California Court of Appeal Oct 27, 2014 No. E059765Unpublished
Filed 10/27/14 In re K.K. CA4/2
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION TWO
In re K.K., a Person Coming Under the Juvenile Court Law.
THE PEOPLE, E059765 Plaintiff and Respondent, (Super.Ct.No. J249618) v. OPINION K.K.,
Defendant and Appellant.
APPEAL from the Superior Court of San Bernardino County. Erin K. Alexander,
Judge. Affirmed.
Alan S. Yockelson, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and
Appellant.
1
Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General, Julie L. Garland, Assistant Attorney General,
Charles C. Ragland, Scott C. Taylor, and Laura Baggett, Deputy Attorneys General, for
Plaintiff and Respondent.
I
INTRODUCTION
In April 2013, appellant K.K. and his coparticipant, D.S., broke into an apartment
to steal 43 DVDs. They were subsequently convicted of burglary and receiving stolen
property. (Pen. Code, §§ 459, 496.)1
After the jurisdictional hearing, the defense made a motion to dismiss or for a new
trial (§ 1538.5), based on Brady2 error, because the prosecution had not disclosed
pertinent information about one of the responding police officers, Michael Cardenas. The
information about Officer Cardenas relates to his termination in 2004 as an LAPD police
officer. The information was not kept confidential at the trial level where it is generally
described in K.K.’s new trial motion. Therefore, although the parties filed sealed and
redacted appellate briefs, the information is not entitled to protection on appeal.
Nevertheless, we will not republish the specific information in our opinion because it is
not necessary to our disposition.
1 All further statutory references are to the Penal Code unless stated otherwise. 2 Brady v. Maryland (1963) 373 U.S. 83, 87; People v. Salazar (2005) 35 Cal.4th 1031, 1042-1043.
2
On appeal, K.K. contends the juvenile court erred when it denied his motion based
on the prosecution’s discovery violation. However, K.K. does not establish he suffered
any prejudice as a result. The trial court found the information about Officer Cardenas
was not material and that, even when the testimony of Officer Cardenas was disregarded,
sufficient evidence proved the offenses beyond a reasonable doubt. The trial court
declared K.K. a ward of the court and granted him probation.
We affirm.
II
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
A. Prosecution Evidence
On April 21, 2013, at approximately 9:30 p.m., Barstow apartment resident, Lakija
McPheters, heard someone trying to break into the apartment next to hers. McPheters’s
daughter, Dyunna Dougal, also heard a noise. Outside her window, she saw a person’s
leg dangling from an awning above their apartment and she heard banging on the wall.
Dougal saw a person—wearing blue and white basketball shorts and a grey sweatshirt—
sitting on the wall outside her apartment and looking up at another person dangling from
the awning. McPheters also saw the person sitting on the wall and she called the police.
Officers Daniel Arthur and Cardenas were dispatched separately to the apartment
complex. The two suspects were described as “Black males,” one wearing blue and
white basketball shorts. Officer Cardenas positioned himself outside the apartment
complex to observe the apartments’ front doors.
3
Two individuals, matching the suspects’ description, descended the stairs near
apartment 14. K.K. wore blue and white basketball shorts and held a stack of DVDs.
One of the boys made eye contact with Officer Cardenas; both immediately turned
around and began quickly walking away. Officer Cardenas alerted Officer Arthur that
the two suspects were headed toward him.
Officer Arthur ordered the boys to the ground. K.K. possessed 43 DVDs. When
Officer Arthur handcuffed K.K., he spontaneously stated that he was trying to return
some DVDs to his friend, Christina, who lived in apartment 14. Neither boy could
provide Christina’s last name and phone number.
The officers then observed a bent window screen on the ground. The window to
apartment 14 was slightly open and displayed handprints. An awning below the second
floor apartments was about nine feet above the ground and difficult for one person to
access alone. The front door of apartment 14 was slightly open without any signs of
forced entry. Inside the apartment Officer Arthur found a DVD with packaging similar to
the DVDs in K.K.’s possession.
Shayna Bradford, the occupant of apartment 14, was out of town that evening but
she had locked the apartment before departing, except for a screened window which she
left open about two to three inches. Bradford testified that she kept hundreds of bootleg
DVDs—which she had received from her father— in the room with the open window.
Bradford identified the 43 DVDs recovered from K.K. as being hers. Finally, Bradford
testified that no one named Christina lived with her.
4
B. Defense Evidence
Two different women testified they were outside the courtroom when they
overheard a conversation between Bradford and the deputy district attorney, Kit Davis, in
which Bradford told Davis that she did not want to testify and that nothing was missing
from her home. The second woman admitted she was not certain Bradford actually stated
that nothing was missing but she believed Bradford had said she did not want to testify.
K.K. testified he was walking home from the residence of his friend, Crystal,
when he was stopped by Officer Arthur. The DVDs belonged to Crystal. K.K. denied
taking the movies from apartment 14. On cross-examination, K.K. admitted he was
wearing blue and white striped basketball shorts and a grey sweatshirt that evening. He
could not remember where he or Crystal lived in the complex. He denied that he had
walked down the apartment stairs, as Officer Cardenas had testified.
C. Rebuttal Evidence
After K.K. was taken into custody, he did not mention a friend named Crystal,
only Christina, and he did not claim to be uncertain about which apartment he was
coming from when he was confronted by the officers. Bradford had admitted some
DVDs were taken but she did not care because she had already watched them.
D. Motion for New Trial
Shortly after the jurisdictional hearing in July 2013, the prosecutor learned there
was information about Officer Cardenas that had not been disclosed to K.K. K.K. made a
motion to dismiss, or for new trial, based on a Brady violation. The People conceded that
5
the information should have been provided to K.K. before the jurisdictional hearing.
