People v. Cason

• Decision Date: 07 December 2009
• Docket Number: No. E047440.,E047440.
• Citation: 179 Cal.App.4th 1419,102 Cal. Rptr. 3d 560
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. MICHAEL BARRETT CASON, Defendant and Appellant.

179 Cal.App.4th 1419

102 Cal. Rptr. 3d 560

THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. MICHAEL BARRETT CASON, Defendant and Appellant.

No. E047440.

Court of Appeals of California, Fourth District, Division Two.

December 7, 2009.

Marilee Marshall, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.

Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Gary W. Schons, Assistant Attorney General, Daniel Rogers and Christopher P. Beesley, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

OPINION

RAMIREZ, P. J.

INTRODUCTION

Michael Barrett Cason (defendant) asserts that the evidence adduced at trial is insufficient to support three of his four convictions. We will affirm.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

Defendant was on probation in two prior felony cases when, on April 28, 2008, the District Attorney of Riverside County filed an information charging him with two counts each of pimping (Pen. Code, § 266h; counts 1 & 2),¹ and pandering (§ 266i; counts 3 & 4). As to pimping, the information alleged that defendant willfully and unlawfully solicited Jane Doe No. 1 (Q.) and Jane Doe No. 2 (P.) to be prostitutes and lived and derived support from the earnings of their prostitution (counts 1 & 2). As to pandering, the information alleged, in the language of section 266i, subdivision (a)(1) and (2), that defendant procured Q. and P. "for the purpose of prostitution and by promises, threats, violence and by device and scheme, cause, induce, persuade and encourage [each of them] to become a prostitute" (counts 3 & 4). The information further alleged that a year earlier, on April 27, 2007, defendant had been convicted of making criminal threats (§ 422), a serious and violent felony within the meaning of the three strikes law. (§§ 667, subds. (c), (e)(1), 1170.12, subd. (c)(1).)²

Jury trial began on September 3, 2008. Q., D., H., and two sheriff deputies, Rohn and Staton, testified for the People. P. did not testify. Defendant did not testify and called no witnesses.

Q.

Q. was in debt and living with her parents in San Diego when, in June 2007, for the first time, she posted an Internet advertisement offering to provide time and companionship to persons who were willing to pay her. The day she posted the ad, defendant called and offered her employment as a prostitute. If she would work for him, he said, he would take care of her and pay her outstanding car and telephone bills. He would post advertisements and all she had to do was "take the calls" and "give him the money." Defendant talked to Q. for about an hour.

On June 11, 2007, the day after he called her, Q. drove to Temecula to meet defendant. She agreed to work for him and stayed at his house that night. The next morning, D., who lived with defendant and also worked for him, accompanied Q. to the Comfort Inn in Temecula for her first day of work. The women both had cell phones defendant gave them and on which customers could call to make "dates." Through his computer, defendant monitored their calls. If Q. missed any calls or stopped answering the phone, defendant would contact her and ask her why she was not answering the phone. Defendant posted Q.'s services at $200 for each half hour and gave her a daily quota of $1,000. Because she was "just a prostitute," she gave all the money she made, including tips, to defendant.

Q. did not like the work and tried to leave defendant's employ on several occasions. When she told him she wanted to go home, he refused to give her any money. Defendant told Q. she would never make it without him, that she "wasn't good enough" and "didn't have the looks" to be successful by herself. Nonetheless, Q. "quit" five or six times, by turning in her phone and driving back to her parents' home in San Diego. When she again found herself in debt, she sometimes worked for a pimp in San Diego, "DK." She returned to work for defendant because, unlike DK, he did not hit her.

In August 2007, Q. reported defendant to the police. At trial, she testified that she was angry at defendant, as opposed to DK, because it was defendant who had first recruited her to work as a prostitute. She had never engaged in any acts of prostitution before she met defendant.

D.

