STATE of Utah, Appellee, v. Rick JIMENEZ, Appellant.
No. 20140841-CA
Court of Appeals of Utah.
Filed June 30, 2016
2016 UT App 138
Nаthalie S. Skibine and Scott A. Wilson, Attorneys for Appellant. Sean D. Reyes and Jeanne B. Inouye, Salt Lake City, Attorneys for Appellee.
CONCLUSION
¶ 21 The district court appropriately concluded that McTee‘s notice of claim was timely filed under the Immunity Act. We therefore affirm the court‘s decision to deny Weber County‘s motion to dismiss.
Memorandum Decision
ROTH, Judge:
¶ 1 Rick Jimenez appeals his conviction for burglary, a second-degree felony, on the ground that the trial court exceeded its discretion by excluding his medical records exhibit. We affirm.
¶ 2 In December 2012, a woman came home to find that someone had broken into her house in Salt Lake City, Utah. Plastic insulation had been рushed away from one of the windows, and a garbage can had been placed underneath. The window was high enough off the ground that a person standing on the ground would have to reach up to touch the windowsill, and the position of the garbage can suggested a means of entry. A number of items were missing from the house, including small electronics, watches, clothing, and money. The woman called the police. An officer came to the woman‘s home, took her statement, and walked through the house without noting anything of particular interest.
¶ 3 The next day, the woman noticed “bits” of blood on the еnd of a pillow, on her bedroom dresser, on her bathroom vanity, on the handle of a blender in the kitchen, and on various items of clothing. She again called the police, who sent a crime scene investigator to take photos, look for fingerprints, and obtain a sample of blood from the blender. The only fingerprint sufficient for comparison did not identify a suspect, and none of the items missing from the house were ever found. But after a delay of about six months, the crime lab completed its analysis of the DNA results from the blood and found that the DNA, when checked against a database, wаs a match for Jimenez, a resident of Ogden, Utah.
¶ 4 Police questioned Jimenez about the burglary and advised him that he was a suspect. When an officer showed Jimenez a picture of the victim‘s home, Jimenez claimed that he had never been there before. When the officer then advised Jimenez thаt blood found inside the house matched his DNA profile, Jimenez responded that “he didn‘t understand how that could happen because he was never inside that house.” Jimenez was charged with one count of burglary. See
¶ 5 At trial, the State argued that the DNA results proved Jimenez had entered the house and stоlen the items. And for the first time, Jimenez offered an alternative explanation for the presence of his blood in the house. He claimed that a few days before the burglary, he had traveled from Ogden with a friend (D.L.) to help D.L.‘s friend in Salt Lake City. Jimenez and D.L. met D.L.‘s girlfriend and another friend at a motel. While they were there, Jimenez walked to the front of the motel and saw a little girl crying. He asked her what was wrong, and she informed him that she needed her medication—Xanax. Jimenez offered to help, and he, D.L., and D.L.‘s girlfriend then drove the girl to the house of someone she had identified as a friend, who turned out to be someone Jimenez had grown up with (D.B.). When Jimenez asked D.B. about the girl‘s medication, D.B. became upset and yelled at Jimenez to “get her out of [the] house.” But D.B.‘s girlfriend said that she could get the girl‘s pills and ran across the street into another house, which turned out to be the victim‘s house. While Jimenez waited for D.B.‘s girlfriend tо return, two more girls approached him. One of the girls had come out of the victim‘s house, and the other girl had two dogs. The first girl told Jimenez that “she” (the reference is uncertain) did not “have enough money“—apparently to purchase the medication—and Jimenez came up with $20 and D.L. with another $3. Thеn one of the dogs, a pit bull, jumped on Jimenez and knocked him down.
¶ 6 Jimenez claimed that he did not recognize the victim‘s house when the officer first showed it to him during the interview but that he later recognized the address as being near the home of his acquaintance D.B. and realized that the burglary had happened soon after he was there. He surmised that his blood must have gotten into the house via the dishrag.
¶ 7 Jimenez also asserted that he had health conditions that would have precluded him from climbing onto a garbage can and through a window, as the burglar apparently did. He testified that he has “six herniated disks,” “a crushed vertebrae in [his] neck,” and “a tor[n] tendon.” He testified that he has been treаted for these conditions with medication and physical therapy for the past fourteen years.
