People v. Kraft8/10/2000
at the nature of the list should be determined based on an examination of all the entries; the court concluded instead that the focus properly lay only on those assertedly relating to the charged counts. At the conclusion of the hearing, the trial court ruled the 13 entries admissible. In the abstract, the court acknowledged, the entries "mean nothing," but in the context of the evidence on the corresponding counts, the prosecution's interpretation of the list as a death list was reasonable. The court declared it would leave it to the jury to give the list whatever weight it thought appropriate. The trial court further concluded, pursuant to Evidence Code section 1220, that the entries were not subject to exclusion as hearsay. Finally, the court ruled that the probative value of the list outweighed any prejudice flowing from its admission.
We conclude the trial court properly overruled each of the defense objections to the list.
First, the trial court could, in the exercise of sound discretion, conclude the list was relevant. It had a tendency in reason to prove a disputed fact of consequence to the case (Evid. Code, § 210), namely defendant's awareness of certain characteristics of the charged murders. For example, the prosecution argued the entry "MC HB TATTOO" referred to victim Loggins, who was last seen by his fellow Marines at the pier in Huntington Beach, and who had a large tattoo; "MARINE CARSON," the prosecution contended, referred to victim Keith, a Marine who was last seen alive by his girlfriend in Carson.
Indeed, the conclusion is strengthened by examination of certain entries strongly suggesting some of the uncharged murders, evidence of which was later presented in the penalty phase. "PORTLAND HAWAII," the prosecution asserted, meant Lance Taggs, a resident of Tigard, Oregon, who previously had lived in Hawaii. Taggs carried a bag with "Kaneohe, Hawaii" printed on it. His body, clad in a shirt bearing the words "Local Motion" and "Hawaii," was found on December 9, 1982, beside a road a half-mile west of Interstate 5 between Wilson and Canby in Oregon. Defendant claimed reimbursement from his employer for travel expenses incurred in Portland, Oregon, on December 8 and 9, 1982; Taggs's distinctive nunchakus were recovered from defendant's garage after his arrest. "PORTLAND RESERVE" referred to Anthony Silveira, a member of the National Guard Reserve, whose decomposed body was found off Boon's Ferry Road near Interstate 5 just west of Hubbard, Oregon. The method by which Silveira was killed closely fit the pattern of defendant's California offenses. Silveira had owned an army jacket with his name sewn on it, similar to one acquaintances of defendant testified he possessed around the time Silveira disappeared on December 4, 1982. Silveira's jacket was found in a lobby of the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on December 8, 1982, some 12 to 15 feet from the room in which defendant was then staying.
Contrary to the trial court, we see no impropriety in gleaning the significance of the document as a whole, or of certain entries, partly in light of other entries not admitted in the guilt phase. As the Attorney General argues, the fundamental issue in determining admissibility was whether the document constituted a list of murder victims, and in answering that question the trial court properly could consider all available information pertaining to the list. If no other entry, besides the 13 assertedly relating to the charged victims, could be associated with a homicide victim, the trial court could have considered that fact as suggesting the document was not, in fact, a list of defendant's victims. By the same token, however, the fact the prosecut
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