Filed 2/10/26 P. v. Superior Court (Small) CA4/2
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION TWO
THE PEOPLE,
Petitioner, E086768
v. (Super.Ct.No. SWF021505)
THE SUPERIOR COURT OF OPINION RIVERSIDE COUNTY,
Respondent;
JAMES LEON SMALL,
Real Party in Interest.
ORIGINAL PROCEEDINGS; petition for writ of mandate. John M. Monterosso,
Judge. Petition denied.
Michael Hestrin, District Attorney, Matthew Murray and Kent M. Walters, Deputy
District Attorneys, for Petitioner.
No appearance for Respondent.
1 Steven L. Harmon, Public Defender and Joseph J. Martinez, Deputy Public
Defender, for Real Party in Interest.
The discovery provision of the California Racial Justice Act of 2020 (RJA)
(Stats.2020, ch. 317, § 1) requires a trial court to order “all evidence relevant to a
potential violation of subdivision (a) in the possession or control of the state” released to
a criminal defendant “[u]pon a showing of good cause.” (Pen. Code, § 745, subd. (d)
(section 745(d)); unlabeled statutory references are to this code.)
In 2023, the trial court recalled the sentence of James Leon Small under section
1172.75. While Small was awaiting resentencing, he moved for disclosure of
information from the Riverside County District Attorney, alleging a potential violation of
subdivision (a)(3) of section 745 (section 745(a)(3)), that is, racial disparity in seeking or
obtaining convictions or imposing sentences in Riverside County for the offenses of
which Small was convicted. The trial court granted the motion and ordered the district
attorney to disclose responsive information for the five-year period in which Small was
charged, convicted, and sentenced.
The district attorney subsequently moved for reconsideration. The trial court
denied the motion in part and granted it in part. The court rejected the district attorney’s
invitation to reconsider its finding that Small had established good cause for disclosure,
but the court limited the amount of information that the district attorney had to provide.
2 The district attorney filed a petition for writ of mandate, challenging the trial
court’s finding of good cause under section 745(d) and its failure to compel the public
defender’s office to search its own records before ordering disclosure from the district
attorney. We deny the petition.
BACKGROUND
I. The conviction
Small is African American.1 In June 2007, a felony complaint was filed against
him in Riverside County. In March 2010, a jury convicted him of numerous sexual
offenses committed against his former girlfriend’s daughter, including one count of rape
of a child under age 14 (§ 269, subd. (a)(1)), one count of forcible lewd and lascivious
conduct against a minor under age 14 (§ 288, subd. (b)(1)), and a total of eight counts of
lewd and lascivious conduct against a child under age 14 or 16 (id., subds. (a), (c)(1)).
(People v. Small (June 30, 2011, E050735) [nonpub. opn.].) Small admitted that he
served one prior prison term under former section 667.5, subdivision (b). (People v.
Small, E050735.) In April 2010, the trial court sentenced Small to an aggregate term of
39 years four months in state prison, which included a one-year term for the prior prison
term enhancement. We affirmed the judgment in an unpublished opinion. (People v.
Small, E050735.)
1 Small’s motion does not contain any information identifying his race, so we take judicial notice of the record from Small’s direct appeal on our own motion. (Evid. Code, §§ 452, subd. (d), 459, subd. (d).) We provided the parties the requisite notice under Evidence Code section 459, subdivision (d), in a tentative opinion, and they did not oppose judicial notice of those materials.
3 II. Initial resentencing proceedings
In 2023, the trial court recalled Small’s sentence under section 1172.75 and struck
the one-year prior prison term enhancement, thereby reducing his aggregate sentence to
38 years four months in state prison. The court scheduled a future hearing to conduct a
full resentencing.
III. RJA discovery motion
Small filed a motion for disclosure of information under the RJA. (§ 745(d).) He
was represented by an attorney from the public defender’s office. Small argued that the
requested records were relevant to prove a violation of section 745(a)(3). The motion
sought the following categories of information from the district attorney’s office for the
years 2003 through 2010: (1) lists of everyone arrested for violating section 269 or
section 288 and everyone charged with violating those provisions, along with each
person’s age, gender, race, ethnicity, and national origin; (2) any offers made by the
prosecution to any person charged with violating section 269 or section 288; (3) any
written material in the district attorney’s office reflecting the reasons for the charging
decision and the disposition for each offense; and (4) “[a]ny reason stated or provided by
any member of the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office or policy relied upon in
making the decision to charge James Small.” Small also sought copies of any associated
police reports and rap sheets.
