People v. Robbins

• Citation: 248 Cal.Rptr. 172,45 Cal.3d 867,755 P.2d 355
• Court: United States State Supreme Court (California)
• Decision Date: 27 June 1988
• Parties: , 755 P.2d 355 The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Malcolm Joseph ROBBINS, Defendant and Appellant. Crim. 23149.

Page 172

248 Cal.Rptr. 172

45 Cal.3d 867, 755 P.2d 355

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Malcolm Joseph ROBBINS, Defendant and Appellant.

Crim. 23149.

Supreme Court of California,

In Bank.

June 27, 1988.

Rehearing Denied Aug. 18, 1988.

Certiorari Denied Jan. 17, 1989.

See 109 S.Ct. 849.

Frank O. Bell, Jr., State Public Defender, under appointment by the Supreme Court, Monica Knox, Chief Asst. State Public Defender, and Michael Tanaka, Deputy State Public Defender, San Francisco, for defendant and appellant.

John K. Van de Kamp, Atty. Gen., Steve White, Chief Asst. Atty. Gen., Robert R. Anderson, Susanne C. Wylie, Gary R. Hahn and Donald E. De Nicola, Deputy Attys. Gen., Los Angeles, for plaintiff and respondent.

LUCAS, Chief Justice.

Malcolm Joseph Robbins appeals (Pen.Code, § 1239, subd. (b)) ¹ from a judgment of death following his conviction of the murder ( § 187) and kidnapping ( § 207) of Christopher Finney. The jury found as special circumstances that the murder was committed during a kidnapping ( § 190.2, subd. (a)(17)(ii)) and a lewd and lascivious act on a minor ( § 190.2, subd. (a)(17)(v); see § 288). We affirm.

I. FACTS

A. Guilt Phase Evidence

On the afternoon of June 15, 1980, six-year-old Christopher Finney disappeared on the way home from his father's store in Isla Vista. Christopher was last seen riding a red motorcycle driven by a blond man wearing shorts. His skeleton was found three months later. A medical examiner concluded death was caused by a broken neck--an abrupt twisting of the head and a forced separation of the cervical vertebrae.

Defendant was arrested in New Jersey in November 1980 on an unrelated matter. While in custody there, he spontaneously revealed to police officers that he had killed a young boy in California. Thereafter California law enforcement officials interrogated him about Christopher's disappearance. In a tape-recorded interview, he confessed to picking up Christopher, giving him a motorcycle ride, "having sex" and sodomizing him, and choking him to death. He said that after the sexual activity, Christopher had been angry, and had kicked him and his motorcycle's tires, at which point he became enraged and grabbed Christopher around the neck; the next thing he knew, Christopher was dead. He explained that he then collected Christopher's clothes and took them home.

Defendant's description of the manner of death was consistent with that of the pathologist. In addition, a gas station attendant had seen defendant, wearing shorts but no shirt and driving a red motorcycle, shortly before Christopher disappeared. Christopher's friend, Eric, had seen him riding the motorcycle sometime that afternoon, and gave a description of the motorcycle's driver that matched defendant. Defendant sold his motorcycle shortly after Christopher's disappearance, but failed to collect the full purchase price. He moved out of his apartment and left Isla Vista within a few days after June 15th. One of his roommates later found a boy's T-shirt in defendant's room.

While defendant was in custody in New Jersey, he was questioned by law enforcement officials from Texas, West Virginia, New York, Wisconsin, Maine, and other jurisdictions as well as New Jersey and California. He confessed to a Texas police officer that he had left California for Dallas around Christmas day, 1979, and once in Dallas, had lured Steven Little, a seven-year-old boy, into his truck where he first sodomized and, after the boy screamed, strangled him by wrapping an object around his neck. Thereafter, defendant admitted, he put Steven's body in a dumpster, lighted a fire, and left. Steven's unclothed body was found in a burning dumpster behind a department store at 1 a.m. on December 28, 1979. Throughout the confession, defendant disclosed several details that only the culprit could have known. An autopsy performed on Steven Little revealed that he had been sodomized, that he had been dead at the time of the burning, and that he had died from ligature strangulation.

