New filing in the Orange County court records website late last night: the state is moving to exclude some of Jorge's medical records as irrelevant.
First, the state does not seem happy with the late timing of when the defense gave these to the state: "Tonight the State received 550 pages of medical records regarding medical treatment the decedent received in 2017 and 2018. The Defendant acquired these records in January 2022."
A few other snippets:
"The Defendant, even in her most recent iteration of what happened on February 23, 2020, has not set forth the legal grounds to claim self-defense. Assuming that she does so at trial with a different version of events, then prior incidents of violence committed by the decedent that she was aware of would be admissible to show the reasonableness of her fear of imminent great bodily harm or death."
"487 pages regard an incident on December 24, 2017 where the decedent was beaten so badly he needed facial reconstruction surgery. This is not relevant to whether the decedent committed a prior act of violence that the Defendant was aware of occurring."
"The 2018 incident is also not relevant. The history provided by the decedent was that he put his hand through a glass window the day before..."
"Burying the jury with 550 pages of records, when nearly all of them are irrelevant when giving the Defendant every benefit of the doubt on relevancy is unnecessary, and the probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of issues, misleading the jury, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence."
So it sounds to me, a non-lawyer, that the defense is trying to enter Jorge's medical records to show Sarah hurt him previously and somehow they think this will help bolster her defense of BSS. My assumption is she was the one who beat him in 2017 and somehow caused the glass window incident in 2018? I'm sure there's a legal strategy here I'm oblivious to but to an outsider, it looks like it just further proves that Sarah was a violent person.
