People v. Edwards
Annotate this CaseEdwards, age 17, and his friends from East Palo Alto drove to a high school house party in San José. Following an argument, members of his group fired gunshots at a crowd on the lawn in front of the house. A bullet struck DeJesús in the head, fatally wounding him. This incident followed a similar shooting at a Sunnyvale party three weeks earlier in which a teenager was shot but survived. The prosecution charged Edwards as an adult with: murder for the death in San José; shooting at an inhabited dwelling in San José; assault with a firearm in Sunnyvale; and shooting at an inhabited dwelling in Sunnyvale. All counts included firearm and gang-related enhancements. The jury found defendant guilty of second degree murder and shooting at an inhabited dwelling in Counts One andTwo. The jury hung on the counts related to the Sunnyvale shooting and returned no findings on any of the enhancements. The court sentenced Edwards to 22 years to life. The court of appeal affirmed, finding harmless error in contentions that the court erroneously excluded expert testimony offered to impeach the prosecution’s gang expert and erroneously admitted testimonial hearsay through the prosecution’s gang expert.
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