California Evidence Code §1235

Petitioners Jefferson Doyle and Richard Wood were arrested together in Tuscarawas County, Ohio, and charged with selling ten pounds of marijuana to William Bonnell, an informant working with the local narcotics unit. The evidence presented at their separate trials, held about one week apart in the Common Pleas Court, was identical in all material respects. Narcotics agents had arranged with Bonnell to set up a purchase using $1,320 collected from the unit, which Bonnell took to a bar in Dover, Ohio, where he met the petitioners. Subsequently, Doyle obtained the marijuana and met Bonnell and Wood at a parking lot in New Philadelphia, Ohio, where the transaction occurred under surveillance by four agents. After discovering they had been paid $430 less than agreed, Doyle and Wood chased Bonnell but were stopped by local police acting on instructions from the agents. Agent Kenneth Beamer arrived, arrested both petitioners, and administered Miranda warnings before a search of the car uncovered the $1,320. At trial, each petitioner testified that Bonnell had framed them by attempting to sell the marijuana to Doyle, who had changed his mind about the quantity, leading Bonnell to throw the money into the car and take the drugs back. During cross-examination, the prosecutor in each trial asked why the petitioner had not told this story to Agent Beamer at the time of arrest, and the trial court overruled defense objections to these questions. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth District affirmed the convictions, and the Supreme Court of Ohio denied further review before the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari.

In January 1967, sixteen-year-old Melvin Porter was arrested for selling marijuana to an undercover police officer. Four days after his arrest, while in the custody of juvenile authorities, Porter told Officer Wade that respondent John Green had supplied him with the marijuana. Porter stated that Green had called him earlier that month, asked him to sell some stuff or grass, and personally delivered a shopping bag containing twenty-nine baggies of marijuana from which Porter made the sale. A week later, Porter testified at Green's preliminary hearing. He again identified Green as his supplier, though he now stated that Green had shown him where to pick up the shopping bag hidden in the bushes at Green's parents' house rather than personally delivering it. Green's counsel, the same attorney who later represented him at trial, conducted extensive cross-examination of Porter at the hearing. At the conclusion of the hearing, Green was charged with furnishing marijuana to a minor. Green's trial took place two months later before a judge sitting without a jury in the Superior Court of San Luis Obispo County. Porter again took the stand as the State's chief witness but proved markedly evasive and uncooperative. He testified that Green had called him and asked him to sell some stuff and that he had obtained twenty-nine baggies of marijuana. Porter claimed he could not remember the events after the phone call because he had taken LSD twenty minutes before Green phoned and the drugs prevented him from distinguishing fact from fantasy. During Porter's direct examination, the prosecutor read excerpts from his preliminary hearing testimony, which were admitted as substantive evidence under California Evidence Code section 1235. Officer Wade also testified about Porter's earlier statement to him. Porter admitted making both prior statements and insisted he had been telling the truth as he then believed it, but he maintained that his current testimony about his inability to remember was also truthful. Green was convicted. The California Court of Appeal reversed the conviction, holding that the use of Porter's prior statements violated the Confrontation Clause. The California Supreme Court affirmed. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari.

On the night of August 30, 1982, eight young boys returning home from a party were confronted by a trio of other boys who demanded money. When the eight boys refused to comply, one member of the trio produced a gun and fired into the larger group, killing one boy and seriously injuring another. When the police arrived, the remaining members of the larger group provided eyewitness accounts of the event and descriptions of the perpetrators. The next evening, two detectives of the Chicago Police Department took 15-year-old Darryl James into custody as a suspect in the shooting. James was found at his mother’s beauty parlor sitting under a hair dryer; when he emerged, his hair was black and curly. After placing James in their car, the detectives questioned him about his prior hair color. He responded that the previous day his hair had been reddish brown, long, and combed straight back. The detectives questioned James again later at the police station. He further stated that he had gone to the beauty parlor to have his hair dyed black and curled to change his appearance. The State subsequently indicted James for murder and attempted murder. Prior to trial, James moved to suppress the statements regarding his hair. After an evidentiary hearing, the trial court ruled that the statements would be inadmissible at trial. At trial, five members of the larger group of boys testified for the State, and each made an in-court identification of the defendant. Each testified that the person responsible for the shooting had reddish hair, worn shoulder length in a slicked-back style. James did not testify in his own defense. He called as a witness Jewel Henderson, a friend of his family. Henderson testified that on the day of the shooting she had taken James to register for high school and that, at that time, his hair was black. The State then sought to introduce James’ statements as a means of impeaching the credibility of Henderson’s testimony. One of the interrogating detectives then reported James’ prior admissions that he had reddish hair the night of the shooting and he dyed and curled his hair the next day to change his appearance. James ultimately was convicted of both murder and attempted murder and sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment. On appeal, the Illinois Appellate Court reversed James’ convictions and ordered a new trial. However, the Illinois Supreme Court reversed and ordered James’ convictions reinstated. The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari.

Plaintiff sustained serious injuries on November 8, 1964, when the Scout vehicle in which he was a passenger plunged 500 feet down Nine Mile Canyon Road near Mojave, California. The road was dry and twenty feet wide, and the vehicle had been traveling at only ten to fifteen miles per hour. The owner and driver had previously traversed the same road in the Scout without incident. Both the driver and plaintiff suffered retrograde amnesia following the accident and could not testify about its circumstances. Following the accident, it was discovered that the gear box of the Scout had broken. Plaintiff contended that the break occurred on the highway due to metal fatigue in the aluminum 380 material from which the gear box was manufactured, causing the vehicle to go out of control. Defendant asserted that the gear box broke upon impact as the vehicle fell into the canyon and that the accident resulted from driver negligence or collapse of the roadway. At trial, plaintiff presented expert testimony that aluminum 380 was unsuitable for the gear box, that malleable iron was a stronger material, and that defendant had changed to malleable iron in manufacturing the gear box three years after the accident in 1967. Experts also testified regarding two other accidents involving similar failures of aluminum 380 gear boxes in Scout vehicles. The jury returned a verdict awarding plaintiff $700,000. Defendant appealed the judgment, challenging the trial court's admission of evidence regarding the post-accident change in materials, testimony about other accidents, refusal to admit a superseded complaint from a prior trial between the parties, and denial of a motion for mistrial related to hearsay testimony read from the prior proceeding. The matter came before the California Supreme Court on this appeal.