Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
APPEAL from the Superior Court of Riverside County Super. Ct. No. SWF023128. Michele D. Levine, Judge. Affirmed.
Michael Anthony Hernandez, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Gary W. Schons, Assistant Attorney General, Jeffrey J. Koch and Marissa Bejarano, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
OPINION
RAMIREZ, P. J.
Defendant and appellant Susan Lynn Gingrich was charged with grand theft (Pen. Code, § 487), and convicted by a jury of the lesser included offense of petty theft (Pen. Code, § 488). She contends the trial court abused its discretion in admitting evidence of her poverty. We affirm.
BACKGROUND
On March 29, 2007, defendant was observed towing a “big ship cable” down a gravel road with her truck. The witness who observed the truck drove past her and then noticed that the cable was one of the cables he and the victim keep on their properties for fire abatement work. The chain on the gate to the victim’s property had been cut, and the cable had been cutting a big groove in the road starting on the other side of the gate. The witness turned around and caught up to defendant’s truck and confronted defendant and her passenger, who claimed to have found the cable on the road. The witness told them to wait for the police. They did not wait. However, the witness was able to write down the license plate number. Defendant’s truck bed had “a lot of stuff” in it, including windows and equipment. The witness may have originally told the police he saw a generator, but at trial he could not clearly remember a generator; instead he thought he had seen what could have been a generator but could also have been a compressor. The cable was later found in front of another neighbor’s house further down the street.
A deputy responded to the witness’s call; he met the victim who told the deputy that a generator was missing and that the cable belonged to him. The witness also told the deputy about the cable and about observing a generator in the back of the truck. When the deputy located defendant, her truck bed contained a window, tires, scrap metal, and tools—but a generator was not located.
The victim testified that after meeting with the police he checked his property and found a lock cut on a metal building located on his property and that two generators, a scooter, and numerous air powered tools were missing from the building. He was also missing a used bay window that had been stored outside under a tarp.
Prior to receiving any testimony at trial, defendant argued that testimony concerning where she had been located by law enforcement, described as a “transient camp” in the police report, would be prejudicial without being probative because it could “make the jury think [defendant is] a hobo or a tramp....” The court decided that the term “transient” was not objectionable but ordered that the term “transient camp” not be used because while “ ‘transient’ is probably a less loaded term than ‘homeless,’ ” combining “transient” and “camp” “drummed up the old adage of [a] ‘hobo’ kind of a visual.” Instead, the trial court indicated that the officers could describe “a place where people don’t necessarily live for long periods of time or are transient from one location to another.”
The deputy testified that he located defendant and her truck several hours after the incident at “a makeshift homeless camp area where a lot of homeless people live.” He further described the area as being a very large property with a couple of structures, numerous trees and tree lines, broken down camper trailers, tents, broken down cars, and quite a few people living there. Outside the presence of the jury, defendant moved for a mistrial, but was denied because the testimony only indicated that defendant was found at the homeless camp and not that she was staying or sleeping at the camp. The trial court also thought that the error was not an intentional violation of its order, and that after the use of the term “homeless camp” the deputy gave a description of the area “that did comport with what the Court had indicated would be appropriate.” Additionally, the trial court thought that instructing the jury to disregard “would cause more prejudice than it would cure the situation” and that the information as to the location was “relevant, not to the issue of criminality, but [as to] the lack of finding of the property at the location” because “it could have been given to or sold to someone at that location.”
Before the examination of the deputy resumed, the People sought to clarify whether they could have the deputy testify as to defendant’s self-reported unemployment as well as the possibility that defendant was staying at the transient camp. The trial court allowed information as to defendant’s unemployment to be elicited as being probative of motive, and permitted evidence of the transient location as being relevant to the sale or disposal of unrecovered items. The deputy later testified that he did not recall asking defendant about her employment status, but that on his report he wrote “unemployed” in the business address field, and that such information would have been obtained from defendant.
STANDARD OF REVIEW
Claims of error in admitting evidence are reviewed under the abuse of discretion standard. (People v. Guerra (2006) 37 Cal.4th 1067, 1113.) “Under this standard, a trial court’s ruling will not be disturbed, and reversal of the judgment is not required, unless the trial court exercised its discretion in an arbitrary, capricious, or patently absurd manner that resulted in a manifest miscarriage of justice. [Citation.]” (Ibid.)
DISCUSSION
Defendant contends that the trial court erred in admitting evidence of her poverty, and that admitting such evidence was prejudicial. In particular, defendant challenges the admission of evidence that she was located at a homeless camp and was unemployed.
Evidence of a defendant’s poverty is inadmissible to prove motive in theft and robbery cases. (See People v. Cornwell (2005) 37 Cal.4th 50, 96, overruled on other grounds in People v. Doolin (2009) 45 Cal.4th 390, 421, fn. 22.) The “risk of causing suspicion of indigent persons generally outweighs the probative value of such evidence.” (People v. Cornwell, at p. 96.) Although it may seem logically relevant, “ ‘it would prove too much against too many. [Citation.]’ ” (People v. Carrillo (2004) 119 Cal.App.4th 94, 102.) The “ ‘Lack of money gives a person an interest in having more. But so does desire for money, without poverty. A rich man’s greed is as much a motive to steal as a poor man’s poverty. Proof of either, without more, is likely to amount to a great deal of unfair prejudice with little probative value.’ ” (Ibid.) The general rule against admitting evidence of financial status to show motive in theft cases has some exceptions, such as eliminating explanations for sudden wealth after a theft and refuting claims by a defendant that they did not need money. (People v. Koontz (2002) 27 Cal.4th 1041, 1076.) Reversal is required if the introduction of evidence regarding poverty was erroneous and if, under People v. Watson (1956) 46 Cal.2d 818, 836, “it is reasonably probable the defendant would have obtained a more favorable result had the evidence been excluded.” (Carrillo,at p. 103.)
The evidence of defendant’s unemployment was expressly admitted for purposes of showing defendant’s motive. The evidence of defendant being located at a homeless or transient camp was not admitted to show motive, but was admitted because the trial court thought it was relevant to showing why the stolen property had not been recovered. Accordingly, the trial court erred in admitting the evidence of defendant’s unemployment, but did not abuse its discretion in admitting evidence of where defendant was apprehended. However, it is not reasonably probable a more favorable result would have been obtained. While defendant raised reasonable doubt as to whether she had taken the additional items the victim claimed were missing, and thus the jury found only petty theft and not grand theft, there was nothing contravening the witness’s testimony that he observed the groove in the road, created by defendant towing the cable, starting behind the gate to the defendant’s property.
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.
We concur: HOLLENHORST, J., MILLER, J.