People v. Ditson

• Citation: 369 P.2d 714,20 Cal.Rptr. 165,57 Cal.2d 415
• Decision Date: 15 March 1962
• Docket Number: Cr. 6843
• Court: United States State Supreme Court (California)
• Parties: , 369 P.2d 714 The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Allen DITSON and Carlos Gonzales Cisneros, Defendants and Appellants.

Page 165

20 Cal.Rptr. 165

57 Cal.2d 415, 369 P.2d 714

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Allen DITSON and Carlos Gonzales Cisneros, Defendants and Appellants.

Cr. 6843.

Supreme Court of California, In Bank.

March 15, 1962.

As Modified March 28, 1962.

Rehearing Denied April 25, 1962.

William A. Drake, Los Angeles, under appointment by the Supreme Court, Harold J. Ackerman, Los Angeles, and W. M. Brooks, Van Nuys, for defendants and appellants.

Stanley Mosk, Atty. Gen., William E. James, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Gordon Ringer, Deputy Atty. Gen., for plaintiff and respondent.

SCHAUER, Justice.

Defendants Ditson and Cisneros appeal (by operation of Pen.Code, § 1239, subd. (b)) from judgments of death imposed pursuant to jury verdicts finding each of them guilty of murder in the first degree and fixing the penalty at death, and from orders denying their motions for new trial and for reduction of the penalty or the degree of the offense.

Defendants contend that they were denied a fair trial and due process of law by reason of the admission of certain evidence (testimony and photographs relating to the finding of the remains of the murder victim) assertedly discovered by the police as a result of a confession by Cisneros made during or after a lie detector test which he had voluntarily agreed to take. The trial court on defendants' motion excluded the confession as involuntary. However, the court immediately followed the exclusionary ruling with a declaration that 'The mere exclusion of the confession to my mind does not exclude the evidence secured by the People as a result of it,' and proceeded to follow that theory in subsequent rulings on admissibility of certain relevant evidence. As hereinafter shown the quoted declaration portrays a view of the law once widely accepted but which in recent years has been rejected by the Supreme Court of the United States. Since the matter involves due process a conviction by means obnoxious to the federal concept cannot be sustained. Accordingly the entire record must be examined to determine, among other things, whether any error has been prejudicial to defendants or any procedure has operated to deprive either of them of any essential element of a fair trial or due process of law.

To reach our ultimate conclusion with fairness both to the defendants and the plaintiff, and to correct the untenable views of the law which contributed to certain rulings, we consider the contentions of defendants from two separate standpoints: 1. With an assumption (without deciding) that the trial court's exclusionary ruling was correct. 2. With an analysis of the circumstances of the confession as well as of the other evidence in the record, and of the pertinent rules which should have been considered in determining admissibility of (a) the confession and (b) its asserted products. Upon such consideration of the problems presented it develops that from either standpoint the announced untenable view of the law becomes immaterial. It is inconsequential here because (1) defendants' contentions as to the sources and effect of essential evidence are without factual support and (2) defendants have not, on any reasonable interpretation of the evidence whether excluding or including that claimed to have been a product of the confession, been denied any essential element of a fair trial or due process. Defendants also complain of certain other rulings on the admissibility of evidence and of a number of instructions given and refused. After consideration of each contention we conclude that the record reveals no prejudicial error; that the proof of guilt entirely apart from evidence related to the confession is overwhelming; and that the judgments of conviction should be affirmed.

Most of the evidence is undisputed but because of the nature of the problems presented must be summarized or recounted in sufficient compass to show the issues and manifest the grounds of decision.

The record portrays the lurid story of an episode in the life of a gang of criminal conspirators organized and directed by defendant Allen Ditson. Ditson is described as a slight, quiet, cool, soft-spoken intellectual who owned and operated a jewelry store and watch repair shop in North Hollywood, Los Angeles County. He occasionally bought wrecked automobiles, and repaired and sold them; and he bought or procured guns, including one machine gun, assertedly for a man who was planning a trip into headhunters' territory. But all of these endeavors were side lines; his more active business, during the time here relevant, was as the organizer and director of a gang of criminals who sometimes engaged in burglary but whose specialty was the more profitable armed robbery. The guiding principle of life which Ditson sought to instill in his recruits was that while on a job each man must carry out his 'assignment' and was on his own; if he was caught he was to keep silent and Ditson would provide a lawyer; but above all, each should remember that a 'squealer' or a blackmailer should be eliminated.

