People v. Chatman

• Decision Date: 08 May 2006
• Docket Number: No. S032509.,S032509.
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Erik Sanford CHATMAN, Defendant and Appellant.

42 Cal.Rptr.3d 621

38 Cal.4th 344

133 P.3d 534

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Erik Sanford CHATMAN, Defendant and Appellant.

No. S032509.

Supreme Court of California.

May 8, 2006.

Mark Goldrosen, under appointment by the Supreme Court, San Francisco, for Defendant and Appellant.

Bill Lockyer, Attorney General, Robert R. Anderson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Ronald A. Bass, Assistant Attorney General, Ronald S. Matthias and Jeremy Friedlander, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

CORRIGAN, J.

A jury convicted Erik Sanford Chatman of first degree murder under the special circumstance of torture murder and with use of a knife.¹ The jury acquitted him of robbery and rejected a related robbery-murder special-circumstance allegation.² It did find defendant guilty of the lesser offense of grand theft. After the jury returned a death verdict, the court denied defendant's motion to modify the verdict³ and imposed sentence. In this automatic appeal, we affirm the judgment.⁴

I. FACTS

A. Guilt Phase

1. Overview

On October 7, 1987, defendant stabbed Rosellina Lo Bue to death at a Photo Drive-Up store in San Jose. He stabbed Lo Bue 51 times and took cash from the store. The only eyewitness was defendant's son, Mario, then two and a half years old.

These facts are undisputed. Contested at trial was what specific crimes defendant had committed. While the prosecution alleged first degree murder, robbery, and attendant special circumstances, defendant contended he was guilty only of manslaughter or second degree murder and innocent of robbery.

2. Prosecution Evidence

Lo Bue worked at the store along with defendant's wife, Yvonne Chatman.⁵ Yvonne usually worked from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., while Lo Bue worked from 2:00 or 3:00 p.m. until 6:00 p.m. On the day of the killing, Yvonne opened the store but falsely told her supervisor that she had to leave because her husband and son had been in an automobile accident. Yvonne returned home, and Lo Bue was called to take her place. Yvonne testified that around 3:00 p.m., defendant left their apartment with their son, Mario. Defendant said they were going to the park, but instead took the boy to the store. Independent witnesses saw defendant there with Lo Bue until the 6:00 p.m. closing time. Lo Bue did not appear to be afraid of defendant.

Mario was seven years old at the time of trial, and testified he saw his father stab the victim. Mario remembered that the knife came from a yellow box, but did not recall when he first saw it. Defendant was the only person Mario saw handle the knife. After the stabbing, defendant ran home with Mario. Mario could not remember whether defendant carried him. At home, both defendant and Mario took a shower. Mario said he thought he took the shower because Mario had blood on his hands.

Around 7:15 p.m., passerby Curtis Jones saw the store apparently unattended with the door ajar. On closer inspection, Jones saw Lo Bue's body and called the police.

The crime scene was in disarray, the walls spattered in blood. Most of the blood was less than three feet from the floor, indicating the victim had been stabbed while crouching or reclining. Carpeting behind the main counter was soaked with blood. The cash drawer lay empty on the counter. There was no blood on the cash register. A safe under the side counter was open. An envelope unmarked by blood and containing over $100 in cash, along with checks and deposit slips, remained in the safe. According to a notation on the envelope, it contained the store proceeds from October 6, minus $150. October 7 proceeds were missing. It appeared the safe had been opened after the stabbing, because the door was spattered with blood but the interior was not. The victim's purse was found under the counter. It was covered in blood but still contained a wallet with about $27 in cash. An envelope containing less than $2 was recovered from one of the countertops. A telephone receiver had been torn from the wall. Defendant's fingerprint was found on a photocopy machine.

The store video surveillance camera was inoperable on the day of the stabbing. Yvonne knew the camera did not work. She may have told defendant this, but she could not recall.

Yvonne heard defendant come home that evening. Shortly thereafter she saw her husband and son standing in bloody water in the tub. Defendant was flustered and had scratches on his chest. Something he said caused her to go to the store, where she saw paramedics removing Lo Bue's body. When she returned home, defendant was excited. She saw cash and checks in a moneybag like one used at the photo shop. Defendant's finger was badly cut. He told Yvonne's mother, Mary Irving, that he had gotten cut while either fighting or robbing someone. Later the same evening, at defendant's insistence, defendant, Yvonne, Mario, and Irving went to East Palo Alto, where they purchased crack cocaine, using money defendant had taken from the store. The three adults smoked the drugs in a motel room.