4 The following exhibits were attached to the motion: (1) a printout from the
website www.indexmundi.com stating that the African Americans were between 6 and
7.5 percent of Riverside County’s population from 2000 to 2009; (2) a printout from the
United States Census Bureau’s website providing “Quick Facts” about Riverside County,
showing African Americans to be 7.6 percent of the population at some unspecified
time2; (3) two pages of a 2021 report from the Judicial Council of California (the Judicial
Council), stating that in 2020 African Americans were 5.5 percent of California’s
population but were 18.9 percent of California’s felony defendants; and (4) several copies
of reports printed from a website called the Racial Justice Act Tool, which is maintained
by an organization called the Paper Prisons Initiative. The exhibits were attached to the
motion without any accompanying declaration.
The Paper Prisons Initiative describes itself as “a multi-disciplinary research
initiative focused on documenting and narrowing the ‘second chance gap’ between
eligibility for relief from the criminal justice system and its delivery due to hurdles in
access to relevant information and data.” Its website “provides summary data
representing the raw numbers, rates per population, and disparity gaps by race of adults in
the California criminal justice system using data provided by the California Department
of Justice as well as by the Census Department.”
2 Some of the statistics in the “Quick Facts” are accompanied by dates, but there is no date accompanying the data concerning the racial composition of the county’s population. In his motion, Small asserted that the United States Census Bureau statistics were taken from July 1, 2023.
5 The reports printed out from the Paper Prisons Initiative’s Racial Justice Act Tool
cover the period 2010-2021 and compare the per capita rates for African Americans in
Riverside County of arrests, court actions, convictions, incarceration, and sentences for
violations of sections 269, subdivision (a)(1), 288, subdivisions (a), (b)(1), and (c)(1),
with the same rates for the county’s White population. The reports state that African
Americans’ rates for each variable of each offense (from arrest through sentencing) are
higher than the rates for Whites.
The printouts state that the source of the underlying data “is a comprehensive
dataset of arrests, court actions, convictions, and sentences in California, the Criminal
Offender Record Information (CORI) database, available to researchers through the
California Department of Justice Automated Criminal History System (ACHS) under the
provisions of the CA DOJ Research Data Request Process.” The printouts state that the
CORI dataset “is not without limitations,” for at least the following reasons: “Among the
known disadvantages of the CORI data are that it does not include systematic information
on the conditions of the arrest (such as whether or not a weapon was present) or other
aspects of the defendant’s conduct which might influence the evaluation of the ‘similar
conduct’ under the RJA statute.” The printouts also include the following general
disclaimer: “This tool is intended to help you access and analyze criminal justice data
and identify potential racial disparities for counties across California and the state as a
whole. The tool and the accompanying data are provided as a public service ‘as-is’, and
do not constitute legal advice or ‘official proof’ of actionable disparity or lack thereof.”
6 The district attorney’s office opposed the discovery motion, arguing that Small
failed to demonstrate good cause. The district attorney argued that general statistical
information alone without reference to similarly situated defendants engaged in similar
conduct does not establish a plausible violation of the RJA. The district attorney attached
the complete 2021 Judicial Council report to its opposition, highlighting that the report
included the finding that “[w]hen controlling for age, gender, county, and legal factors,
differences in prison sentence lengths across racial groups were not significant.” As to
the county-specific data in the printouts from the Racial Justice Act Tool, the district
attorney argued that the data constituted unreliable hearsay that was generated by an
advocacy group. The district attorney also argued that application of the factors set forth
in City of Alhambra v. Superior Court (1988) 205 Cal.App.3d 1118 (Alhambra)—the
Alhambra factors—warranted denying the requested discovery, because Small failed to
demonstrate that he had attempted to obtain any relevant information readily available to
him through other sources, such as the public defender’s office.
At the hearing, the court stated that it had reviewed the parties’ filings, the exhibits
attached to Small’s motion, and what were then the only published cases addressing the
good cause requirement under section 745(d), Young v. Superior Court (2022) 79
Cal.App.5th 138 (Young) and Gonzales v. Superior Court (2024) 108 Cal.App.5th Supp.
