California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Arbee, A144931 (Cal. App. 2016):
Here, the record does not establish the existence of an "ongoing emergency" at the time the statements were made. The victim was safely home and away from the defendant. Defendant and the two other suspects were in custody, their weapons in police possession. Although the statements were not made at the police station, they were not "informal" in the sense used in prior cases. (See e.g. Michigan v. Bryant, supra, 562 U.S. at p. 366 [questioning that "occurred in an exposed, public area, prior to the arrival of emergency medical services, and in a disorganized fashion" supports finding that statements were not testimonial].) Most importantly, the officer repeatedly emphasized that he was dispatched to the victim's home to transport the victim to the police station so that he could identify the defendant. Under such circumstances, the victim's statements were testimonial and their admission erroneous.
Defendant also contends the court erred in admitting his recorded jailhouse phone calls as they were irrelevant and extremely prejudicial. To the extent that defendant admitted in the recorded conversations that he had taken the hat and was carrying a firearm, this evidence undoubtedly was relevant and admissible. Although the recordings are littered with obscenities and racial epithets, the language is not so shocking or offensive as to make the trial court's admission of those recordings an abuse of discretion. (People v. Hines (1997) 15 Cal.4th 997, 1044-1045.) The court's failure to redact other statements in which defendant expressed anger towards the victim and the bus driver for reporting his crime to the police is more questionable. Defendant repeatedly discusses in the recorded conversations whether the bus driver or the victim called the police or "snitched." In one of the recorded conversations he states, referring to the bus driver, "I always see his bitch ass" and "he better hope I get a car by the time I get out." In response, the other participant in the call says, "Yeah and OR you out. Hope them fucking guns is all clean, no bodies on that thing." With respect to the victim, defendant suggested that they will know if he's the snitch because "If he did he's going to
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