The Supreme Court today decides two follow-ups to the Sanchez case, a 2016 opinion in which the court held the Sixth Amendment, as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court in Crawford v. Washington (2004) 541 U.S. 36, precluded a prosecution expert from relating “case-specific statements . . . concerning [the] defendant’s gang membership.”  In People v. Perez, a defendant sentenced to life without parole for murders and kidnappings, among other things, gets another chance to convince the Court of Appeal that he is entitled to relief because of Sanchez error.  The defendant in People v. Veamatahau doesn’t fare as well, however, losing on the Sanchez claim he made attempting to overturn his drug-possession conviction.

The Perez Court of Appeal held the defendant had forfeited his Sanchez argument by not objecting at trial, even though he was tried before Sanchez was decided.  The Supreme Court disagrees in a unanimous opinion by Justice Joshua Groban, holding that one of its prior opinions, which was disapproved in Sanchez, made an objection by the defendant futile, even though the change in the law was not entirely unexpected.  The court says, “If objection would be futile under current precedent, counsel is not obligated to object on pain of forfeiture simply because a future change in the law might be foreseeable.”

In Veamatahau, the Court of Appeal rejected the defendant’s Sanchez claim on the merits and the Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion by Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, affirms.  An expert did not relate impermissible “case-specific hearsay” when he testified that he had “identified the controlled substance the defendant was charged with possessing by comparing the visual characteristics of the pills seized against a database containing descriptions of pharmaceuticals” and when he discussed the database’s contents.  The court concludes that “information from the database is not case specific but is the kind of background information experts have traditionally been able to rely on and relate to the jury.”

In Perez, the court reverses the Fourth District, Division Two, and it disapproves a 2018 Third District opinion.

In Veamatahau, the court affirms the First District, Division One, and it disapproves a 2016 opinion of the First District, Division Four.