People v. Brenn

In People v. Brenn (2007) 152 Cal.App.4th 166, defendant and the victim lived at a group home and got into a fight over defendant's girlfriend. Defendant grabbed a knife and stabbed the victim in the stomach. The victim left the group home, went to another location, called 911, and reported the stabbing. The 911 operator asked the victim who stabbed him and how it happened. The victim identified defendant, explained they were fighting about defendant's girlfriend, and described the fight in detail. The operator asked the victim several questions about defendant's location, whether he had mental health problems, and if he still had a knife, and the victim answered to the best of his knowledge. (Id. at pp. 170-171.) Brenn held the victim's statements to the 911 operator were not testimonial under Crawford and Davis because "the purpose and form of the statements were not the functional equivalents of trial testimony." (Brenn, supra, 152 Cal.App.4th at p. 176.) Brenn further held there was no material difference between Davis's 911 call and victim's statements to the 911 operator about the stabbing. (Id. at p. 176-177.) Brenn held the victim's statements about the stabbing were made "in response to rapid-fire questioning from the dispatcher. There was nothing formal, solemn, or structured about the colloquy. And unlike a criminal prosecutor, the dispatcher was primarily concerned with what was happening at the moment, as opposed to what had happened in the past. The dispatcher was eliciting information in an attempt to assess the present situation and help the victim and the responding officers, not secure a conviction in a court of law." (Id. at p. 177.) Brenn discounted the fact that the victim told the 911 operator that he wanted to press charges against the defendant: "It does not appear that his primary purpose during the call was to establish past facts for use in a criminal trial, or that the 911 operator was concerned about that issue. . . . 'The proper focus is not on the mere reasonable chance that an out-of-court statement might later be used in a criminal trial. Instead, we are concerned with statements, made with some formality, which, viewed objectively, are for the primary purpose of establishing or proving facts for possible use in a criminal trial." (Ibid.) Brenn also rejected the defendant's argument that the victim was no longer facing an emergency as he spoke to the 911 operator about the stabbing and noted such a claim was "much easier to make from a law office than from 100 feet from someone who has just stabbed you." (Brenn, supra, 152 Cal.App.4th at p. 177.) The victim was suffering a stab wound and defendant was still at large. "It is hard to construct a definition of the word 'emergency' that this scenario does not fit." (Ibid.) The victim's information was important to help the police "formulate an appropriate response to the situation. It does not appear the information was elicited or provided for the primary purpose of making a case against defendant at trial." (Ibid.)