36 (Gonzales). The court explained that the standard for discovery under section 745(d)
is ”very low” and that Small could establish good cause by showing a plausible violation
of section 745(a)(3). Defense counsel argued that the countywide, offense-specific data
7 in the printouts from the Racial Justice Act Tool were “the most relevant” data
demonstrating a plausible violation of the RJA, describing that data as “more on point
than the statewide” data. The district attorney reiterated the arguments from their written
opposition, asserting that the court should give “very little” weight, “if any,” to the
printouts from the Racial Justice Act Tool. In response, the court noted that the district
attorney had “a hill to climb to completely discredit this such that I can give it no weight
at all.”
After hearing the parties’ arguments, the court found that Small had “made at least
a minimal showing of a plausible scenario for a claim as it relates to disparity of
prosecution under 745(a)(3).” The court’s determination was based on “the whole of the
statistics that were cited by” defense counsel. When the district attorney asked for
clarification about the specific data that the court relied on, the court replied: “The
statistical information that was provided through the defense exhibits— [¶] . . . as a
whole, without parsing each item or finding that they are proof beyond a reasonable
doubt.” Upon further questioning, the court reiterated: “I said it’s all of it,” and “[t]he
Appellate Court can know that I relied upon all the statistics that were provided.”
The trial court ordered the district attorney to provide the defense with a list of all
individuals referred to the district attorney’s office for prosecution of a violation of either
section 269 or section 288 from January 1, 2006, through December 31, 2010. For each
listed individual, the court ordered the district attorney to provide the following
information: (1) identifying information, such as name, birthdate, gender, race, ethnicity,
8 and national origin; (2) the investigating agency, the agency’s report number, and copies
of any reports still in the district attorney’s possession; (3) an indication of whether the
case was filed and, if filed, the charges brought and the superior court case number; and
(4) any rap sheets within the district attorney’s possession. The court explained that the
district attorney was not obligated to “hunt these things down from other agencies” but
was expected “to do a due diligent search within their own records to locate any
investigative reports.”
As to the issue of whether the public defender should be required to search
through its own records before seeking discovery from the district attorney, the court
noted that such a search would have made its decision on the motion “easier.” But the
court reasoned that it was not prepared to require such a search before ordering disclosure
from the district attorney. Moreover, the court found that “the public defender would not
have any information with regards to cases that were rejected. It would not have
information on cases that involve private counsel or conflict counsel defendants. So this
isn’t something that’s—they can get otherwise but through the DA’s office.” The court
set a status hearing several months later.
IV. The district attorney’s motion for reconsideration
Before the scheduled hearing, the district attorney moved for reconsideration. The
district attorney argued that new case law—McDaniel v. Superior Court (2025) 111
Cal.App.5th 228 (McDaniel)—warranted reconsideration of the good cause finding under
section 745(d). McDaniel agreed with Young and Gonzales that parties seeking discovery
9 under section 745(d) “only need to show plausibility based on ‘specific facts’”—“a low
threshold”—and reasoned that those specific facts could be case-specific facts, “statistical
facts relevant to the charges and individuals involved,” “[o]r both.” (McDaniel, at p.
244.) The court observed that “some review of statistical data” was warranted “even at
the discovery stage,” but the court cautioned that “if the statistical data demonstrates an
actual racial disparity in the charging decisions of the county, weaknesses in the data pool
or concerns about additional data points do not necessarily negate the plausible factual
foundation that an RJA violation ‘could or might have occurred.’” (Id. at p. 246)
McDaniel concluded that the defendant had shown good cause for discovery under
section 745(d) on the basis of evidence that included (1) “county-specific data suggestive
of a disparity between the racial composition of San Mateo County and the racial
composition of those charged with gang or gang enhancement charges” and (2) “an
expert declaration evaluating charging and incarceration rates and concluding that
available data indicates ‘some actual disparity.’” (McDaniel, at pp. 245-246.) The
district attorney argued that the evidence submitted by Small was far less probative than
that submitted in McDaniel, noting in particular that unlike the defendant in McDaniel,
Small had not submitted an “expert declaration or analysis of any kind describing the
relevance or significance of the statistical evidence.”
In addition to seeking reconsideration in light of McDaniel, the district attorney
urged the court to reconsider its good cause finding because of new evidence that the
district attorney submitted concerning the unreliability of the Racial Justice Act Tool.
