, the prosecution adduced the same evidence admitted at the suppression hearingthat defendant wanted to tell the truth to the officers. No substantive evidence of the confessions beyond what defendant previously gave pursuant to his limited waiver of the right to self-incrimination was admitted at trial. In fact, no such substantive evidence existed, because of the properly circumscribed nature of the suppression hearing testimony. [20] Instead, at trial a new inference could be drawn from that same evidence: because defendant wished to tell the truth, he probably did tell the truth. [21] (Cf. People v. Griffin (2004) 33 Cal.4th 536, 578, 15 Cal.Rptr.3d 743, 93 P.3d 344 [state-of-mind exception to the hearsay rule under Evid.Code, § 1250 permits admission of a hearsay statement as proof of the declarant's future conduct in accordance with his or her expressed intent].) Defendant's own trial testimony put the truthfulness of his testimony and his earlier confessions at issue. There was nothing improper, therefore, in admitting the suppression-hearing testimony to rebut his trial testimony or in allowing the jury to infer from this evidence that defendant acted in accordance with his state of mind, and that his confessions to the officers were truthful. Because there was no error in admitting the testimony given at the suppression hearing, no violation of defendant's constitutional rights occurred. (See Partida, supra, 37 Cal.4th at pp. 434-435, 35 Cal.Rptr.3d 644, 122 P.3d 765.)