Defendant pleaded not guilty to the California charges. At his trial for Christopher's murder, the Dallas offense evidence was introduced in the prosecution's case-in-chief to establish defendant's intent to engage in lewd and lascivious conduct with, and intent to kill, Christopher. The defense theory was that although defendant had killed Christopher, there had been no sexual activity nor any sexual motive for the killing, and the killing was neither deliberate nor intentional. Counsel argued defendant had picked up Christopher simply for companionship (because he was socially more at ease with children than adults) and that he had killed Christopher in a frustrated rage when Christopher kicked his motorcycle.

Although defendant had confessed to sodomizing as well as strangling Christopher, at trial he sought to demonstrate that he often confessed falsely, and he attempted to establish an alibi for the Dallas crime to which he had confessed. The alibi evidence was as follows: Defendant was seen in Palm Springs early on December 26, and kept a doctor's appointment there at 4 or 5 p.m. on December 28. The Dallas victim was last seen near his home at 5 or 6 p.m. on the 27th. The dumpster fire was started between 11 p.m. on the 27th and 1 a.m. on the 28th. The distance between Dallas and Palm Springs is 1,380 miles. Estimates of driving time between the two points ranged from 18 to 25 hours. In sum, the alibi evidence made it questionable but not impossible that defendant was in Dallas at the critical times. The credibility of this evidence, however, was seriously cast in doubt by the impeachment of one of the defense witnesses with his prior statement to the police that defendant had taken a short trip to Texas at the end of December.

The remainder of defendant's evidence consisted of testimony about his character and mental state from expert and lay witnesses. Acquaintances, most of whom were homosexual lovers during the period from 1978 to 1980, described him as immature, cocky, and craving attention. They described a tendency to exaggerate, to brag of his exploits, and to fantasize events and relationships.

Several friends described defendant's fascination with police officers and police work. One former lover, a security guard, described defendant and others driving around Los Angeles, pretending they were assisting homicide detectives in stalking the "freeway killer." Defendant's interview with the California officers in New Jersey contained numerous references to his friendly contacts with police.

The defense experts' testimony was rather inconsistent with the theory that defendant had not sexually molested Christopher. They described him as having borderline intelligence and suffering from severe emotional problems resulting from a childhood of neglect and sexual abuse. They revealed that he began to abuse other children at an early age, while he was being abused and victimized himself in the various institutions in which he had been placed. As these experts explained, defendant is capable of simultaneously identifying with a child as victim, and victimizing that child to strike back at those who hurt him. They described his "primary diagnosis" as pedophilia.

One expert witness believed defendant would confess to crimes he had not committed because of a general sense of guilt typical of abused children. Dr. Coburn, a psychiatrist, thought defendant would also have confessed out of a desire to please the police and to help them solve a crime, and out of gratitude for the attention he was receiving from them.

All defense expert witnesses stated that even if there had been a sexual motive for the encounter with Christopher, the killing was probably unintentional. Whether Christopher was killed for kicking the motorcycle or for resisting sexual advances, the witnesses believed defendant was in an unthinking rage and could not have intended to kill.

On rebuttal, the prosecution sought to disprove the theory that defendant confessed falsely to please the authorities by introducing evidence of three interviews in which defendant refused to confess to unsolved crimes. In one of these cases, it was later definitively established defendant could not have been the culprit. Additionally, a New Jersey officer testified defendant had denied guilt of a New Jersey offense for some time before confessing to the California killing. The prosecution argued that on this record one could conclude defendant confessed only to those crimes of which he was guilty.

B. Penalty Phase Evidence

The prosecution presented evidence of two additional sexually motivated murders of boys during 1980. The first victim was 17-year-old Brian Lepko, who disappeared from his home in Wheeling, West Virginia, on January 29, 1980. Brian's mother testified that her son had left for a party with a man who was supposed to buy his car, a blue Nova. The Nova was registered to defendant in Maine on February 4, 1980. There had been guilt phase testimony that defendant was seen driving a car of that description in California in early 1980.

Brian's disappearance was not solved until defendant was arrested in New Jersey in November 1980 and confessed to the killing. He told police he had stabbed Brian in the stomach in self-defense and had then driven Brian's body to Maine, where he tried to bury it but was unable to do so because the ground was frozen. Defendant gave Brian's wallet to Mr. Freeman, one of his mother's former boyfriends whom defendant believed to be his father. On hearing defendant's account of what had happened, Freeman advised him to register the car in his own name.

With assistance from defendant, the Maine authorities found Brian's body in February 1981. A pathologist testified that the cause of death was stab wounds to the head and back, rather than to the front of the body.

The second victim was nine-year-old Evan Bailey of Vineland, New Jersey,...