 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to DUI Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
People v. Kraft8/10/2000
itigating factor broadly permits a defendant to present evidence of "any other circumstance which extenuates the gravity of the crime even though it is not a legal excuse for the crime" (§ 190.3, factor (k)). Defendant primarily asserts the evidence he sought to present was relevant to Rabbi Beerman's credibility because his views were made by some unspecified means to appear out of the mainstream of Jewish thinking. (Cf. People v. Mickle (1991) 54 Cal.3d 140, 196 [questions seeking to elicit a partisan expert's philosophical views on capital punishment might disclose some bias bearing on the expert's credibility as a witness in the penalty phase].) Assuming the trial court erred in sustaining the prosecutor's relevancy objection, however, defendant suffered no prejudice. After testifying to his belief defendant should not be executed, the rabbi stated his Jewish faith confirmed him in the conviction that capital punishment is a violation of God's law. The jury therefore could infer that Judaism disapproves of the death penalty, and to have explored the question further would not particularly have assisted the jury. We see no reasonable possibility the jury would have returned a more favorable verdict had the rabbi been permitted to testify more fully concerning Judaism's attitude toward the death penalty. (People v. Brown, supra, 46 Cal.3d at pp. 446-448.)
d. Exclusion of defendant's post-arrest writings
Through the testimony of defense investigator Ramsay, the defense sought to have admitted into evidence letters written by defendant to others during his incarceration in the Orange County jail pending his trial. Jail authorities had intercepted and copied the letters and then disclosed them to the defense during discovery. The prosecution objected to the admission of the letters on grounds of hearsay, and the trial court questioned their relevancy as well. The defense asserted the letters were not hearsay, in that they were offered not for the truth of the matters asserted therein but to show the defendant "as a human being and a concern he has for other people and the concern for the welfare and sensitivity to other people's problems and issues." The prosecution characterized the letters as essentially "telling all of his friends that he didn't do it"; the defense contended the letters stood for more than that. The trial court viewed the letters as "one hundred percent self-serving hearsay" and found them unreliable, possibly having been written for presentation in the penalty phase. Accordingly, the court sustained the prosecutor's objection, but ruled the defense could introduce any poetry or drawings defendant had produced.
We conclude the trial court did not abuse its discretion in so ruling. The letters were indeed hearsay, in that they possessed no probative value apart from the truth or sincerity of their contents. The trial court also reasonably could have entertained questions regarding their reliability, given the circumstances in which they were composed. In People v. Harris (1984) 36 Cal.3d 36, 70, this court concluded the proponent of penalty phase evidence, consisting of poetry composed by the defendant, had the burden of showing it was reliable or trustworthy. We noted the defendant in that case had previously written poetry and the poems he sought to introduce had been seized when he was extradited to Kansas (and thus evidently had not been disseminated to potential witnesses). Comparable circumstances were not shown to exist in the present case. Indeed, the record contains a suggestion that defendant, during his pretrial incarceration, was concerned to assemble a persuasive case-in-mitigation: A jail correctional officer testified that, in a conversation with defenda
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 California DUI Attorneys
DUI Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to DUI Lawyers in your area.
|
|