Filed 7/28/21 CERTIFIED FOR PUBLICATION IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA THIRD APPELLATE DISTRICT (Sacramento) ---- THE PEOPLE, C080978 Plaintiff and Respondent, (Super. Ct. No. 11F04310) v. KA YANG, Defendant and Appellant. APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Sacramento County, Steve W. White, Judge. Reversed. Scott Concklin, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant. Rob Bonta, Attorney General, Lance E. Winters, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Michael P. Farrell, Assistant Attorney General, Julia A. Hoskans, Clara M. Levers, Deputy Attorney General, for Plaintiff and Respondent. 1 This is an excruciatingly tragic case. A mother of four young children was found guilty by jury of first degree murder and assault on a child resulting in death, after she killed her youngest child and only daughter. There was no dispute that on an otherwise routine afternoon, defendant Ka Yang, while alone with her baby Mirabelle, placed the baby in a microwave oven and operated it for multiple minutes. These actions killed the baby, whom by all accounts was a child Yang cherished. Defendant told her family and first responders that she did not know how the baby was injured, but she consistently spoke of having suffered a seizure, and guessed that the baby had been injured when dropped on a nearby heater while defendant was incapacitated. Defendant had a history of epilepsy; her defense at trial, supported in part by expert testimony, was that she killed her daughter while unconscious due to an epileptic seizure. The prosecution countered defendant’s claim of unconsciousness with expert testimony of its own, including testimony regarding postpartum mental disorders and testimony utilizing defendant’s privileged psychological records, after an inadvertent disclosure by the trial court allowed the prosecutor to discern these records’ contents midtrial and secure their admission on that basis. Although defendant had not been diagnosed with any postpartum mental disorder, and Mirabelle’s pediatrician testified defendant had screened negative for any such disorder, the prosecution relied on this evidence to theorize that defendant was motivated to kill her daughter by hallucinations related to undiagnosed postpartum psychosis. We conclude the trial court abused its discretion by allowing expert testimony regarding postpartum mental disorders without sufficient factual basis and by subsequently admitting into evidence defendant’s psychological records not directly related to any mental condition she had put at issue. Because we cannot conclude these 2 errors were harmless when considered together, we reverse the judgment in its entirety. Accordingly, we do not reach defendant’s remaining claims.1 FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS In September 2015, an amended information charged defendant with the first degree murder of her infant daughter, Mirabelle (Pen. Code, § 187, subd. (a); count one), and assault on a child resulting in death (id., § 273ab; count two). It was further alleged defendant personally used a deadly and dangerous weapon, to wit, a microwave, in the commission of the murder as charged in count one. (Id., § 12022, subd. (b)(1).) The murder was alleged to have occurred on March …
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals