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Ambiguous Order
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Aug 20 2008

B195450
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Piscitelli v. Salesian Society 8/20/08 CA2/8

Piscitelli_v_Salesian_Society_B195450

Ambiguous Order-General Rule

[9] When wrestling with the admissibility of the evidence, the trial court said: “Again, the prejudicial effect is obvious. But nevertheless, it is an offense of moral turpitude. It does go to his credibility. It does go to his credibility in terms of denial of witnessing the events that are described [] by Mr. Piscitelli.” The court’s first statement about moral turpitude is the type of general character trait evidence permitted by section 788. The next portion, concerning the relevance of the evidence to Billante’s credibility as it related to his denial of witnessing the masturbation incidents, sounds to us much more like the motive to lie issue raised by Piscitelli in opposition to the motion in limine. At oral argument, the Society’s lawyer agreed that the transcript was vague, and so do we. To the extent the order is ambiguous, we will resolve the ambiguity in favor of affirmance under the well-established rule that a trial court’s orders are presumed correct. (Winograd v. American Broadcasting Co. (1998) 68 Cal.App.4th 624, 631.) Accordingly, we read the court’s comments as twin findings: first, that Billante’s prior conviction was admissible as general character trait evidence under section 788; and second, that it was admissible to explain why he might lie about the masturbation incidents. The latter is just another way of stating that a witness was biased.
Piscitelli v. Salesian Society 8/20/08 CA2/8

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