People v. Clark

• Citation: 203 Cal.Rptr.3d 407,63 Cal.4th 522,372 P.3d 811
• Decision Date: 27 June 2016
• Docket Number: No. S066940.,S066940.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court (California)
• Parties: The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. William Clinton CLARK, Defendant and Appellant.

63 Cal.4th 522

372 P.3d 811

203 Cal.Rptr.3d 407

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent

v.William Clinton CLARK, Defendant and Appellant.

No. S066940.

Supreme Court of California

June 27, 2016.

Peter Giannini, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for Defendant and Appellant.

Bill Lockyer, Edmund G. Brown, Jr., and Kamala D. Harris, Attorneys General, Mary Jo Graves and Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorneys General, Gary W. Schons, Assistant Attorney General, Holly D. Wilkens and Daniel Rogers, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

CUÉLLAR

, J.

An Orange County jury found defendant William Clinton Clark guilty of the first degree murders of Kathy Lee (count 1) and Ardell Williams (count 7). (Pen.Code §§ 187

, 189.)¹ The jury found true the five special-circumstance allegations charged, as follows: that defendant committed the murder of Lee while engaged in the commission of a burglary (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(17)(G) ) and while in the attempted commission of a robbery (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(17) (A) );² that the murder of Williams was the murder of a witness for the purpose of preventing her from testifying in a criminal proceeding (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(10) ) and a murder while lying in wait (§ 190.2, subd. (a) (15) ); and a multiple-murder special-circumstance allegation ( § 190.2, subd. (a)(3)

).³ The jury hung on a penalty verdict, but a new jury returned a verdict of death at the penalty phase retrial. The trial court denied defendant's motions for a new trial (§ 1181) and modification of the penalty (§ 190.4, subd. (e)), and it sentenced him to death. This appeal is automatic. (Cal. Const. art. VI, § 11 ; § 1239, subd. (b).)

We vacate the burglary-murder and robbery-murder special-circumstance findings, but otherwise affirm the judgment.

Introduction

The jury convicted defendant and sentenced him to death for two murders. He was the shooter in neither of them. The first murder was that of Kathy Lee, who was shot by Nokkuwa Ervin on the evening of October 18, 1991, during an attempted robbery of a CompUSA store in a Fountain Valley shopping center.⁴ The second murder was that of defendant's former associate Ardell Williams, who was shot in Gardena during the early morning of March 13, 1994, by either Antoinette Yancey, who was defendant's girlfriend at the time, or by someone acting at Yancey's direction.⁵ The prosecution's theory of defendant's accomplice liability for Lee's murder was that defendant organized, and was present at, the CompUSA murder. The prosecution's theory of defendant's accomplice liability for Williams's murder was that defendant conspired with Yancey to have Williams killed because Williams had testified to a grand jury about defendant's involvement in the CompUSA murder, and she was going to testify against defendant at his trial.

Defendant denied involvement in either murder. As to the first murder, the defense sought to challenge the credibility of the prosecution witnesses, including Williams. Defendant also presented as an alibi evidence that he was present at a recording studio in Glendale during the time of the CompUSA murder. As to the second murder, the defense acknowledged defendant's close personal relationship with Yancey, but it contended there was no evidence he conspired with Yancey to have Williams murdered.

I. Facts

A. Guilt Phase

1. The Prosecution's Case

a. The CompUSA Murder

i. Surveillance of the Store

The prosecution introduced Williams's Orange County grand jury testimony to establish defendant's preparations for the attempted robbery at the CompUSA store.⁶

At the end of August or in the early part of September 1991, Ardell Williams accompanied defendant while he surveilled a CompUSA computer store in the Fountain Valley Mall near its 10 p.m. closing time.⁷ From the vantage point of a Del Taco restaurant parking lot—which faced the CompUSA store about 500 feet away—defendant, his brother, Eric Clark,⁸ and his cousin, Damian Wilson, scrutinized the closing operations of the computer store and noted the amount of time it took the employees to leave. During Williams's conversations with defendant that night, defendant implied several times that he was planning some sort of crime involving the CompUSA store. After defendant and his companions finished watching the CompUSA store, they drove to a street near the mall where defendant checked on a U–Haul truck that he had parked there.

