People v. Bolden

• Decision Date: 05 December 2002
• Docket Number: No. S022173.,S022173.
• Citation: 29 Cal.4th 515,58 P.3d 931,127 Cal.Rptr.2d 802
• Parties: The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Clifford Stanley BOLDEN, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: California Supreme Court

127 Cal.Rptr.2d 802

29 Cal.4th 515

58 P.3d 931

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Clifford Stanley BOLDEN, Defendant and Appellant.

No. S022173.

Supreme Court of California.

December 5, 2002.

Jeanne Keevan-Lynch, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for Defendant and Appellant.

Daniel E. Lungren and Bill Lockyer, Attorneys General, George Williamson and David P. Druliner, Chief Assistant Attorneys General, Ronald A. Bass, Assistant Attorney General, Joan Killeen and Frances Marie Dogan, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

KENNARD, J.

Defendant Clifford Stanley Bolden appeals from a judgment of death upon his conviction by jury verdict of one count of murder in the first degree (Pen.Code, § 187),¹ with the special circumstance of murder in the commission of robbery (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(17)(A)), and one count of robbery (§ 211), with use of a deadly weapon to commit both offenses (§ 12022, subd. (b)). The jury that returned these verdicts as to guilt and special circumstance also returned a penalty verdict of death for the offense of first degree murder. The trial court denied the automatic motion to modify penalty (§ 190.4, subd. (e)) and sentenced defendant to death.

This appeal from the judgment of death is automatic. (§ 1239, subd. (b).) We will affirm the judgment in its entirety.

I. Facts and Proceedings

Henry Michael Pedersen was found dead in his apartment. He had been stabbed to death, and his body had been wrapped in a bedspread and placed in a bathtub. When last seen alive, Pedersen was in defendant's company, and defendant's fingerprints were found in Pedersen's apartment. When the police arrested defendant for Pedersen's murder, defendant had property belonging to Pedersen, and he was carrying a knife that was stained with human blood consistent with Pedersen's blood type.

A. Prosecution's Guilt Phase Case in chief

On September 8, 1986, Pedersen, an unemployed accountant, lived by himself in the upper unit of a three-unit apartment building in San Francisco. During the early afternoon, he went to a bar called the Pendulum, where the bartender, Thomas Sherck, recognized him as a regular customer. In the gay community of San Francisco, the Pendulum was known as a bar where Black men could meet White men. Sherck also saw defendant in the bar that afternoon. Defendant had placed an advertisement in the personals section of a local newspaper describing himself as a "black body builder, sculptured rock hard" and offering his services as an escort and model.

Around 5:00 p.m., Pedersen returned to his apartment where he spoke to Wayne L. Frye, a friend who occupied the ground floor apartment in the same building. Pedersen left again a short time later.

Lawrence Weathers, another friend of Pedersen's, met Pedersen at the Pendulum between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. Weathers saw Pedersen speak to defendant for 10 to 15 minutes. Pedersen left a short time later. Defendant followed and caught up with Pedersen, and the two continued walking together. Bruce Wertin, another bartender at the Pendulum, saw defendant there after 11:00 p.m., but Wertin was not acquainted with Pedersen and could not say whether Pedersen was there at that time.

That night, Frye heard Pedersen return to his apartment with another person between 11:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. Frye heard music being played in Pedersen's apartment and later he heard one person leave. Around 2:45 a.m., Bruce Wertin was waiting at a bus stop on Market Street when he saw defendant walking from the direction of Pedersen's apartment carrying an athletic bag. Wertin and defendant rode the same bus, and both got off at the corner of Market and Eighth Streets.

Around 6:00 p.m. on September 9, Frye went to Pedersen's apartment to investigate the sound of running water. After knocking and getting no response, he entered the apartment. In the bathroom, he found Pedersen's body in the bathtub, wrapped in a brown bedspread, with his head under the running faucet. Frye immediately contacted the police.

At the time of his death, Pedersen was 46 years old, stood five feet nine inches tall, and weighed 165 pounds. An autopsy of his body revealed that the cause of death was shock and hemorrhage caused by a stab wound to the back, just to the left of the center line and below the shoulder blade. This wound was five to six inches deep and five inches long, and it penetrated the lung and the spleen. There was also an L-shaped incised wound on Pedersen's chest, consisting of a vertical cut along the sternum and a horizontal cut along the ribs. Each of these cuts penetrated to the bone but not into the chest cavity. Pedersen's nose was fractured at the base and there was an abrasion and redness along the bridge of the nose. These injuries could have been caused either by a blow or by falling against a hard object. There were no defensive wounds on the body. Blood taken from the body had an alcohol content of .36 percent.