10 The district attorney had run inquiries about attempted murder using that website and
found it “produced grossly inaccurate” data. (Underlining omitted.) The Racial Justice
Act Tool reported that there had been no attempted murder court actions, convictions, or
sentences from 2010 to 2021.
The district attorney also argued that the discovery that the court ordered would be
unduly burdensome, given the record review that the district attorney’s office had already
undertaken in response to the order. The district attorney attested that there were
approximately 1,619 cases potentially responsive to the discovery order. The district
attorney submitted a declaration from an attorney at the district attorney’s office who
described the limitations of the office’s case management system and some difficulties
with finding all of the information that the court had ordered disclosed. The district
attorney argued that “the case-by-case ‘due diligence’ search for agency reports and RAP
sheets would be prohibitively and unduly burdensome—whether this search is conducted
electronically or through a[] physical search of the records.” In addition, the district
attorney renewed its argument that the information was readily available to Small through
other sources, namely, the public defender’s records.
At the hearing, the trial court denied the request to reconsider its good cause
finding in light of McDaniel. The court reasoned that McDaniel had not “really
change[d] anything” and was consistent with prior law. The court found it insignificant
that Small had not produced an expert to satisfy the “most minimal showing necessary”
under section 745(d). In denying that portion of the motion, the court also stated: “I
11 would acknowledge that this particular Court used primarily, if not exclusively, statewide
statistical information to make my initial good cause finding. [¶] There is no case that
says you can’t do that.”
But the trial court otherwise granted the district attorney’s motion and limited the
information that the district attorney had to produce. The court maintained the prior
order requiring the district attorney’s office to provide Small with a list of all individuals
referred to the district attorney’s office for prosecution of a violation of either section 269
or 288 from January 1, 2006, through December 31, 2010 (the 1,619 cases). But the
court limited the information that the district attorney was required to disclose to: (1) the
individual’s name, gender, race, ethnicity, and national origin, and (2) the investigating
agency and agency report number. The court allowed the district attorney to exclude any
juvenile records. The court found that, given the information that the district attorney’s
office had already collected, it could “relatively easily provide” the relevant information.
The court found that production of the additional information required by the court’s
original order would be unduly burdensome.
The district attorney subsequently filed this petition for writ of mandate,
challenging the trial court’s finding of good cause and failure to require the public
defender to search its own records before seeking disclosure from the district attorney’s
office. We issued an order to show cause and stayed the proceedings in the superior
court pending further order of this court.
12 DISCUSSION
I. The RJA
“The Legislature passed the RJA in 2020 with a stated aim ‘to eliminate racial bias
from California’s criminal justice system’ and ‘to ensure that race plays no role at all in
seeking or obtaining convictions or in sentencing.’” (People v. Wilson (2024) 16 Cal.5th
874, 944-945.) To that end, the RJA provides that “[t]he state shall not seek or obtain a
criminal conviction or seek, obtain, or impose a sentence on the basis of race, ethnicity,
or national origin.” (§ 745, subd. (a).) One way to establish a violation is by proving that
“[t]he defendant was charged or convicted of a more serious offense than defendants of
other races, ethnicities, or national origins who have engaged in similar conduct and are
similarly situated, and the evidence establishes that the prosecution more frequently
sought or obtained convictions for more serious offenses against people who share the
defendant’s race, ethnicity, or national origin in the county where the convictions were
sought or obtained.” (§ 745(a)(3).)
If a defendant believes that a violation of the RJA has occurred, they “may file a
motion requesting disclosure to the defense of all evidence relevant to a potential
violation of subdivision (a) in the possession or control of the state.” (§ 745(d);
McDaniel, supra, 111 Cal.App.5th at p. 240.) “Upon a showing of good cause, the court
shall order the records to be released.”3 (§ 745(d).)
