People v. Gutierrez, No. B211622

Conviction of defendant on multiple counts of kidnapping and sex-related crimes is affirmed where defendant's Sixth Amendment right of confrontation was not violated by admission of a lead nurse practitioner's testimony regarding a report prepared by a nontestifying nurse, as People v. Geier (2007) 41 Cal.4th 555 is still controlling law after Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 129 S.Ct. 2527 (2009), where the supervisor of the analyst who prepared the reports testified at trial and Melendez-Diaz involved only "near-contemporaneous" affidavits that were prepared almost one week after the tests were performed, whereas this case involves contemporaneous recordation of observable events.  To the extent the narrative portion of the report ran afoul of defendant's right of confrontation, the violation did not result in prejudicial error as there was nothing in the narrative portion of the report potentially damaging to defendant's case.   

Read People v. Gutierrez, No. B211622

Appellate Information

Filed September 9, 2009

Judges

Opinion by Judge Rothschild

Counsel

For Appellant: Vanessa Place 

For Respondent:  Edmund G. Brown Jr., Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Pamela C. Hamanaka, Assistant Attorney General, Kenneth C. Byrnes and Eric J. Kohm, Deputy Attorneys General