ii. The Night of the Crime

At approximately 10 p.m. on October 18, 1991, after the CompUSA store had closed for the evening, a man later identified as Ervin approached the three remaining employees in the store with a gun and eventually handcuffed them in the men's restroom. At about 10:30 p.m., Fountain Valley Police Officer Raymond Rakitis was on car patrol near the CompUSA store when he heard a gunshot. From 15 to 20 yards away, he saw a silver BMW back out of the parking lot and Ervin run from an open loading door in the back of the CompUSA store toward the BMW. When Ervin reached the BMW, he tried to enter the car through the driver's window and then tried to open the passenger side door. But the BMW did not wait for him, and it drove off, leaving him in the parking lot. Officer Rakitis exited his police car and subdued Ervin. Officer Rakitis then noticed a dead woman lying on her back with blood pooling under her head near the CompUSA loading doors. The police later determined that the woman, Kathy Lee, had come to pick up her son, who was an employee at the store. The autopsy showed that she died as a result of a single gunshot wound

to the head, fired while the gun directly touched the skin behind her left ear.

Police recovered a blue-steel .38–caliber revolver with a two-inch barrel, from the left inside pocket of Ervin's jacket. The cylinder of the revolver contained one expended .38 caliber cartridge casing and some human tissue. Ballistic testing matched the bullet that killed Lee to the revolver found on Ervin. At trial, two CompUSA employees identified Ervin as the man who held them at gunpoint.

iii. Matthew Weaver's Testimony

Matthew Weaver was present in the CompUSA parking lot that night and placed defendant at the scene of the crime. Weaver testified under a grant of transactional immunity. Weaver knew Eric and Wilson, who were fellow members of the Moorpark College basketball team. They had offered to pay Weaver $100 to help them move computers to a warehouse from a store they said belonged to defendant. On the night of the crime, Eric drove Weaver to the mall parking lot where they waited for the CompUSA store to close. While they were waiting, Wilson introduced Weaver to his brother “Bill,” who had driven up in a BMW. Weaver identified defendant in court as the man to whom he had been introduced.

Defendant eventually told Weaver that the group could start moving the computers, and he drove Weaver over to the store in the BMW.⁹ As they approached the store, Weaver saw a woman lying on the ground next to a car. Suddenly Weaver saw an African–American man, later identified as Ervin, run up and unsuccessfully attempt to dive through the driver's side window of the BMW. Weaver ducked down toward the dashboard and noticed that two police cars with flashing lights were approaching the BMW. Defendant made a U-turn and drove off, leaving Ervin in the parking lot. After driving some distance away from the mall, defendant stopped at the side of the road and told Weaver and the other passenger to get out.

iv. Investigation of the U–Haul Truck

On October 22, 1991, four days after the CompUSA murder, police investigators found a U–Haul truck that had been parked near the store for several days. They determined that Jeanette Moore had rented the truck on October 3, 1991, using a fraudulent driver's license with her picture but with the name “Dena Carey.”¹⁰ Moore testified under a grant of transactional immunity. She testified that, in June or July of 1991, defendant obtained the fraudulent driver's license for her.¹¹ Defendant and Moore had gone to the DMV where defendant knew the clerk who processed the license. Moore subsequently rented the U–Haul truck at defendant's request using the license.¹² Eric drove Moore to the U–Haul lot and drove the truck away after Moore filled out the forms and obtained the key. Defendant rewarded Moore with $100 the next day. A U–Haul clerk testified that, on October 9, 1991, which was six days after Moore rented the truck, an African–American male came to the U–Haul lot in Glendale and extended the contract.¹³

Moore moved to Yuma, Arizona in 1992 or 1993 and did not see defendant again. But while living in Arizona in 1993, she received a three-way phone call from Gary Jackson (an ex-boyfriend through whom she had met defendant) and a woman identifying herself as “Nina,” who claimed to be defendant's wife.¹⁴ Nina told Moore to expect some money via Western Union. In the winter of 1993, Moore received $100.

In June 1994, while Moore was in custody at the Orange County Jail pursuant to a commitment under section 1332 to ensure her availability as a witness at defendant's preliminary hearing, she received an anonymous letter urging her not to testify. The letter included a photocopy of a newspaper article describing a witness who was released from jail after refusing to testify at a trial.¹⁵

v. Sale of Defendant's BMW After the CompUSA Murder

Defendant bought a BMW model 735i on July 31, 1991. On October 24, 1991, six days after the CompUSA murder, he arranged to sell it through the dealer from whom he had bought it. The dealer suggested that defendant would get more money selling it retail rather than on auction wholesale, but defendant told him that he just needed to get rid of it and wanted to sell it wholesale.

b. The Murder of Williams

i. Arrest of Defendant and Williams in Las Vegas and Her Cooperation with the Authorities

In September 1991, sometime after Ardell Williams had accompanied defendant during his surveillance of the CompUSA store, she...