3 On October 13, 2025, the Governor signed into law two bills that amend section 745 and other provisions of the RJA, effective January 1, 2026: Senate Bill No. 734 (2025-2026 Reg. Sess.) and Assembly Bill No. 1071 (2025-2026 Reg. Sess.). No [footnote continued on next page]
13 The RJA does not define the term “good cause.” (§ 745(d); see also id., subd. (h).)
In 2022, Young held that the discovery standard in the RJA is similar to the “‘relatively
relaxed’” good cause standard that governs disclosure of law enforcement personnel
records under Pitchess v. Superior Court (1974) 11 Cal.3d 531, 535-537. (Young, supra,
79 Cal.App.5th at pp. 158-159; id. at pp. 158-161.) Drawing on the Pitchess standard,
Young “conclude[d] that in order to establish good cause for discovery under the Racial
Justice Act, a defendant is required only to advance a plausible factual foundation, based
on specific facts, that a violation of the Racial Justice Act ‘could or might have occurred’
in this case.” (Young, at p. 159, quoting Warrick v. Superior Court (2005) 35 Cal.4th
1011, 1016.) Young held that the good cause standard under section 745(d) is “even
more relaxed than” the Pitchess standard in the following respects: A defendant seeking
discovery under section 745(d) need not provide “an affidavit setting forth a reasonable
belief that the requested discovery is material to the subject matter of the case” or
“‘propose a defense or defenses to the pending charges’ and a ‘logical link between the
defense proposed and the pending charge.’” (Young, at p. 159.) The limiting factor for
the RJA good cause finding “is ‘relevance’ in the discovery sense—that is, each request
for disclosure must be reasonably calculated to lead to discovery of admissible evidence
probative of a section 745, subdivision (a) violation.” (Young, at p. 160.)
changes were made to section 745(a)(3), and no material changes were made to section 745(d). (Assem. Bill No. 1071, § 2.) Uncodified legislative findings state that the Legislature “intend[ed] that individuals must be afforded access to a broad range of relevant discovery to develop and support their potential RJA claims. Otherwise, they are left in the impossible position of having their claims rejected for want of the very data they seek. This is antithetical to the RJA.” (Assem. Bill No. 1071, § 1(b).)
14 The “showing of plausible justification is merely a threshold consideration.”
(Young, supra, 79 Cal.App.5th at p. 144.) A court analyzing whether a defendant can
obtain discovery of the requested material also “‘must consider and balance’” the
Alhambra factors. (Young, at p. 144; McDaniel, supra, 111 Cal.App.5th at p. 248.)
Those factors are: “(1) [W]hether the material requested is adequately described, (2)
whether the requested material is reasonably available to the governmental entity from
which it is sought (and not readily available to the defendant from other sources), (3)
whether production of the records containing the requested information would violate (i)
third party confidentiality or privacy rights or (ii) any protected governmental interest, (4)
whether the defendant has acted in a timely manner, (5) whether the time required to
produce the requested information will necessitate an unreasonable delay of defendant’s
trial, (6) whether the production of the records containing the requested information
would place an unreasonable burden on the governmental entity involved and (7) whether
the defendant has shown a sufficient plausible justification for the information sought.”4
(Alhambra, supra, 205 Cal.App.3d at p. 1134; Facebook, Inc. v. Superior Court
(Touchstone) (2020) 10 Cal.5th 329, 345-347.)
4 Since Young, the Legislature has not amended the good cause requirement in section 745(d) or defined “good cause” for purposes of the RJA. (See, e.g., Assem. Bill No 1071, § 2.) If “‘a statute has been construed by judicial decision, and that construction is not altered by subsequent legislation, it must be presumed that the Legislature is aware of the judicial construction and approves of it.’” (Donorovich- Odonnell v. Harris (2015) 241 Cal.App.4th 1118, 1132.)
15 We review the trial court’s discovery order for abuse of discretion, “‘because
management of discovery lies within the sound discretion of the trial court.’” (Young,
supra, 79 Cal.App.5th at p. 156.) “We review the factual underpinnings of a
discretionary determination for substantial evidence [citation], but where such a
determination rests on ‘incorrect legal premises,’ our review is de novo [citations].”
(Ibid.)
II. Good cause
The district attorney contends that the trial court erred by concluding that Small
established good cause under section 745(d). In particular, the district attorney argues
that the trial court erred by (1) relying “‘primarily, if not exclusively’” on statewide
statistical data that “did not relate to similarly situated individuals engaged in similar
conduct, as required by the RJA,” and (2) not reconsidering the discovery order in light
of McDaniel, because McDaniel requires that a movant provide more than just statewide
statistical data to establish good cause under section 745(d). Both arguments assume that
the trial court’s good cause finding was based solely on “statewide statistical evidence.”