D. was working as a clerk at Walgreen's in Hemet when she met defendant in 2005. Defendant told her she was beautiful and that he would like to take her and her two-year-old daughter to Disneyland. In the beginning, D. and defendant had a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship and talked about getting married. However, a few weeks after they began dating, defendant revealed that he ran an escort business and talked to D. about some of the girls who worked for him.³ Eventually, D. began working for defendant too. Defendant photographed her with other prostitutes and posted their pictures, along with phone numbers and prices coded in "roses" on the Internet Web site, craigslist. P. was one of the girls who worked for defendant and with whom defendant photographed D. for ads he posted. Some of the photographs were taken in a house in Temecula where D. lived with defendant. D. saw defendant in their kitchen writing and posting Internet advertisements containing photographs of P. and other girls.

D. worked for defendant from July 2006 to August 2007. She stopped for four months between January and May 2007, hoping she could regain custody of her daughter, who had been taken by child protective services. In those four months, D. worked as a hostess at a restaurant. Defendant repeatedly called and came to the restaurant or to her apartment and tried to persuade her to return to work for him. To avoid him, D. sometimes would not answer the phone or the door. Eventually, because she needed money so badly, she returned to work for defendant. D. was afraid to leave lest, "all this stuff he told me happened to the girls that told, would happen to me."

When she worked for defendant, D. would sometimes accompany and transport defendant's other girls to hotel rooms where she and they would wait for customers to call their cell phones. Defendant had a laptop computer that "went everywhere he went" and on which he could monitor their calls and post Internet ads. In addition to their photographs and phone numbers, defendant set and posted varying prices for their services. The prices varied by city and the amount of time and number of girls a customer wanted. All the girls had a quota of $1,000 a day. All the girls gave defendant all the money they made every day. As soon as a client paid D., she took the money directly to defendant.

In May 2007, defendant and D. moved together to a house in Temecula, which D. and M.O.—another girl who worked for defendant—rented for $2,300 per month with money orders defendant gave them. Defendant gave D. money for groceries and beauty supplies, but never any money for herself.

D. was arrested with defendant on August 27, 2007, and charged with four identical felonies. By the time of defendant's trial, however, her charges had been reduced to misdemeanors in exchange for a guilty plea. During testimony, D. identified eight different photographs of P., taken by defendant and posted by him on the Internet. D. said she had never worked as a prostitute before meeting defendant and did not work as a prostitute after his arrest. She never recruited other girls to work for defendant.

H.

H. and D. had been friends since they were in seventh grade. H. met defendant when she was visiting D.'s apartment, where she observed him "posting girls" on craigslist. Defendant told H. she was beautiful, that she was what guys wanted, and that "a guy could make a lot of money off a girl like [her]." He suggested a number of "really dumb reasons" why she should be a prostitute: D. was doing it; if H. did it, he would buy her a car; since she was having sex anyway, she might as well get paid for it. However, he would be keeping all the money she made because if he gave it to her, she would "spend it too fast." And if they got her a car, it would be in his name. H. did not go to work for defendant. Because she was worried about her friend, she told D.'s mother about what D. was doing.

Rohn and Staton

On August 15, 2007, in the course of investigating defendant, Rohn and fellow deputies staked out the Comfort Inn in Temecula. About 9:00 p.m., Rohn saw defendant pull up to the hotel in a red Nissan truck and drop off a "Hispanic female." The woman, dressed in a "revealing outfit," entered room 319. Subsequently, about 20 minutes apart, two different middle-aged men came to the hotel, went to that room, and left after 10 to 15 minutes. Shortly after the second man departed, the Hispanic female left the hotel with a "white female" who appeared to be in her mid-20's and was also dressed seductively. Rohn lost sight of the women after they left the parking lot, but called "the rest of the team" to let them know.

Staton had worked in law enforcement for almost 20 years before taking a job in the Riverside County Sheriff's Department, where he had worked for two and one-half years. Staton had been assigned to the special enforcement unit and had received training in prostitution and pimping. He testified about the recruitment and Internet advertising methods used by pimps: within hours of posting their first ads, new girls get calls from pimps who offer protection, food, more money, or a better life. When a girl goes to work for a pimp, "the girl does all the work, the guy gets all the money."

Staton and two fellow deputies investigated defendant. They had seen his Internet advertisements and had printed out craigslist photographs of prostitutes, including Q., D., and P., who worked for defendant. At one point, Staton and two other deputies conducted a traffic stop of D. and P. and later ran their DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) photographs. Staton recognized the two as girls who had appeared in defendant's Internet...