¶ 8 Jimenez sought to introduce medical records to corroborate his testimony regarding his physical condition. At trial, the State objected to the admission of the medical records on relevance grounds. The State asserted that the diagnoses in the records were based solely on Jimenez‘s self-reported injuries and symptoms and pointed out that the most recent report was from January 2012, almost a year before the December 2012 burglary. Because the records were nоt contemporaneous with the burglary; contained no objective tests, such as x-rays; and contained no medical opinions regarding the effects of Jimenez‘s condition on his ability to climb onto a garbage can and through a window, the State argued that the records were irrelevant.2 The triаl court agreed, explaining that records dating to nearly a year before the burglary and not containing any objective measures of injury were not relevant to establish Jimenez‘s condition at the time of the burglary. The court explained that even assuming that portions of the medical records might be relevant and might be admissible if redacted, Jimenez had not provided the court with a redacted version of the medical records in a timely manner and it was too late to do so. The court further concluded that because the records were based on Jimenez‘s self-reported symptoms, they were cumulative of his testimony and therefore need not be admitted. Accordingly, the trial court excluded Jimenez‘s medical records exhibit. The jury convicted Jimenez of the burglary charge, and he now appeals.
¶ 9 “[W]e review a trial court‘s decision to admit or exclude specific evidence for an abuse of discretion.” State v. Jones, 2015 UT 19, ¶ 12, 345 P.3d 1195 (alteration in original) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Nevertheless, even “[i]n circumstances where evidence should have been admitted, it is reviewed for harmless error.” State v. Colwell, 2000 UT 8, ¶ 26, 994 P.2d 177; see also
¶ 10 Jimenez asserts that the medical records were relevant and not needlеssly cumulative and that the court should have therefore either admitted them in their entirety or given Jimenez the opportunity to redact them. But even accepting Jimenez‘s arguments, we ultimately conclude that any error on the part of the trial court was harmless.
¶ 11 While we do not agree with the trial court that the medical records were irrelevant to Jimenez‘s impossibility defense,3 it is unlikely that the admission of the medical records would have resulted in a different
¶ 12 Moreover, while medical rеcords or testimony strongly supporting Jimenez‘s assertion that he was physically incapable of climbing onto the garbage can and through the window might have prompted the jury to accept the implausible story of how his blood got into the house, we are unconvinced that the limited evidencе contained in the medical records would have been sufficient to do so. Although the records corroborated Jimenez‘s testimony by demonstrating that he had reported his claimed conditions to medical professionals on several occasions prior to the burglary, other than noting that he used a cane, the records contain no tests or assessments that give any indication of the effect of Jimenez‘s back condition on his mobility or the potentially alleviating effect of the medications he was receiving. And because the records cover only a six-month periоd, with the most recent dated nearly a year prior to the burglary, their ability to substantiate Jimenez‘s account of his condition at the relevant time was limited.
¶ 13 Under the circumstances of this case, it would have required highly persuasive evidence that Jimenez was physically incapable of entеring the window for his alternative explanation for the presence of his DNA in the victim‘s house to have raised a reasonable doubt about his guilt in the mind of the jury. The probative value of the medical records was too limited to have accomplished this task. For these reasons, we are not convinced that any error in the trial court‘s decision to exclude the medical records prejudiced Jimenez. See Colwell, 2000 UT 8, ¶ 26, 994 P.2d 177.
¶ 14 We therefore affirm Jimenez‘s conviction.
STEPHEN L. ROTH
JUDGE
onto a garbage can and through a window—as the medical records were not contemporaneous to the burglary and contained little information regarding how Jimenеz‘s medical problems affected his mobility—they did indicate that he had previously been diagnosed with back and leg pain, a herniated disc, and a tendon disorder (though based largely on his own self-reported history) and that he had been known to walk with a cane. The medical records thereforе constituted evidence having a tendency to make Jimenez‘s ability to climb onto the garbage can and through the window less likely. Accordingly, those records were relevant to Jimenez‘s defense (though, ultimately, not so probative that their exclusion was prejudicial, see infra ¶¶ 11-13). Furthermore, the medical rеcords were not needlessly cumulative of Jimenez‘s testimony, see