Police investigators observed no signs of a struggle in the apartment. On the coffee table in the living room were an empty wine bottle and two glasses. When the investigators turned over the cushions on the couch, they saw that the center cushion was saturated with blood, and the two outer cushions each had blood spatters. Defendant's fingerprints were found on the wine bottle, on one of the wine glasses, and on the bathtub. A warrant was issued for defendant's arrest.

Defendant was arrested on September 11, 1986. The arresting officers found a doubled-edged knife in a black sheath strapped to defendant's leg, concealed by his pants and socks. The knife, which had a six-inch blade, could have been the weapon that killed Pedersen. Defendant's pockets contained a gold bracelet engraved with the initials HMP and one gold cuff link. In the hall closet of defendant's apartment, officers found a black athletic bag containing these items: a gold cuff link matching the one found in defendant's pocket, a camera, binoculars, a wristwatch, a coin issued in 1977 to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth, and a plastic vial containing 50 cent pieces. The camera contained film; when this film was developed, the photographs included views of Pedersen's apartment building.

Pedersen's brother identified the camera found in defendant's apartment as one he had loaned to Pedersen. He identified the binoculars as those he had given to Pedersen around 1973. He said Pedersen usually kept the binoculars on the dining table or the coffee table in his apartment. He identified the plastic vial with 50-cent pieces as property that Pedersen usually kept on a bookcase in his bedroom.

Michele Garrison, one of Pedersen's former coworkers, identified the bracelet found in defendant's pocket as one she had caused to be engraved with Pedersen's initials and had given Pedersen around 1973. Kathryn Hendricks, a friend of Pedersen's, identified the gold cuff links, one of which was found in defendant's pocket and the other in defendant's apartment, and the binoculars found in defendant's apartment, as items belonging to Pedersen. She said Pedersen had used the binoculars when attending opera and ballet performances. Joseph Falardi, another friend of Pedersen's, also identified the camera, binoculars, and the vial with coins as property belonging to Pedersen. Marion Seitz, a friend and former coworker of Pedersen's, identified the 1977 commemorative coin as one she had given Pedersen. She testified that she had attended a concert with Pedersen on September 7, 1986, the night before he was killed, and that during the concert Pedersen had used the binoculars that were found in defendant's apartment.

Debbie Madden, a police criminalist specializing in forensic serology, examined the knife defendant was carrying when arrested and found a dried stain on the blade where it entered the knife's hilt. She scraped off the dried material and, upon testing, determined that it was human blood. By further testing using the electrophoretic multisystem method, she determined that the blood was ESD type 2-1 and PGM type 1. This was consistent with Pedersen's blood and with the blood of 13 percent of the White population, but it was inconsistent with defendant's blood.

B. Defense Case at the Guilt Phase

Duayne J. Dillon, a consulting criminalist, testified that his examination of the wine bottle and glasses found in Pedersen's apartment revealed no evidence that any of these objects had been wiped to remove fingerprints. On the wine bottle there was a mark indicating something had come in contact with the bottle, leaving a smudge, but the mark covered less than 3 percent of the bottle's surface. There were no marks on either wine glass consistent with wiping. Although more fingerprint powder adhered to one glass than to the other, this did not indicate that one of the glasses had been wiped. Rather, it indicated that there was more oil or other residue on the surface of the glass to which more powder adhered.

James Lord testified that he was a close friend of victim Pedersen. During the months of July to September 1986 Pedersen was not working. Pedersen frequented bars, including the Pendulum, in the Castro area of San Francisco. Defense counsel showed Lord a copy of a newspaper called the Bay Area Reporter in which defendant had advertised his services as a model or escort. Lord testified that the Bay Area Reporter was a newspaper that circulated primarily in the gay community. He knew of one occasion on which Pedersen had answered a similar newspaper advertisement.

Mary Elizabeth Reynolds testified she was the assistant manager of a clinical laboratory at a hospital. Her duties included quality assurance for clinical tests performed in the laboratory, including blood tests. She reviewed the testimony of prosecution criminalist Debbie Madden about the blood testing in this case, and particularly the test, known as the Ouchterlony species test, used to determine...