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People v. Mendoza12/9/2002
ct and the possible revelation of the fact of Mendoza's prior convictions was announced, the court, on its own motion, received testimony from the jury concerning the possibility of improper influence on jury deliberation. The form of the court's inquiry consisted of a question directed to each individual juror that simply asked whether the juror was influenced by the information contained in the instruction inadvertently left on the juror's seat. Mendoza contends this form of questioning was impermissible under the provisions of Evidence Code 1150. While we agree the court's question was impermissible, the issue has been waived and the error is harmless in any event.
Evidence Code section 1150 limits the scope of evidence the court may receive in its inquiry into the validity of the verdict. By its terms, this section prohibits the admission of testimony reflecting jurors' thought processes. (People v. Sutter (1982) 134 Cal.App.3d 806, 836.) This rule, however, is a rule of evidentiary exclusion and, like all such rules, its violation is only cognizable on appeal where a timely and specific objection was raised at the trial level. (Evid. Code, § 353; People v. Hill (1992) 3 Cal.App.4th 16, 33 at fn. 5 (overruled on other grounds in People v. Nesler (1997) 16 Cal.4th 561, 582).) Here, there was no objection at the trial level. Consequently, Mendoza may not raise the issue of erroneous admission of evidence of jurors' mental processes for the first time on appeal.
Mendoza attempts to circumvent the application of waiver to this issue by again attempting to characterize the issue as one of jury instruction. As above, we reject this characterization. Here, the issue is plainly evidentiary as it deals solely with the propriety of admission of evidence of the states of jurors' minds. The doctrine of waiver is therefore applicable as discussed previously.
Even if the issue were cognizable on appeal, the trial court's error would be harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. The rule of exclusion contained in Evidence Code section 1150 exists to preserve the stability of verdicts, prevent fraud and the harassment of jurors, as well as preventing intrusion by courts upon the freedom of juries to deliberate freely. (People v. Hutchinson (1969) 71 Cal.2d 342, 348; People v. Orchard (1971) 17 Cal.App.3d 568, 574.) In the present case, the court's error does not give rise to any concern that any of the evils the statute is intended to prevent were, in fact, realized.
The jury's deliberations were concluded and the court's simple question as to the possibility of improper influence cannot be held improperly to have unsettled the verdict, perpetuated a fraud or unnecessarily intruded on the then-concluded deliberative process. Although the court should have chosen a different line of questions to explore the possibility of juror bias, the questioning that was conducted was certainly harmless.
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.
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