The arguments fail because they are based on a false premise. At the hearing on
Small’s discovery motion, the trial court expressly and repeatedly stated that its good
cause finding was based on all of the evidence that Small submitted in support of his
motion. That evidence included the Riverside County data generated by the Paper
Prisons Initiative’s Racial Justice Act Tool, which compared the rates of arrests, court
actions, convictions, incarceration, and sentences of the African American and White
16 populations in the county for violations of section 269, subdivision (a)(1), and section
288, subdivisions (a), (b)(1), and (c)(1), between 2010 and 2021. The record thus
demonstrates that the trial court did not rely solely on generic statewide statistics in
finding that Small established good cause under section 745(d).5 (Cf. People v. Superior
Court (Lalo) (2025) 114 Cal.App.5th 707, 714-715 [concluding that “statewide statistics”
alone are not sufficient to establish good cause under section 745(d)].)
To support the contrary proposition, the district attorney points out that at the
hearing on the district attorney’s reconsideration motion, the trial court stated that it had
previously relied “primarily, if not exclusively, [on] statewide statistical information to
make my initial good cause finding.” Relying on that comment alone, the district
attorney contends that the trial court erred by basing its finding of good cause solely on
statewide statistical evidence. Drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the
correctness of the trial court’s order (People v. Carpenter (1999) 21 Cal.4th 1016, 1046),
we interpret the trial court’s phrase “primarily, if not exclusively” to mean “primarily but
not exclusively.” That interpretation is supported by the fact that the trial court was
describing its previous ruling, and the reporter’s transcript of the prior hearing
demonstrates unequivocally that the court relied on all of Small’s evidence, not just the
statewide data. We accordingly conclude that the record does not support the district
5 In the writ petition, the district attorney does not challenge the trial court’s reliance on the data provided by the Racial Justice Act Tool. We accordingly express no opinion on whether the printouts generated from that website have any probative value.
17 attorney’s contention that the trial court relied exclusively on statewide statistical data in
finding that Small established good cause to warrant disclosure under section 745(d).
Because the record demonstrates that the trial court did not rely exclusively on
statewide statistics in finding that Small established good cause under section 745(d), the
district attorney’s arguments assuming such exclusive reliance lack merit.
III. Alhambra factors
A party can oppose disclosure under the Alhambra factors “by establishing that,
for example, the [party seeking discovery] can obtain the same information by other
means, or that the burden on the [party from whom discovery is sought] is not justified
under the circumstance.” (Facebook, Inc. v. Superior Court (Hunter) (2018) 4 Cal.5th
1245, 1290 (Hunter).) The district attorney argues that in weighing the Alhambra factors,
the trial court abused its discretion by “excusing Small from reviewing readily available
information before compelling disclosure.” We disagree.
At the initial hearing on the discovery motion, the trial court declined to compel
the public defender to conduct such a search before the court ordered disclosure from the
district attorney’s office. The court reasoned that the information it had ordered disclosed
included information that would not be readily available to Small or in the files of the
public defender’s office, such as cases in which the defendant had private counsel or
conflict counsel. In modifying the discovery order, the court again did not compel the
public defender’s office to search through its own records before the court compelled
disclosure by the district attorney’s office. That was not an abuse of discretion. The
18 district attorney did not provide any information about who represented the individuals in
the 1,619 cases that the district attorney had already identified as responsive to the court’s
order. The district attorney thus did not proffer any evidence countering the trial court’s
previous finding that the information available to Small from the public defender’s office
would not be the same as the information that could be obtained from the district
attorney’s office. (See Hunter, supra, 4 Cal.5th at p. 1290.)
Moreover, by the time of the hearing on the reconsideration motion, the district
attorney had already completed an extensive search of its records to respond to the initial
discovery order and had already identified the list of responsive cases. It was not
unreasonable for the trial court not to compel Small at that stage to seek similar
information from the public defender’s office before the court compelled the district
attorney to comply with the modified order, given the efforts already undertaken by the
district attorney’s office to comply with the initial order.
Given that the trial court could reasonably infer that Small could not obtain the
same information from the public defender’s office, and given the efforts already
undertaken by the district attorney’s office to comply with the initial discovery order, we
cannot say that the trial court abused its discretion when it declined to require Small to
obtain readily available information from the public defender’s office before the court
ordered disclosure from the district attorney’s office.
19 DISPOSITION
The petition is denied. The stay of proceedings in the superior court is lifted.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS
MENETREZ J.
We concur:
RAMIREZ P. J.
MILLER J.