People v. Jones
| Citation | 131 Cal.Rptr.2d 468,29 Cal.4th 1229,64 P.3d 762 |
| Decision Date | 17 March 2003 |
| Docket Number | No. S046117.,S046117. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court (California) |
| Parties | The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Ernest Dwayne JONES, Defendant and Appellant. |
H. Mitchell Caldwell and Jan J. Nolan, Santa Ana, under appointments by the Supreme Court, for Defendant and Appellant.
Bill Lockyer, Attorney General, Robert R. Anderson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Pamela C. Hamanaka, Assistant Attorney General, John R Gorey and Herbert S. Tetef, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
Certiorari Denied October 14, 2003. See 124 S.Ct. 395.
A jury convicted defendant Ernest Dwayne Jones of the first degree murder (Pen.Code,1 §§ 187, 189) and rape (§ 261) of Julia Miller, and it found true the special circumstance allegation that the murder was committed in the commission of the rape. The jury found that defendant was not guilty of burglary (§ 459) or robbery (§ 211) of Mrs. Miller, and it found not true the special circumstance allegations that the murder of Mrs. Miller was committed in the commission of burglary or robbery. Finally, the jury found true the allegations that defendant personally used a deadly weapon, i.e., a knife, to commit the crimes (§ 12022, subd. (b)) and that he had served a prior prison term (§ 667.5). The jury set the penalty at death. The trial court denied defendant's motion for a new trial (§ 1179 et seq.) and his motion for modification of the sentence (§ 190.4, subd. (e)). This appeal is automatic. (§ 1239.) We conclude the judgment should be affirmed in its entirety.
Shortly after midnight on August 25, 1992, in Los Angeles, Chester Miller returned home from work and noticed the family station wagon was missing from the driveway. Mr. Miller went into his house and found his wife, Julia, lying dead at the foot of their bed. Mrs. Miller's robe was open, her nightgown was bunched above her waist, and she was naked from the waist down. A telephone cord and a purse strap had been used to tie Mrs. Miller's arms over her head, and a nightgown had been used to loosely tie her ankles together. Mrs. Miller had been gagged with two rags, one in her mouth and another around her face. Two kitchen knives were sticking out of her neck. Pieces of three other knives were found on or around her body.
Defendant and the Millers' daughter, Pam, lived together in an apartment about two and one-half miles from the Millers. Around 6:00 p.m. on the previous day, August 24, 1992, Pam had been on the phone with her mother. Defendant had interrupted Pam to ask her whether her parents were at home. Pam told defendant that her father was at work, but that her mother was home.
Around 7:40 p.m. the same evening, defendant left the apartment. Pam later noticed defendant had apparently switched off the ringer on their phone, something he had never done before. At 9:30 p.m., defendant returned to the apartment, smoked a joint of marijuana and cocaine, and then left again at 10:00 p.m. He had again switched off the phone ringer. Defendant returned in 20 minutes and rolled some more "joints."
Pam always slept with the television on, but this night defendant told her to turn it off because he had things on his mind. Around midnight she woke up and saw defendant looking out the window. At some point in the evening he had changed clothes. At 1:00 a.m., their doorbell rang. Defendant told Pam not to answer it. Hearing her name called, Pam looked out of the bedroom window and saw her grandmother, who told her to open the apartment door. When defendant did so, Pam's grandfather said her mother had been killed. Pam repeatedly asked defendant to accompany her to her grandparents' house, but defendant refused, saying he would come when he got his sister's car.
When Pam arrived at her grandparents' house, she called her friend Shamaine Love. Pam told Love that Mrs. Miller had been killed. Love, a childhood friend of Pam's, as well as a drug dealer who regularly sold cocaine to her and to defendant, lived near Mr. and Mrs. Miller. Love told Pam that several times during the day Mrs. Miller had been murdered defendant had been to Love's house to buy drugs from her. Two of defendant's trips to Love's house were in the afternoon; on both occasions he paid for the drugs in cash. Shortly after sunset, which would have been sometime between 7:30 and 7:55 p.m., defendant had again visited Love, this time paying for cocaine and marijuana with a gold chain. Later that night defendant again bought cocaine from Love, paying for it with a pearl necklace, pearl earrings, and a pearl bracelet. Pam identified the pearl jewelry, and later the gold chain, as Mrs. Miller's. Pam took the pearl jewelry to the Miller house and showed it to detectives there. Pam told the officers that she knew who had killed her mother and that they should go to the apartment. At 3:00 a.m., police officers staked out the Millers' station wagon, which they found parked around the corner from the apartment. Shortly thereafter defendant got into the station wagon and drove away. The officers followed in their marked patrol car. Defendant looked back in the officers' direction, reached into the back seat, and brought a rifle into the front seat. Defendant then sped up, and the officers gave chase, their lights and sirens on. Defendant ran red lights and stop signs. Other patrol cars joined in pursuit. Defendant hit a traffic island and blew out the tires on the driver's side of the station wagon. He continued driving on the rims, however, and entered a freeway. First the wheels and then the rims on the station wagon disintegrated, forcing defendant to stop. The pursuit lasted 40 minutes. Defendant was ordered out of the station wagon, but instead he placed the rifle to his chest and shot himself. A subsequent search of the apartment revealed that the front and back doors had been barricaded with furniture.
