People v. Gibson (2001)

In People v. Gibson (2001) 90 Cal.App.4th 371, the defendant was charged with being a "madam" engaged in pimping and pandering. The court upheld the admission of two manuscripts found in the defendant's home and hotel room, which described the operation of a prostitution business. The court, following People v. Olguin (1994), held the manuscripts were adequately authenticated as the defendant's because they not only were found in her places of residence, they referred to their author as "Sasha"--one of the defendant's aliases--and "no evidence showed that these items belonged to anyone else." ( Id. at pp. 382-383.) In People v. Gibson (2001) the defendant protested that the evidence linking him to a residence in Palo Verde was stale, because the warrant issued in June 1999, and the affidavit provided in support of the warrant was based on police surveillance of that residence occurring from six to nine months previously, i.e., from October 1998 to January 1999. That did not matter, the court held because "the question of staleness depends on the facts of each case" and "there was no reason to believe that appellant had moved." It was, therefore, "entirely reasonable for the magistrate to conclude that in light of all the known facts, appellant's residence had not changed in the preceding five to six months." (Gibson, supra, 90 Cal.App.4th at pp. 380-381.)