People of Guam v. Jared John Santos

Summary

The Supreme Court of Guam affirmed Jared John Santos’s convictions for aggravated assault and possession of a firearm without a license arising from a drive-by shooting. The court held that Santos preserved his objection under the best evidence rule and that testimony about unavailable surveillance footage was admissible because the original was destroyed by a third party, not by the government in bad faith. The court also concluded that the destruction of the only duplicate did not create a hierarchy of secondary evidence and that any potential error was addressed by an adverse inference instruction.

Holdings

1. The objection was sufficiently specific and preserved because, in context, it reasonably identified the best evidence rule as the basis for objecting to testimony about the contents of the unavailable surveillance video.
2. Under Guam Rule of Evidence 1004(1), secondary evidence of the video's contents was admissible because the original was destroyed by a third party rather than by the government in bad faith.
3. The destruction of the only duplicate did not trigger the best evidence rule or require exclusion of the officers' testimony because Guam's evidentiary rules impose no hierarchy of secondary evidence and do not require production of a duplicate instead of oral testimony.
4. Any potential error in admitting the officers' testimony was harmless because the trial court gave an adverse-inference instruction allowing the jury to infer that the lost surveillance video was unfavorable to the government.

Questions Presented

1. Whether Santos preserved a best-evidence objection when he objected to the general testimony about the unavailable surveillance video without expressly citing Guam Rule of Evidence 1002.
2. Whether Guam Rule of Evidence 1004(1) permitted testimony about the contents of the surveillance video when the original was automatically destroyed by a third party and the government failed to obtain it.
3. Whether the destruction of the only duplicate by a police officer required exclusion of the officers' testimony under the best evidence rule.
4. Whether any evidentiary error was harmless in light of the adverse-inference instruction given to the jury.

Disposition

affirmed