The next day, when police came to the apartment, Yvonne spoke to them while defendant hid in the bathroom. Yvonne reported that she had not been to work because her "boyfriend" and son had been in an automobile accident, and she had spent the previous night at the boyfriend's home. After the police left, defendant told Yvonne that if she "told that he did it, he would . . . get me and my family, he would drag us all into it." Yvonne and defendant separated shortly thereafter.

Defendant lived with Tina Whaley for several months in 1988. She testified defendant told her he had killed a woman at the Photo Drive-Up. He said the victim was acting as if she were high on drugs, and while they spoke she pulled a knife on him. Defendant disarmed the victim, and stabbed her "quite a few times" because "she kept coming back. He said she wouldn't die." He stabbed her "all over from the neck down, chest, stomach, everywhere." The victim "went for the phone and he pulled it out of the wall." After the stabbing he took about $500 from the cash register, ran home with his son, and showered. He also burned his clothes. He told his wife what happened, and threatened to kill her if she told anyone. That evening, along with his wife, son, and mother-in-law, defendant used money he took from the store to buy crack cocaine, which they smoked in a motel.

Rosalind Wathel was defendant's girlfriend in Houston, Texas, for about eight months in 1989. She testified that defendant described the incident and seemed to be bragging. He told Wathel he had gone there with his son to collect some photographs. "[H]e wasn't happy with the photos, and . . . he had stabbed the girl that was there" repeatedly. After he stabbed her, "he robbed her to go get some more crack cocaine and alcohol." He said the girl begged him to stop, and that "the more she asked him to stop the more he kept stabbing," because "[i]t felt good." He said that "[i]t just start[ed] feeling good and he just kept doing it even after she had got quiet." He told his wife and "made her promise not to tell. . . . [S]he got afraid and left, and took the baby."

William Speed testified defendant told him that he had stabbed someone in a fight and he "kind of" seemed to be bragging. He said he stabbed the person in the neck and "the person was gurgling, kind of choking on his own blood."

The murder weapon was never found. According to witnesses, no knives were kept in the store. Lo Bue's sister testified that the victim never carried one. Shortly after the killing, Yvonne and her mother, Mary Irving, noticed that a distinctive kitchen knife was missing from their home. Yvonne last saw the knife a couple of days before the killing. Its handle was about four inches long with a blade between seven and a half and 10 inches long. The blade was about an inch and a half at the hilt and narrowed to a point. It was the only sharp knife the family owned.

Yvonne's sister, Denise Taylor, also testified Mary Irving told her that defendant said he stabbed the victim, who was gasping and gagging for air. At trial, Irving denied that defendant had said this to her or that she had repeated such a statement to anyone.

An autopsy revealed that Lo Bue died from exsanguination and asphyxiation due to a collapsed lung. Of the 51 separate knife wounds she sustained, seven were defensive wounds to the hands and forearms. On the front of the body, there were two life-threatening neck wounds. One severed the jugular vein; the other cut through the esophagus and trachea. While not immediately fatal, the latter wound would have caused labored breathing, accompanied by a gurgling sound. The frontal wounds cut through all layers of the skin and into the underlying tissue. They would have bled extensively.

Three of the back wounds were quite serious. They penetrated the chest cavity and completely pierced through the right lung. They caused significant bleeding, collapsing the lung and resulting in an inability to breathe. Eight other back wounds cut through the skin, fatty tissue, and perhaps into underlying muscle, but did not enter the chest cavity. Thus wounded, Lo Bue would have died after the lapse of several minutes.

The injuries were inflicted by a single-bladed knife of undetermined length and width. The wounds did not seem to follow a pattern and were inflicted from varying angles, with the assailant in varying positions. The victim had no alcohol or drugs in her system.

The police arrested defendant in Houston, Texas, on April 24, 1990. He was found hiding in a closet.

3. Defense Evidence

Defendant admitted stabbing Lo Bue. He testified that he went to the store around 3:00 p.m. to talk with her about his troubled marriage. He did not have a knife. After the store closed, Lo Bue told him that "Yvonne had confided in her that she wasn't happy with the relationship as far as me not having a full-time job." Lo Bue said that "she told [Yvonne] that sh...