CALIFORNIA EVIDENCE: CIVIL AND CRIMINAL
...Relevance
......Demonstrative Evidence
.........Victim Impact Evidence
............Admissibility of Victim Impact Evid.
 16 Cards On This Topic:
  • No error at penalty phase in allowing VI evidence re noncapital crimes; as in capital crimes, VI evidence establishes the unique loss resulting from a murder and counteracts D’s mitigating evidence.
  • Supreme Ct. won't impose arbitrary bar of victim impact Ws per V as the number needed to accurately portray effects of D's actions will vary by case, and the trial court has discretion to control excesses by excluding cumulative and irrelevant testimony.
  • Testimony by victims of D's prior crimes about how his crimes affected their lives properly admitted victim impact evidence and did not violate 8th. Amend.
  • Trial court did not err when it excluded portion of doctor's testimony re effect D's execution would have on his children.
  • Trial court did not err in refusing to place D's requested limitations on victim-impact evidence.
  • V's husband's suffering and death as victim impact evidence: Circumstances of crime not merely immediate, temporal and spatial, but extend to what surrounds crime materially, morally, or logically.
  • No abuse of discretion in admitting photo of V's husband and sons in football gear as relevant to show husband's efforts to provide a home and happy life for sons after wife's murder.
  • Trial court properly admitted victim impact evidence at penalty phase; many of D’s arguments forfeited as he was actively involved in shaping scope of the testimony and limited his objections to EC 352 issues.
  • Victim impact evidence properly introduced at penalty phase, coming well within permissible limits and typical of the victim impact evidence Supreme Court routinely permits.
  • Knowing victim impact evidence presented at first trial, D could have sought to restrict its admission at 2d trial, or objected—by not so doing, he waived issue on appeal.
  • Generic, nonspecific notice that DA will rely, as aggravating factor, on circumstances of offense (PC 190.3 (a)), fails to give adequate notice he also will present victim impact evidence from surviving family members.
  • Testimony that lid to V's closed casket mistakenly opened, leading people to faint, one falling on opened casket, should have been excluded but D didn't object and it was too remote from any act by D to be relevant to moral culpability.
  • Victim impact evidence in form of testimony by surviving assault victims and murdered officer's family members properly admitted at retrial under PC 190.3 (a) and (b).
  • Daughter's victim impact testimony properly admitted where directly relevant to and highly probative of whether V met with foul play or had disappeared of her own accord.
  • Although victim impact testimony is admissible, the victim's view as to the proper punishment is not.
  • Victim impact evidence admissible under 8th Amendment and Pen. Code §190.3.


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