Court Opinion

ID: 9746085
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 13:56:57.972312+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:08.595478
License: Public Domain

SCOTLAND, P. J., Concurring.
Did the prosecutor go too far in showing that a defense expert’s opinion testimony that defendant is not a sexually violent predator was based not on principle, but on profit? The majority conclude the trial court erred in failing to rein in the prosecutor. I disagree.
Dr. Theodore Donaldson, a clinical psychologist, testified as an expert for the defense and opined there was insufficient evidence that defendant had a diagnosed mental disorder which makes him likely to engage in sexually violent criminal behavior. Donaldson so opined despite defendant’s history of committing numerous violent sex offenses against adult women and young girls.
The prosecutor was permitted to cross-examine Dr. Donaldson about his apparent bias in favor of defendants in Sexually Violent Predator Act (SVPA) cases. Among other things, the court allowed the prosecutor to raise specific facts underlying Donaldson’s expert opinions in favor of defendants in three other SVPA cases. The majority find fault in this latter ruling. In their view, “the facts of the three other SVPA cases and the psychologist’s opinion in those cases were not relevant to show his bias or prejudice . . . .” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 448.) To the contrary, the cross-examination was probative and proper.
The majority have no quarrel with the cross-examination that elicited that Dr. Donaldson was a well-paid expert (earning about $180,000 in one year for his testimony in SVPA cases), who routinely reached opinions favorable to defendants in such cases (disagreeing 90 percent of the time with the state’s experts in the 254 SVPA cases in which he has testified), and who was defense counsel’s friend. As the majority readily acknowledge, this evidence *459“was relevant because a rational inference can be drawn that the more defendants for whom Dr. Donaldson testifies, the more he is not giving his true opinion in these cases, or that his analysis is not as trustworthy as it might be. As a matter of common sense, the fact that a well-paid expert witness routinely offers opinions in favor of SVP defendants in a great number of cases has some tendency in reason to prove he is not being entirely objective in formulating his opinion.” (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 454-455.) Stated simply, the evidence was relevant to show that Donaldson is biased in favor of defendants in SVPA cases because he can profit by being a hired gun for the defense in those cases.
The problem, as the majority see it, is that the facts of other cases in which Dr. Donaldson has testified for SVPA defendants were not relevant to his bias unless “the jury had some other basis for concluding that the given facts reasonably should have led to a different opinion.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 455.) That other basis, the majority say, could come only in the form of contrary expert opinion about those other cases, which was not introduced here. I am not persuaded.
The repetitive nature of defendant’s sex crimes was very much like the repetitive nature of the sex crimes committed in the three other SVPA cases.
Over a period of time, defendant (1) awoke a 14-year-old girl in her home, forced her into the backyard, told her he wanted to “lay her,” and threatened to kill her if she screamed, (2) entered the home of a 69-year-old woman at night and raped her, (3) choked a sleeping 16-year-old girl and raped her while her 13-year-old sister was in the house, (4) raped a 23-year-old woman at knifepoint while her baby was in bed with her and threatened to kill them both if the woman reported the rape, (5) raped a 39-year-old woman while her children were in the next room, (6) raped a 54-year-old woman at knifepoint in her home, became angry when he could not ejaculate, threatened to shoot her, forced her to orally copulate him, and then threatened to place a knife in her vagina and sodomize her if she did not cooperate, (7) raped a 38-year-old woman while her children were in the house, and made one of her children undress and lie on the floor, (8) entered the home of a 29-year-old woman and—before running away when confronted by the woman’s son—told her that he had a knife and “want[ed] her,” (9) raped a 23-year-old woman at knifepoint in her house, (10) threatened a 44-year-old woman at knifepoint, told her he had killed four others so she better do what he wanted, and tried repeatedly to rape her, (11) entered the home of a 54-year-old woman, hit her on the head, told her to play with his penis so he could get an erection, then raped her and threatened to kill her, (12) masturbated in front of a female staff member at Atascadero State Hospital, and threatened to kill another female staff member, after he was *460incarcerated there, (13) implied to a social worker that he had committed more rapes than those for which he was caught, (14) twice masturbated in front of female correctional officers after he was transferred to a prison facility, (15) told doctors that “something uncontrollable led him to sexually reoffend” and that he would have eventually killed someone if he had not been caught, and (16) exposed himself to female staff and made abusive comments to them after he was again committed to Atascadero State Hospital.