The deputy medical examiner with the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office who performed the autopsy on Mrs. Miller's body concluded, on the basis of the following evidence, that she had been stabbed to death. Two knives were sticking out of Mrs. Miller's neck. She also had 14 stab wounds in her abdomen and one in her vagina, but the fatal stab wound, which penetrated to the spine, was the one in the middle of her chest. Aside from the stab wound, there was no evidence of trauma to the vaginal region.
At the crime scene, a criminalist with the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office took swabs of Mrs. Miller's vagina. Another criminalist found a great abundance of intact spermatozoa on the vaginal swab, leading him to conclude that ejaculation occurred no more than five to 10 hours before Mrs. Miller's death. A blood sample was taken from defendant. A molecular biologist for Cellmark Diagnostics performed deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) testing on the blood sample taken from defendant and on the vaginal swabs taken from Mrs. Miller. This testing yields banding patterns that are, with the exception of identical twins, unique to every individual. There is only one chance in 78 million that a random individual would have the same DNA banding pattern as defendant. The tests showed that the banding pattern in the DNA from defendant's blood sample matched the banding pattern of the semen on the vaginal swab taken from Mrs. Miller.
Defendant's prior conviction for sexually assaulting Dorothea H.
Previously, defendant had lived with Glynnis H. and their infant son in a garage behind the home of Glynnis's mother, Dorothea H. (Mrs. H.). After defendant and Glynnis broke up and Glynnis moved away, Mrs. H. told defendant to move out of the garage. On March 29, 1985, around 6:30 a.m., Mrs. H. heard the gate to her backyard rattle and then heard a window in the bedroom nearest the garage, the bedroom Glynnis had used, break. Mrs. H. investigated and found defendant standing in her hallway. Appearing desperate, defendant asked Mrs. H. where Glynnis and the infant were. When he learned they were not there, defendant, telling her not to scream, took Mrs. H. into her bedroom. Defendant gagged Mrs. H. and bound her arms and legs. The binding permitted Mrs. H.'s legs to be separated a bit. Defendant then raped and sodomized her.
After the assault, while defendant was resting on the bed, the doorbell rang. After peeking outside, defendant untied Mrs. H., told her not to say anything, and stood behind her as she opened the door. It was a delivery from the United Parcel Service — a package from Glynnis containing a photograph of Glynnis, defendant and their infant. When he saw the photograph, defendant began crying. He told Mrs. H. he was not going to kill her because Mrs. H., who was a teacher, could take care of the baby financially.
Defendant then took a knife from the kitchen drawer, placed it against his stomach, and asked Mrs. H. to kill him. When Mrs. H. said she couldn't, that it would be against her religion, defendant bound her to her bed, took $40 dollars from her purse, and asked her for her neighbor's phone number, saying that after he left he would call her neighbor. Defendant did so, and the neighbor released Mrs. H.
As a result of this incident, defendant was convicted of first degree burglary (§§ 459, 460, subd. (a)), residential robbery (former § 213.5, repealed by Stats.1986, ch. 1428, § 5, p. 5124; see now § 213), assault with a deadly weapon (§ 245, subd. (a)(1)), rape (§ 261, subd. (a)(2)), and sodomy (§ 286, subd. (c)(2)). In April 1986, defendant was sentenced to prison for 12 years, and he was paroled in 1991, 10 months before the murder of Mrs. Miller.
Defendant testified as follows: Around 3:00 p.m. on the day he killed Mrs. Miller, defendant, feeling depressed, bought rock cocaine and marijuana from Shamaine Love, paying $20 in cash. He went to the apartment...
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