People v. Corona

• Decision Date: 14 June 1989
• Docket Number: No. A021804,A021804
• Citation: 259 Cal.Rptr. 524,211 Cal.App.3d 529
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Juan Vallejo CORONA, Defendant and Appellant.

Page 524

259 Cal.Rptr. 524

211 Cal.App.3d 529

The PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Juan Vallejo CORONA, Defendant and Appellant.

No. A021804.

Court of Appeal, First District, Division 5, California.

June 14, 1989.

Certified for Partial Publication. ^*

Review Denied Sept. 7, 1989.

John K. Van de Kamp, Atty. Gen., Steve White, Chief Asst. Atty. Gen., John H. Sugiyama, Sr. Asst. Atty. Gen., Laurence K. Sullivan, and Stan M. Helfman, Supervising Deputy Attys. Gen., San Francisco, for plaintiff and respondent.

Michael Mendelson, Margaret E. Murray and James T. Diamond, Jr., and Mary Hughes, Arnelle & Hastie, San Francisco, for defendant and appellant.

I. INTRODUCTION

KING, Associate Justice.

In this case we affirm a judgment of conviction on 25 counts of first degree murder and hold, among other things, that (1) systematic but nonpurposeful denial of a fair cross-section of the community in the selection of a grand jury does not require reversal absent prejudice relating to the conviction, and (2) the consular privilege to withhold evidence in criminal proceedings is held and may be waived only by the consul's government, not the individual consul, but the defendant is not a holder of the privilege and thus on appeal is statutorily precluded from asserting error by the trial court in failing to assert the privilege on the government's behalf.

The facts of this case are fully recounted in People v. Corona (1978) 80 Cal.App.3d 684, 693-701, 145 Cal.Rptr. 894, and need not be repeated here except in summary. The victims were male migratory farmworkers who were killed during February-May 1971 and were buried on two ranches in the Marysville-Yuba City area of Sutter County. Most were wounded in similar fashion, with chop or hacking wounds to the head and stab wounds in the upper left chest. They were also buried in a similar manner, with each victim lying on his back and his hands over his head, chest or stomach and his shirt or other clothes pulled over his head.

Juan Vallejo Corona was employed as a labor contractor for the two ranches where the victims were buried. He was connected to the crimes by overwhelming circumstantial evidence. As a labor contractor he had access to the area of the gravesites. Several eyewitnesses saw him in the area at crucial times, and some of the victims had last been seen entering his pickup truck or van. One grave contained two meat company sales slips bearing Corona's name; another grave contained various items belonging to Corona and two bank deposit slips bearing his name.

A search of Corona's office yielded two bloodstained knives and a bloodstained pistol (one of the victims had been shot in the head). A search of Corona's residence, car and van yielded a post-hole digger in which human hairs were embedded, a bolo knife, many personal items containing bloodstains (including boots, a jacket, a belt, floor mats and throw rugs), and a ledger containing a list of names and dates in Corona's handwriting including the names of seven identified victims. Bloodstains appeared all over the inside and outside of the van as well as on the latch of the car trunk. One of Corona's neighbors had frequently observed him hosing out the inside of his vehicles without washing the outside. A laboratory examination of the various bloodstains revealed human blood of all four blood types. (Ibid.)

Corona was tried, convicted and sentenced in Solano County in 1972-1973. Division Two of the First Appellate District reversed the judgment in 1978, on two grounds. First, Corona's trial counsel provided inadequate legal representation in that he failed to present any of the defenses he promised in his opening statement and failed to present any defense based on mental incompetence and legal insanity (id. at pp. 705-719, 145 Cal.Rptr. 894), which the appellate court characterized as "not only a 'crucial,' but the 'sole' defense in the case." (Id. at p. 719, 145 Cal.Rptr. 894.) Second, trial counsel's agreement to accept a grant of exclusive literary and dramatic property rights to Corona's life story in return for legal services created a prejudicial conflict of interest. (Id. at pp. 719-727, 145 Cal.Rptr. 894.)

The retrial occurred in Alameda County in 1982. The prosecution's case was substantially similar to that presented in the first trial, with two notable additions: The prosecution presented evidence of Corona's 1978 admission to a Mexican consul that he had committed the crimes but was a "sick man," and his 1974 admission to another prisoner that he had committed the crimes but "it was my brother's idea."

Corona was represented on retrial by a skilled and tenacious team of defense lawyers. Counsel evidently disagreed with the appellate court's characterization of mental incompetence and legal insanity as the "sole" defense in the case, and presented the theory that the murders had been committed by Corona's half-brother, Natividad Corona, who had owned a local bar-cafe and died in 1973 in Mexico.

