Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County No. BA316313 Ruth Ann Kwan, Judge.
Robert Bryzman, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Pamela C. Hamanaka, Assistant Attorney General, Theresa A. Patterson and Eric E. Reynolds, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
BIGELOW, J.
The trial court found Matthew Lewis guilty of possession of cocaine base and possession of an opium pipe. We affirm.
FACTS
On January 28, 2007, Los Angeles Police Department Officers Brian Inderland and Bruno Guzman Perez were on patrol in the downtown area when they saw Lewis sitting on a public sidewalk and drinking from a can of “211 Steel Reserve,” a brand of malt liquor or beer. The officers arrested Lewis for a misdemeanor violation of Los Angeles Municipal Code section 41.27 (“drinking in public”), and, during an ensuing search, found an opium pipe and a rock of cocaine base in Lewis’s pants pockets.
In February 2007, the People filed a complaint charging Lewis with one felony count of possession of cocaine base and one misdemeanor count of possession of an opium pipe. (Health & Saf. Code, §§ 11350, subd. (a); 11364, subd. (a).)
The information also alleged that Lewis had been convicted multiple times for prior drug offenses. The prior conviction allegations were dismissed at trial when the People were unable to proceed, and are not an issue in the current appeal.
In March 2007, Lewis filed a motion seeking discovery of the officers’ personnel records. (See Pitchess v. Superior Court (1974) 11 Cal.3d 531 (Pitchess); and see also Evid. Code, § 1043 et seq.) On March 28, 2007, the trial court found good cause for an in camera review of the officers’ personnel records regarding “the areas of false reporting, fabrication of charges, fabrication of evidence, fabrication of reasonable suspicion, fabrication of probable cause, illegal search and seizure, [and] false arrests.” When the trial court asked defense counsel whether “perjury” was an issue, the answer was, yes, but the court found “there was no allegation of perjury,” and denied the motion to that extent. A moment later, the court retired to chambers with the custodian of records for the police department, following which, the court ordered the disclosure of a report of excessive force lodged against Officer Guzman, and two reports lodged against Officer Inderland, one involving a claim of arrest without cause and the other involving a claim of issuing a traffic ticket without cause.
On April 20, 2007, the charges against Lewis were tried to trial court at a one-day proceeding that came down to a truth contest between Officer Inderland and Mr. Lewis. The officer’s testimony established the facts summarized above. Lewis testified that he had imbibed a can of 211 Steel Reserve earlier in the day of his arrest, but claimed that he had not been drinking at the moment the officers approached him. Lewis admitted that he did have a pipe in his possession, but denied that he had any drugs in his possession. According to Lewis, he had possessed some rock cocaine earlier in the day, but he had already consumed it before the officers arrested him. The court found Lewis guilty as charged.
On May 5, 2007, the court suspended imposition of sentence and placed Lewis on formal probation for three years on condition that he serve 180 days in county jail (with credit for 95 days of actual custody and 46 days of good time), and that he complete a drug treatment program.
DISCUSSION
Lewis contends his convictions must be reversed because the trial court abused its discretion when it denied discovery of evidence of past instances of “perjury” by Officer Inderland and his partner. We disagree.
A. The Motion
Lewis’s Pitchess motion asked for all complaints against the two officers relating to aggressive behavior, excessive force, racial and sexual orientation bias, coercive conduct, violation of constitutional rights, fabrication of charges, illegal searches, false arrests, false police reports, perjury, and dishonesty. In a supporting declaration, Lewis’s attorney offered the following statement in an attempt to establish good cause for the requested discovery:
“Based on information and belief, at trial the defense expects to show that the charges against Mr. Lewis are false, manufactured, and/or manipulated to support his arrest. The defense expects that the evidence adduced at trial will establish the following: That [the officers] deliberately lied in the police report regarding Mr. Lewis’s possession of an alcoholic beverage so that they could fabricate probable cause to arrest Mr. Lewis and conduct a search incident to arrest. The evidence will show that Mr. Lewis was merely sitting on the sidewalk when the officers saw him and decided to search him. When Mr. Lewis protested his random search and harassment, the officers became irate at Mr. Lewis for mouthing off [about] his rights to be free from illegal search and seizures. The evidence will show that Mr. Lewis neither possessed [an] alcoholic beverage nor did he drink from such a beverage. The evidence will show that for ‘mouthing off,’ the officers planted the pipe and cocaine on Mr. Lewis.”
B. The Trial Court’s Guilty Verdicts are not Undermined by Pitchess Error
We review the trial court’s ruling on Lewis’s Pitchess motion through the lens of the abuse of discretion standard. (People v. Samayoa (1997) 15 Cal.4th 795, 827.) This means that we will not assign error to the trial court’s ruling unless Lewis has convinced us on appeal that the trial court’s ruling was arbitrary, capricious or beyond the bounds of reason. (People v. Carbajal (1995) 10 Cal.4th 1114, 1121.) After reviewing Lewis’s arguments on appeal, we are not instilled with such sentiments.
First, when the trial court indicated that it saw “no allegation” of perjury, defense counsel responded, “No. I believe that false police report will cover that.” We simply cannot find the trial court acted beyond the bounds of reason when it followed defense counsel’s lead. Second, assuming we agreed with Lewis that his Pitchess report showed the required “logical link” between his proposed defense on the one hand and “perjury” on the other hand, or, in other words, assuming we agreed that reports of “perjury” are always discoverable because they are always relevant to truthfulness, we find it was not beyond the bounds of reason for the trial court in Lewis’s current case to limit its inquiry into reports of false arrests. (See Warrick v. Superior Court (2005) 35 Cal.4th 1011, 1019-1021; and see also City of Santa Cruz v. Municipal Court (1989) 49 Cal.3d 74, 81-86; City of San Jose v. Superior Court (1998) 67 Cal.App.4th 1135, 1146-1147.)
Finally, we have reviewed the reporter’s transcript of the in camera hearing in accord with People v. Samayoa, supra, 15 Cal.4th at p. 827, and we assure Mr. Lewis that the trial court made a very clear record of any adverse reports against the officers, and that there is nothing in the officers’ personnel records to suggest that either of the officers have been involved in a report regarding perjury, and that, apart from the materials which the court ordered to be disclosed, the officers have not otherwise been involved in reports of wrongdoing which may tend to suggest dishonesty.
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.
We concur: RUBIN, Acting P. J., FLIER, J.