However, the People explained that—because different computer systems exist in the
District Attorney’s office for the adult and juvenile units—the information about Officer
Cardenas was unavailable on the juvenile unit’s system. The prosecutor did not learn
about the information until after the jurisdictional hearing, at which point the prosecutor
asked the juvenile court to provide the sealed information to the defense.
The juvenile court found the nondisclosure was inadvertent. K.K. argued that, had
he known about Officer Cardenas, he would have conducted his defense differently,
placing more emphasis on the issue of credibility. The People countered that even
without Officer Cardenas’s testimony, there was sufficient evidence to prove beyond a
reasonable doubt that K.K. and his coparticipant committed the offenses. The court
announced it would order Officer Cardenas’s testimony stricken and review the
remaining evidence to determine whether K.K. was prejudiced by the failure to disclose
the impeachment evidence.
Ultimately, the juvenile court denied K.K.’s motion. The court found the
prosecution’s failure to disclose evidence was not willful. Out of an abundance of
caution, the court struck any reference to Officer Cardenas’s testimony. The court
acknowledged that Officer Cardenas could have been impeached but the court concluded
that information dating from 2004 would not have strongly impaired Officer Cardenas’s
credibility. However, the court found there was enough evidence to support the true
findings as to burglary and receipt of stolen property: “I will indicate that my findings
6
are based on the testimony and, specifically, what the court was most convinced by was
the timing. That the phone calls to 911 were still going on while the second officer was
detaining the minors in the area of the burglary. He detained them. The proceeds from
the burglary [were] on the one minor. The other minor made at least a vague attempt to
run. And I am convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that there is sufficient evidence to
believe that each of them have committed the crime.”
III
MOTION FOR NEW TRIAL
K.K. argues the juvenile court erred when it denied his motion for new trial and
that the juvenile court’s decision to strike testimony was insufficient to remedy the
prejudice he suffered. In People v. Salazar, supra, 35 Cal.4th at pages 1043 and 1050,
the court explained a defendant is required to show that, absent the discovery violation,
he would have received a more favorable outcome: “‘There are three components of a
true Brady violation: The evidence at issue must be favorable to the accused, either
because it is exculpatory, or because it is impeaching; that evidence must have been
suppressed by the State, either willfully or inadvertently; and prejudice must have
ensued.’ [Citation.] Prejudice, in this context, focuses on ‘the materiality of the evidence
to the issue of guilt and innocence.’ [Citations.] Materiality, in turn, requires more than
a showing that the suppressed evidence would have been admissible [citation], that the
absence of the suppressed evidence made conviction ‘more likely’ [citation], or that using
the suppressed evidence to discredit a witness’s testimony ‘might have changed the
7
outcome of the trial’ (ibid.). A defendant instead ‘must show a “reasonable probability of
a different result.”’ [Citation.]”
Generally, impeachment evidence is considered material if the witness at issue
supplied the only evidence linking the defendant to the crime but not if the testimony of
the witness is corroborated by other testimony. (People v. Salazar, supra, 35 Cal.4th at
p. 1050.) Reviewing courts also consider how nondisclosure affected the defense
investigation and trial strategy. (People v. Zambrano (2007) 41 Cal.4th 1082, 1132,
disapproved of on other grounds by People v. Doolin (2009) 45 Cal.4th 390, 421.)
Here, the prosecutor conceded the impeachment evidence was inadvertently
suppressed. However, the suppression did not cause prejudice to K.K. Officer Cardenas
was not the only witness whose testimony implicated K.K. The two neighbors and the
other officer testified they saw K.K. and D.S. at the scene. Officer Arthur testified about
the condition of apartment 14. Bradford testified about the condition of her apartment
and her ownership of the DVDs. K.K. himself blurted out incriminating admissions
when he was being handcuffed. Even without Officer Cardenas’s testimony, sufficient
corroborating evidence established that K.K. had broken into Bradford’s apartment and
taken the DVDs.
Furthermore, the juvenile court employed the three-prong Brady analysis and
assessed the evidence in the same manner as a reviewing court: “A defendant . . . ‘must
show a “reasonable probability of a different result [had the evidence been admitted].”’”
(People v. Salazar, supra, 35 Cal.4th at p. 1043.) Here, by striking the testimony of
8
Officer Cardenas, the juvenile court gave K.K. the benefit of the doubt, especially
because the impeachment evidence would have had limited impact on the issue of
credibility.
IV
DISPOSITION
No reasonable probability exists that the outcome of the jurisdictional hearing
would have been different. The juvenile court properly denied the motion for a new trial.
We affirm the judgment.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS
CODRINGTON J.
We concur:
RAMIREZ P. J.
McKINSTER J.
9
AI Brief
AI-generated · verify before citing
Holding. The court held that the juvenile court properly denied the motion for a new trial because the prosecution's inadvertent failure to disclose impeachment evidence regarding a police officer did not result in prejudice, as there was sufficient independent evidence to support the conviction.
Issues
Did the prosecution's failure to disclose impeachment evidence regarding a police officer constitute a prejudicial Brady violation?
Did the juvenile court err in denying the motion for a new trial after striking the officer's testimony?
Disposition. Affirmed
Quotations verified verbatim against the opinion
“Prejudice, in this context, focuses on ‘the materiality of the evidence to the issue of guilt and innocence.’”
“A defendant instead ‘must show a “reasonable probability of a different result.”’”
“No reasonable probability exists that the outcome of the jurisdictional hearing would have been different.”