Reported / Citable
Background
Pedro Thomas DeLeon Tzul was charged with two counts of murder for the stabbing deaths of his longtime girlfriend Martha Garcia and her 21-year-old brother Antonio Garcia. The killings occurred in June 2021 in the Los Angeles apartment Tzul and Martha shared. Police found a handwritten note at the scene that read: “I found her having sex with her own brother and that fills me with rage. I’m asking for forgiveness. I don’t know whether God will do it.”
Before trial, the prosecution moved to exclude the note under Evidence Code section 352, which permits exclusion of evidence whose probative value is substantially outweighed by undue prejudice or other concerns. The trial court ruled that the defense could not introduce the note during the prosecution’s case-in-chief or cross-examine the detective who found it. The court did say Tzul could introduce the note if he chose to testify himself.
Forced to choose between his right not to testify and his ability to put the provocation note before the jury, Tzul testified. He read the note, described his discovery of an apparent intimate relationship between Martha and Antonio, and recounted his rage at the moment of the killings. He was then subjected to extensive cross-examination, during which he detailed his planning and behavior. The jury convicted him of first degree murder for Martha and second degree murder for Antonio. Tzul appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Second District Court of Appeal, Division Seven, reversed both murder convictions and remanded. The court held that while trial courts have broad discretion under Evidence Code section 352 to exclude evidence, that discretion is not limitless. The handwritten note was highly probative of Tzul’s mental state at the time of the killings—directly relevant to whether he acted with premeditation, with malice, or instead in the heat of passion that would reduce the offenses to voluntary manslaughter. Whether Tzul was actually correct about what Martha and Antonio were doing did not matter; the note showed what he believed he had discovered and why he reacted as he did.
The trial court’s exclusion ruling forced Tzul to choose between two constitutional rights: the right to remain silent and the right to present a complete defense. By conditioning the admission of crucial defense evidence on Tzul’s testifying, the court effectively imposed a penalty on the exercise of his Fifth Amendment privilege. This was error.
The error was prejudicial. Without Tzul’s testimony, the prosecution’s evidence of premeditation and deliberation rested largely on circumstantial inferences from his post-killing conduct (placing an air conditioner over the bodies and fleeing to Mexico). Had the note been admitted in the People’s case without Tzul testifying, it is reasonably probable the jury would not have convicted him of first or even second degree murder. The court reversed and remanded for further proceedings, including a possible retrial on lesser charges.
Key Takeaways
- Evidence Code section 352 gives trial courts broad but not unlimited discretion to exclude evidence. Highly probative defense evidence on the central mental-state issue cannot be excluded merely because it is unfavorable to the prosecution.
- A defendant’s statement that he killed in a rage upon discovering apparent infidelity can be admissible to show heat of passion or absence of premeditation, even when made out of court.
- Whether the defendant was correct in his perception of provocation is irrelevant; what matters is the defendant’s actual state of mind.
- Conditioning the admission of crucial defense evidence on the defendant’s decision to testify imposes a constitutional cost on the right to remain silent and may constitute reversible error.
- Prejudice from erroneous evidentiary rulings may be evaluated in light of what the prosecution would have been able to prove without the defendant’s compelled testimony.
Why It Matters
This decision is a strong reminder that Evidence Code section 352 is not a tool for the prosecution to keep out exculpatory or mitigating evidence simply because it is dramatic or sympathetic. Trial courts must carefully weigh probative value, especially when the disputed evidence goes to the defendant’s state of mind in a homicide case where degree of guilt is contested.
For criminal defense lawyers, the decision provides leverage in motions in limine: courts cannot force defendants to testify in order to admit their own statements that bear on provocation, intent, or other mental state issues. For prosecutors, the opinion is a caution against overreaching with section 352 motions to keep out defendant statements that arguably reduce or mitigate the offense. The case will likely be cited frequently in heat-of-passion and imperfect self-defense cases where the defendant’s pretrial statements are at issue.