People v. Balassa
| Decision Date | 25 February 2020 |
| Docket Number | F073733 |
| Court | California Court of Appeals |
| Parties | THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. JOAQUIN MIGUEL BALASSA, Defendant and Appellant. |
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS
California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.
OPINIONAPPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Kern County. Michael E. Dellostritto, Judge.
Cliff Gardner, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Xavier Becerra, Attorney General, Gerald A. Engler, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Michael P. Farrell, Assistant Attorney General, Stephanie A. Mitchell and Alice Su, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
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After a night of drinking and socializing with four male friends, defendant Joaquin Miguel Balassa beat two of them to death inside his apartment. At trial, defendant testified he acted in self-defense when he awoke to find himself being sodomized by one of the victims while the other victim held him down. The jury rejected defendant's claim of self-defense; convicted him of two counts of willful, deliberate and premeditated murder; and found true the special-circumstance allegations that defendant committed multiple murders. (Pen. Code, §§ 187, subd. (a), 189, subd. (a), 190.2, subd. (a)(3).)1, 2 Based on the special-circumstances findings, the trial court sentenced defendant to two consecutive terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole. (§ 190.2, subd. (a).)
On appeal, defendant advances six claims. He argues that the prosecutor improperly used his exercise of his constitutional rights against him at trial, resulting in the violation of his right to due process; that the trial court committed error in its instruction to the jury pursuant to CALCRIM No. 571 (imperfect self-defense); and that the trial court erred in failing to instruct the jury with CALJIC No. 5.10 (). Defendant also argues that cumulatively, these errors were prejudicial. Finally, defendant claims that one of the two multiple-murder special-circumstance findings must be reversed as duplicative, and that the parole revocation restitution fine imposed under section 1202.45 must be stricken because his sentence does not include the possibility of parole.
The People concede one of the two multiple-murder special-circumstance findings and the parole revocation fine must be stricken, but they otherwise dispute defendant's entitlement to any relief.
We accept the People's concessions and agree that one of the two multiple-murder special-circumstance findings must be stricken as duplicative and that the parole revocation restitution fine must be stricken because defendant is not eligible for parole. We otherwise reject defendant's claims of error and affirm the judgment.
The crimes in this case occurred in the Kern County city of Tehachapi. The victims, Guy K. and Jose F., were a gay couple in their 50's. Guy and Jose met defendant approximately six months before their murders when they came into the home improvement store where defendant worked. He assisted them at length that day and they returned the next day. One of Guy's and Jose's purchases was a barbecue grill and they mentioned to defendant barbecuing together sometime. During their second trip to the store, they exchanged phone numbers with defendant. Afterward, defendant periodically received a text inviting him to hang out and he viewed Guy and Jose as friends, but the three were never able to line up plans.
On August 31, 2014, defendant spent the afternoon and early evening with his new girlfriend and Luis, one of his two roommates.4 Shortly before 8:00 p.m., after defendant's girlfriend left to go home, Jose invited defendant by text message to join him and Guy for dinner and drinks at a restaurant in town. Defendant accepted and invitedLuis to come along. Defendant and Luis met Guy and Jose at the restaurant sometime after 8:30 p.m.
Dinner was uneventful and the four men had a good time together. They ate dinner and shared two pitchers of margaritas and two rounds of tequila shots. Defendant and Jose each had an additional tequila shot and the group departed around 10:20 p.m. Defendant and Jose played around in the parking lot having footraces, which Guy took photographs of them on his cell phone. Additional alcohol was purchased at the liquor store near the restaurant and the group went to defendant's apartment. Mario, a friend of defendant's, arrived at the apartment around the same time and joined the group.
Inside, the five men drank whiskey shots and played beer pong. They had a good time and there was no sign of any trouble. At some point, Mario saw defendant go into his bedroom with Guy and Jose. The door to the bedroom was closed and the music was turned up. The three emerged approximately 20 minutes later, and Mario told defendant he was not comfortable and wanted to leave. Mario explained at trial that he preferred partying with both men and women and he was not interested in partying with just men. Mario also testified that defendant had jumped on him at one point without a shirt on and straddled his waist, which made him uncomfortable. Mario departed around 1:00 a.m. and met up with a former girlfriend. He recalled that when he left, Luis was asleep on the sofa and Jose and defendant were talking.
Luis testified that he went to sleep on the sofa because he had to work the next day. Prior to falling asleep, he saw Guy go to defendant's bedroom to sleep. Defendant and Jose were playing beer pong in the kitchen, and Mario was sitting on the sofa next to him. Everyone was having a good time.
Luis later awoke to the sound of a loud argument between defendant and Jose, and he testified that he saw Jose kiss, or attempt to kiss, defendant on the mouth. Luis saw defendant, who was 28 years old and trained in mixed martial arts (MMA) fighting, punch Jose once in the face, knocking Jose unconscious. Defendant then got on Jose'sstomach and started punching and elbowing Jose in the face. Luis tried to pull defendant off Jose, but defendant told Luis not to touch him. Defendant continued to hit and kick Jose in the face, and Luis saw Jose's head hit the living room wall, leaving a hole in the drywall. Luis's cell phone was dead, so he left the apartment to get help, telling officers who interviewed him later that he feared for his own safety. During that time, Luis did not see Guy or Mario.5
At approximately 3:20 a.m., Luis approached a police car at a gas station a mile or two away from defendant's apartment. He told the officer he wanted to remain anonymous and he reported a fight at defendant's apartment involving defendant. He also told the officer that three people were at the apartment. The officer wrote down the license plate to Luis's vehicle and radioed a second police officer for backup.
The two officers responded to defendant's apartment to investigate what they thought was a disturbance of the peace. Defendant answered the front door in his boxer shorts. The officers told defendant that neighbors heard arguing and they were checking to see if everything was okay. Defendant told the officers to hold on, and he then shut the door and locked the deadbolt. One of the officers noticed a spot of blood outside the door.
After waiting several minutes, the officers knocked again. Defendant answered the door a second time. He again told them to hang on because he needed to get dressed, and he shut and locked the door. After defendant shut the door, one of officers told the other that when defendant opened the door, she saw broken glass and what appeared to be a large amount of blood in the entryway, leading her to believe someone inside was either seriously injured or dead.
After obtaining a key from the apartment manager, the two officers and a sheriff's deputy who had arrived entered the apartment. They described the scene as very bloody, and they saw Jose, who appeared deceased, on the floor in the living room. They proceeded through the apartment and located Guy, who was also deceased, in the bathtub. Both victims had visibly swollen faces. Officers located defendant lying on his bed in the master bedroom clothed but wet and pretending to be asleep.
Defendant was handcuffed and escorted from the apartment. He repeatedly stated he had been sleeping and asked what was going on. He was escorted to a patrol car without incident, but he resisted the directive to step into the car. After being placed in the patrol car, defendant slipped his handcuffed arms from behind his back to his front, kicked at the windows, told the officers he was going to kill them and referred to one of the officers as Chuck Liddell, an MMA fighter.6 After he was pepper sprayed, defendant calmed down.
At the police station, defendant gave a statement denying involvement in the crimes. A detective asked him, Defendant denied anything happened and stated that he went out to dinner with his girlfriend, went to bed when he got home and woke up to police "banging on [his] door." He also said that his friends Mario and Luis were over when he went to bed; there were some other people there he did not know but had seen once before; Mario was acting weird that night; and he had always felt Mario was working undercover. Defendant denied knowing the man found on the living room floor, indicated he had notseen any blood on the floor and...
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