Court Opinion

ID: 9795699
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:36:34.957355+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:30:24.209902
License: Public Domain

*785KENNARD, J., Concurring and Dissenting.
In this noncapital case, defendant James Daniel Soper was charged with two murders committed four months apart. The trial court denied a pretrial defense motion to sever the murder charges, ruling that evidence of the two homicides would be cross-admissible on the issues of identity and intent even if the charges were tried separately. At the trial, the jury was allowed to consider the evidence of each murder to establish both identity and intent as to the other murder, and it convicted him of both crimes. On defendant’s appeal from the resulting judgment, the Court of Appeal reversed, holding that the two crimes were insufficiently similar for cross-admissibility on the issue of identity, that under Evidence Code section 352 the risk the jury would misuse the evidence to prove identity outweighed its probative value on the issue of intent, that without cross-admissibility the prejudice resulting from joinder outweighed the benefits of joinder, that the trial court therefore had erred in denying the motion to sever, and that this error required reversal of defendant’s conviction. This court granted review.
I join the majority in reversing the Court of Appeal’s judgment. I agree with the majority that the trial court did not err in denying defendant’s motion to sever the charges relating to the murders of George Rigby and James Olson and that joinder of those charges for trial did not result in gross unfairness depriving defendant of due process of law. I agree with the majority that in hypothetical separate trials, evidence of the two murders would have been cross-admissible on the issue of defendant’s identity as the perpetrator of both murders, as well as on the issue of defendant’s intent when he inflicted the blows that killed the two victims.
I write separately because, unlike the majority, I see no reason to assume, in analyzing defendant’s contentions, that evidence of the two murders would not have been cross-admissible on the issue of identity in hypothetical separate trials. (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 778-779.) Nor am I able to conclude, if that assumption is made, that the trial court ruled correctly in denying defendant’s motion for severance or that joinder of the two murder counts for trial did not result in gross unfairness depriving defendant of due process of law.
I
To prove that a defendant committed a charged offense, the prosecution may introduce evidence that the defendant has committed a similar offense, but only if the two crimes shared common features that are sufficiently distinctive to support an inference that the same person committed both. (People v. Ewoldt (1994) 7 Cal.4th 380, 403 [27 Cal.Rptr.2d 646, 867 P.2d 757].) This court has said that for evidence of another crime to be admissible *786on the issue of the perpetrator’s identity, the similarities between the two crimes must be “ ‘so unusual and distinctive as to be like a signature.’ ” (Ibid., quoting 1 McCormick on Evidence (4th ed. 1992) § 190, p. 803.) It must be remembered, however, that it is the combination of features, and not any individual feature, that must be highly distinctive. (See, e.g., People v. Rogers (2006) 39 Cal.4th 826, 852 [48 Cal.Rptr.3d 1, 141 P.3d 135]; People v. Roldan (2005) 35 Cal.4th 646, 706 [27 Cal.Rptr.3d 360, 110 P.3d 289].)
Here, in both the Rigby and the Olson homicides, the victim (1) was a homeless man (2) who was killed at his own campsite (3) while lying on his back (4) by a single blow (5) to the head (6) with a heavy object (7) that the killer both found and left at the scene. Moreover, the killings occurred only two to three miles and four months apart, and defendant’s fingerprints were found at both campsites. Considered separately, none of these features is highly unusual or distinctive; but the many common features, viewed together, form a pattern that is distinctive and unusual enough to be like a signature. Accordingly, in my view, the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it concluded that evidence of the two murders was cross-admissible on the issue of defendant’s identity as the perpetrator of both. Because a lesser degree of similarity is required for cross-admissibility on the issue of intent (People v. Ewoldt, supra, 1 Cal.4th at p. 402), it follows that evidence of the two murders was cross-admissible on that issue as well.
If evidence of two crimes would be fully cross-admissible in separate trials, that circumstance alone is normally sufficient to eliminate any possibility of prejudice from joining the charges for trial. (Alcala v. Superior Court (2008) 43 Cal.4th 1205, 1221 [78 Cal.Rptr.3d 272, 185 P.3d 708]; People v. Carter (2005) 36 Cal.4th 1114, 1154 [32 Cal.Rptr.3d 759, 117 P.3d 476].) This case contains no unusual circumstance that would preclude application of the normal rule. Therefore, the conclusion that evidence of the Rigby and Olson murders would have been fully cross-admissible on the issues of identity and intent in hypothetical separate trials is sufficient to establish both that the trial court did not err in denying defendant’s pretrial severance motion and that the resulting trial on all charges did not result in such gross unfairness as to deny defendant due process of law. On this basis, I join the majority in reversing the Court of Appeal’s judgment and remanding the matter to that court for further proceedings.
II
Rather than taking the simple and direct analytic road I have described, the majority chooses to assume that in hypothetical separate trials of the Rigby *787and Olson murders the prosecution’s evidence against defendant would not have been cross-admissible on the issue of his identity as the perpetrator of those murders. The majority makes this assumption even though it professes to “agree with the People that the evidence appears to be cross-admissible on the issue of identity.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 779.) After making the assumption of non-cross-admissibility, the majority nonetheless concludes, by means of a labored analysis, that the trial court properly denied the severance motion {id. at p. 783) and that the joint trial on these charges, at which the jury was permitted to consider the evidence of each murder in deciding whether defendant committed the other murder, was not grossly unfair to defendant {id. at p. 784). I am not persuaded.
As I have explained, the many common features of the two murders, considered together, were so distinctive and unusual as to strongly support an inference that the same person committed both. If the evidence were not cross-admissible on the issue of the perpetrator’s identity, this powerful inference would produce a correspondingly grave risk that the jury would be unable to obey an instruction not to consider the evidence for this purpose. I am unable to conclude that this grave risk of prejudice to defendant would have been outweighed by the benefits of joinder. For this reason, I question the majority’s conclusion that even if evidence of the two murders were not cross-admissible on the issue of identity, despite their many common features forming a distinctive pattern, it would have been proper for the trial court to deny defendant’s severance motion.1
The majority’s unnecessary and unrealistic assumption that evidence of the two murders was not cross-admissible on the issue of identity would similarly raise grave doubts about the fairness of defendant’s trial because, contrary to the majority’s assumption, the prosecutor at that trial argued to the jury that the many common features of the two murders proved that the same person had committed both, and the trial court’s instructions allowed the jury to use that method of reasoning in determining defendant’s guilt. Had that method of reasoning been impermissible, as it would necessarily have been under the majority’s assumption, the fairness of defendant’s trial would have been seriously compromised. (See People v. Ewoldt, supra, 7 Cal.4th at p. 404 [acknowledging that other-crimes evidence always involves an inherent and substantial risk of prejudice].)
*788Thus, I do not join the majority in its analysis of the issues under review, but, for the reasons I have set forth earlier, I do join the majority in reversing the Court of Appeal’s judgment.

 In concluding that, in the absence of full cross-admissibility, the benefits of joinder would have outweighed the grave risk of prejudice to defendant, the majority cannot rely on the deference that an appellate court would normally give to the trial court’s determination of that issue. Because the trial court concluded, as have I, that evidence of the two murders was fully cross-admissible, it never undertook that weighing process.