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People v. Mayfield1/2/1997
testimony that the prosecution sought to contradict was elicited on direct, not cross-examination. Moreover, that testimony concerned defendant's actions during the time the charged offenses were allegedly committed and the physical setting of those events. Finally, as the trial court recognized, defendant's credibility was of critical importance in this case because of the absence of other eyewitnesses to the shooting of Sergeant Wolfley. Because the videotape could have assisted the jurors in evaluating defendant's testimony, and because it presented minimal risks of undue prejudice to defendant, the trial court committed no error in allowing its admission for purposes of impeachment. (See People v. Sims (1993) 5 Cal. 4th 405, 452 [20 Cal. Rptr. 2d 537, 853 P.2d 992].)
F. Evidence of the Knife
During the prosecution's case-in-chief, certain police officers testified that after the shooting of Sergeant Wolfley they found what they described as a kitchen knife or butcher knife at the northwest corner of the service station, close to a knitted watch cap. Near the end of the prosecution's case-in-chief, during a review of the prosecution's exhibits, the defense objected to admission in evidence of the knife and photographs showing the location of the knife at the service station. The objection was on the grounds that the evidence was irrelevant and that its probative value, if any, was substantially outweighed by the risk of undue prejudice. The prosecutor argued that the jury could reasonably infer that defendant had brought the knife with him to the service station and that Sergeant Wolfley drew his revolver and took a "combat stance" (as Candette Wolfley had described in her testimony) because he saw defendant remove the knife from his pocket. Initially, the trial court overruled the objection and admitted the exhibits in evidence, but it stated that the ruling was "without prejudice" and invited counsel to submit legal authorities bearing on the issue. A few days later, the court reversed itself and excluded the knife on relevance grounds for lack of evidence that the knife had ever been in defendant's possession or had played any role in the commission of the charged offenses. The trial court also excluded photographs showing only the knife. But the trial court denied a defense motion to bar cross-examination of defendant concerning the knife. During cross-examination, defendant denied that he had been carrying any knife, although he admitted ownership of the watch cap found near the knife.
Defendant now contends that evidence concerning the knife--including testimony describing the knife and its location, photographs showing the knife together with other objects, and cross-examination of defendant concerning the knife--should have been excluded as irrelevant and as being substantially more prejudicial than probative. He further contends that failure to exclude this evidence denied him his right under the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution to reliable guilt and penalty determinations in a capital case, and that if consideration of these issues on their merits is barred by his trial counsel's failure to object, then he has been denied his right under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution to the effective assistance of counsel.
We conclude that evidence concerning the knife was relevant and admissible. Evidence is relevant if it has any tendency in reason to prove or disprove a disputed fact at issue. (Evid. Code, § 210; see People v. Edelbacher (1989) 47 Cal. 3d 983, 1015-1016 [254 Cal. Rptr. 586, 766 P.2d 1]; People v. Burgener (1986) 41 Cal. 3d 505, 527 [224 Cal. Rptr. 112, 714 P.2d 1251].) Here, the presence of the knife at the scene o
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