Once again the jury convicted Corona of 25 counts of first degree murder. The court sentenced him to 25 concurrent prison terms of 25 years to life.

II. DISCUSSION

A. The Composition of the Grand Jury.

Shortly after reversal of the first judgment, Corona moved unsuccessfully to quash his grand jury indictment on the ground the grand jury did not represent a fair cross-section of Sutter County due to underrepresentation of Mexican-Americans. On appeal he asserts three reasons why the trial court erred: (1) the superior court judge who had been responsible for selecting potential grand jurors from 1962 to 1971 had failed to develop affirmative procedures to achieve a fair cross-section (see People v. Superior Court (Dean) (1974) 38 Cal.App.3d 966, 972, 113 Cal.Rptr. 732), (2) the repeated service of certain grand jurors demonstrated that the grand juries had not been selected at random, and (3) the trial court found no underrepresentation based on improper consideration of the estimated number of Mexican-Americans who had been "eligible" for grand jury service by virtue of sufficient proficiency in the English language, rather than on the general population of Mexican-Americans in Sutter County. (See Castaneda v. Partida (1977) 430 U.S. 482, 97 S.Ct. 1272, 51 L.Ed.2d 498.)

It is crucially important to clarify the nature of Corona's challenge to the grand jury. There are two types of racially-based challenges to the composition of petit and grand juries: the claim of intentional discrimination and the claim of an absence of a fair cross-section of the community. Intentional discrimination in the composition of petit and grand juries violates the constitutional right to equal protection. (Batson v. Kentucky (1986) 476 U.S. 79, 84, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 1715, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 [petit juries]; Vasquez v. Hillery (1986) 474 U.S. 254, 261-262, 106 S.Ct. 617, 622-623, 88 L.Ed.2d 598 [grand juries].) The absence of a fair cross-section on a petit jury venire due to systematic but nonpurposeful exclusion of a distinctive group in the community violates the Sixth Amendment guarantee of trial by an impartial jury. (Duren v. Missouri (1979) 439 U.S. 357, 358-359, 99 S.Ct. 664, 665-666, 58 L.Ed.2d 579.) The absence of a fair cross-section of the community in the selection of a grand jury is generally said to violate due process. (See Hobby v. United States (1984) 468 U.S. 339, 346, 104 S.Ct. 3093, 3097, 82 L.Ed.2d 260 [attributing fair cross-section requirement to "representational due process values"]; 2 LaFave & Israel, Criminal Procedure (1984) § 15.3(c), p. 294 & 1988 Supp. pp. 73-74.)

Corona does not claim intentional discrimination. Defense counsel asserted below that "nobody is accusing this gentleman [the judge responsible for selecting potential grand jurors] of intentionally discriminating against anybody and I want that clear for the record." Counsel later mentioned that "incidently I don't waive" the claim of intentional discrimination, but this assertion was directly contrary to counsel's earlier concession and was not pursued further. The trial court concluded there had been "no intentional discrimination in the selection of grand jurors," and Corona does not challenge that conclusion on appeal. This is a fair cross-section claim, not an intentional discrimination claim. ¹

The distinction is not particularly important with regard to methods of proof: the prima facie tests for the two claims are nearly identical, although the claims differ in the way the prima facie case is rebutted. (See Davis v. Zant (11th Cir.1983) 721 F.2d 1478, 1482 & fn. 6.) But the distinction is crucial for purposes of harmless error analysis. We shall proceed directly to a discussion of harmless error because, as will be seen, the applicable harmless error standard makes it entirely unnecessary to decide the merits of the fair cross-section claim.

The general rule in California is that a conviction will not be reversed due to an irregularity in grand jury proceedings absent a showing that the irregularity deprived the defendant of a fair trial or otherwise resulted in actual prejudice relating to the conviction. (People v. Towler (1982) 31 Cal.3d 105, 123, 181 Cal.Rptr. 391, 641 P.2d 1253; People v. Laney (1981) 115 Cal.App.3d 508, 513, 171 Cal.Rptr. 493; cf. People v. Pompa-Ortiz (1980) 27 Cal.3d 519, 529, 165 Cal.Rptr. 851, 612 P.2d 941 [irregularity in preliminary examination procedure].) Absent a possibility of prejudice it is unnecessary to decide the merits of a claim of irregularity. (See People v. Towler, supra; People v. Laney, supra.) Any right to relief without a showing of prejudice is limited to a pretrial challenge by extraordinary writ. (Cf. People v. Pompa-Ortiz, supra, 27 Cal.3d at p. 529, 165 Cal.Rptr. 851, 612 P.2d 941.)

The United States Supreme Court has declared, however, that intentional discrimination in the selection of grand jurors is reversible per se. (Vasquez...