Despite defendant’s history of numerous violent sex offenses, Dr. Donaldson opined there was insufficient evidence to establish that defendant had a mental disorder making it likely he would continue to commit such offenses if he were released from custody. Donaldson explained, the “thing that makes it a mental disorder is that the person is driven to something they [sic] don’t want to do, and they [szc] feel bad about it and it’s cycling, because of the cycling of the urges with the guilt and so forth.” Because he saw no evidence of such “cycling,” Donaldson opined that defendant’s behavior was not evidence of a mental disorder; rather, “[w]hat you have evidence of is criminal behavior.” As for defendant’s conduct and comments after being placed in custody, Donaldson testified that although “[w]e make a lot out of sexual innuendos,” defendant’s remarks and conduct simply reflected anger or, perhaps, misguided “humor.”
The conduct of the defendants in the three other SYPA cases, and Dr. Donaldson’s opinion testimony in those cases, were as follows:
A person (1) molested an 11-year-old boy and was committed to a mental hospital as a “sexual psychopath,” (2) molested a 12-year-old boy after being released from the mental hospital, (3) attempted to sodomize another 12-year-old boy, (4) abducted a boy and sodomized him in the basement of a church, (5) sodomized another boy and was committed to prison, (6) sodomized and orally copulated a 16-year-old developmentally disabled boy after being released from prison, and was again incarcerated, and (7) sodomized and orally copulated a 15-year-old boy after being released from incarceration. Opining that the person did not have a mental disorder which resulted in his sex crimes, Dr. Donaldson explained there was insufficient evidence that the person had been unable to control his sexually dangerous behavior; rather, in Donaldson’s view, the person simply “chooses to do whatever he wants to do.”
Another person admitted molesting 20 to 25 boys over a period of 20 years. Opining there was insufficient evidence that the person was a pedophile or had some other mental disorder which resulted in the sex crimes, Dr. Donaldson explained that the conduct simply “indicated” “criminal behavior and . . . doesn’t identify mental disorder.”
*461The third person (1) raped a woman, while armed with a screwdriver, when she was at home with her 16-month-old daughter, (2) attempted to rape another woman while armed with a screwdriver, (3) attacked a woman in a parking lot with a knife and raped her, for which he was committed to prison, and (4) lured a seven-year-old girl into his house and raped her after he was released from prison. Dr. Donaldson opined that the person did not have a mental disorder which resulted in the sex crimes. Thus, the prosecutor inquired, “no amount of criminal activity creates a mental disorder?” and “[djoesn’t matter whether it was one sex offense or a thousand sex offenses, that by itself does not create a mental disorder . . . ?” Donaldson replied, “That’s correct____”
Under the circumstances of this case, the relevancy of the aforesaid cross-examination was not dependent upon there being other expert testimony contradicting Dr. Donaldson’s opinions about the defendants in the three other SVPA cases.
First, the prosecutor presented expert opinion testimony in this case discrediting Dr. Donaldson’s theory that repeated acts of violent sexual misconduct are insufficient to establish that a person has a mental disorder making the person a danger to the health and safety of others in that the person is likely to engage in sexually violent behavior. Therefore, the jurors had a basis, founded upon the expert testimony in this case, to conclude that Dr. Donaldson’s opinions in the other three cases were meritless and demonstrated his bias to profit by testifying as a defense expert in SVPA cases. Stated another way, because Dr. Donaldson’s theory in the other cases was the same as his theory in this case, it was unnecessary to introduce contrary expert opinion regarding the persons in the other cases.
Second, criminal conduct can be circumstantial evidence that the person has a mental disorder that causes the behavior. The fact that normal people do not forcibly rape adult women and young girls or forcibly sodomize and orally copulate young boys is not so beyond the understanding of lay persons to preclude jurors from considering the facts of the prior cases, along with the contrary expert opinion in this case, to resolve whether Dr. Donaldson is biased in favor of sexually violent predators in order to profit from the giving of his expert opinion in such cases.
Third, the facts of the three prior cases were relevant to put into perspective Dr. Donaldson’s opinions in those cases and, thus, to assist the jurors in assessing the prosecutor’s argument that Donaldson’s opinions were illogical and motivated not by principle, but by personal profit.
*462Accordingly, in my view, the trial court correctly permitted the prosecutor to pursue this line of cross-examination.
In all other respects, I concur in the majority’s analysis and in the affirmance of the judgment.
A petition for a rehearing was denied July 11, 2007, and on July 10, 2007, the opinion was modified to read as printed above. Appellant’s petition for review by the Supreme Court was denied September 25, 2007, S154695.