In re Fernando R. 3/1/06 CA6

State: California

Court: 1st District Court of Appeal 1st District Court of Appeal

Docket No: H028851

Case Date: 05/24/2006

Preview:Filed 3/1/06

CERTIFIED FOR PUBLICATION

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA SIXTH APPELLATE DISTRICT

In re FERNANDO R., a Person Coming Under the Juvenile Court Law.

H028851 (Monterey County Super.Ct.No. J39804)

THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. FERNANDO R., Defendant and Appellant. Since March 2004, courts across the country have attempted to apply the United States Supreme Court's landmark decision in Crawford v. Washington (2004) 541 U.S. 36 (Crawford) in thousands of cases potentially implicating the Sixth Amendment right of confrontation. Crawford--a "case [that] may fairly be characterized as a revolutionary decision in the law of evidence" (People v. Pantoja (2004) 122 Cal.App.4th 1, 9)--held that an out-of-court "testimonial" statement of an absent witness is admissible at trial "only where the declarant is unavailable, and only where the defendant has had a prior opportunity to cross-examine." (Crawford, supra, at p. 59, fn. omitted.) The late Chief Justice Rehnquist lamented (prophetically) that the court's decision "casts a mantle of uncertainty over future [federal and state] criminal trials" (id. at p. 69 (conc. opn. of Rehnquist, C.J.)), and that the majority's reluctance to define "testimonial" left federal

and state prosecutors temporarily without answers as to what types of statements would be deemed "testimonial" under the new rule announced in Crawford. (Id. at pp. 75-76.) Appellate courts (post-Crawford) have utilized a number of different tests and criteria to define "testimonial" in addressing claims that the admission of an unavailable witness's hearsay statement violated a defendant's constitutional right of confrontation. We are required here to determine whether a robbery victim's account of the crime given to the police in the field immediately following the commission of the crime was a testimonial statement. In March 2005,1 Fernando R., a minor, was alleged to have committed a robbery (violation of Pen. Code,

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