The evidence also tells the story of Carlos Gonzales Cisneros, whose mother apparently had been an epileptic and had died of tuberculosis. Carlos had spent most of his infancy and early boyhood in foundling homes. In the course of time he gained common school education up to the tenth grade. In 1950, at the age of 17, he left school and had various employments including more than seven years with Lockheed Aircraft factory, where he earned $85 a week as a sheetmetal worker. He married an apparently loving wife and had four children. While working the swing shift at Lockheed, and at about 24 years of age, he met Ditson. The approach to criminal activity was gradual, but Ditson explained to Carlos that he would like to see him making more money and not working so hard that 'it would be nice to see him driving a Cadillac.' Eventually, Carlos became Ditson's first lieutenant, and had a Cadillac, and then another. He drove the latter on his most tragic assignment to eliminate a fellow gang member who assertedly was a blackmailer and was suspected of being a potential 'squealer.'

There were a good many other 'boys' in Ditson's gang, from time to time. They included Eugene D. Bridgeford and Weyland Keith Slaten and Robert H. Ward. Generally, each did the work assigned to him and when caught kept his mouth shut and pleaded guilty or was 'sprung,' but finally a mistake was made, and one mistake led to another. As a result of the mistakes, on July 12, 1960, Ditson, Cisneros, Bridgeford, and Slaten by Grand Jury indictment were charged with, and they were subsequently brought to trial for, the murder of Robert H. Ward.

To this indictment each defendant entered a plea of not guilty. Ditson also entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, but withdrew the plea after court-appointed alienists reported that he refused to cooperate with them. Ditson and Cisneros were at first represented by the same attorney, but when that attorney and Cisneros learned or, perhaps more accurately, comprehendingly accepted the fact that the latter's interests were in conflict with those of Ditson another attorney was appointed to represent Cisneros. Shortly thereafter an additional plea of not guilty by reason of insanity was entered in Cisneros' behalf. ¹ After the trial had started but before the defendants had 'gone into their defense' the court, on motion of the prosecuting attorney as authorized by Penal Code, section 1099, discharged defendant Bridgeford (who was already serving a first degree robbery sentence resulting from a Ditson enterprise) in order that he might be called as a witness for the People. The jury found Slaten not guilty and Ditson and Cisneros guilty of murder in the first degree; the latter are the appellants. Cisneros waived jury trial on his insanity plea and was found by the court to have been sane at the time the crime was committed. As to each appellant the jury then fixed the penalty at death, and sentences were pronounced accordingly. As the following review of the testimony will show, the verdicts of the jury are supported by overwhelming evidence.

In September and October of 1959 the murder victim (Robert H. Ward, sometimes referred to in the evidence as 'Bob') participated in a series of armed robberies with Ditson, Cisneros, Slaten, and Eugene and Norman Bridgeford, who were brothers. The robberies were planned by Ditson, and each man had a specific duty. Ward failed to carry out his 'assignment' of securely tying up the store owners in the last of these robberies. He effectively tied up the man but not the woman, and she released the man. The latter had a rifle readily available and started shooting. During the flight Eugene Bridgeford threw a stolen cash box into some shrubbery in an alley. On returning to the scene that night to retrieve the loot Cisneros and the Bridgefords were apprehended. (It will be noted that Ditson did not go on field work himself, but stayed at the store to maintain the front.)

Eugene Bridgeford and Cisneros were released on bail in mid-October. At the jewelry store approximately one week later Ditson told Bridgeford, in the presence of Cisneros, that Ward had been asking for money in return for silence as to Ditson's activities and that he had decided that 'in some way Bob Ward would have to be eliminated, gotten rid of.' Ditson had previously made it clear that 'if at any time anybody ever got the idea that they could talk or squeal on the others, they would have to be eliminated in one way or another.'

On November 6, 1959, Ditson told Bridgeford at the jewelry store that he had 'decided that tonight would be the best night to get rid of Bob Ward,' and that he was 'through being blackmailed by a no-good-son-of-a-bitch like him.' Ditson stated that he had given Ward $100 or more so far, and that 'The only way is to get rid of him.' Ditson outlined a plan that Cisneros should hit...