People v. Foalima

• Decision Date: 31 August 2015
• Docket Number: C071581
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Daniel Fiamatai FOALIMA, Defendant and Appellant.

239 Cal.App.4th 1376

192 Cal.Rptr.3d 136

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent

v.Daniel Fiamatai FOALIMA, Defendant and Appellant.

C071581

Court of Appeal, Third District, California.

Filed August 31, 2015

Madeline McDowell, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.

Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Michael P. Farrell, Assistant Attorney General, Eric L. Christoffersen and Caely E. Fallini, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

Opinion

NICHOLSON, Acting P.J.Defendant Daniel Fiamatai Foalima appeals from his conviction of first degree murder. He contends the trial court erred by: (1) refusing to strike a possible accomplice's testimony after the accomplice testified he did not know the answer to most of the questions asked him; (2) instructing the jury on accomplice testimony; (3) admitting evidence of media coverage of the murder to impeach a witness's testimony that was recorded in an earlier trial but admitted here; (4) ordering direct victim restitution allegedly for a crime of which defendant was acquitted and that was not the proximate cause of the victim's damage; (5) imposing jail booking and classification fines without determining defendant's ability to pay; and (6) imposing restitution fines without determining defendant's ability to pay.

We affirm the judgment in its entirety.

FACTS

The prosecution charged defendant with murder (Pen.Code, § 187, subd. (a) ),¹ second degree robbery (§ 211), and arson (§ 451, subd. (b)). The information alleged defendant used a dangerous weapon (a knife) to commit the murder and the robbery (§ 12022, subd. (b)(1)), and he committed the murder while committing the robbery (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(17)).

The parties presented the following evidence at trial:

People's case-in-chief

The events of August 6 to 7, 2010

Shalini Singh, the victim's daughter, lived at the North Avenue Apartments in Sacramento with her daughter, a roommate, and the roommate's children. The victim, Arun Singh (Singh), was 50 years old. He often visited Shalini and frequently stayed the night at her apartment. Singh had been involved with drugs for the last 20 years.

At approximately 10:00 p.m. on Friday, August 6, 2010, Shalini was in the apartment complex's hot tub with friends. While Shalini and her friends were in the hot tub, defendant walked into the pool area and asked for a cigarette. Shalini and defendant conversed, and she pointed out the location of her apartment.

Singh came to the pool area, and Shalini and he returned to her apartment. Singh asked if he could stay the night. Shalini said yes, but she and her roommate would be gone for the night. Singh left between 11:00 and 11:30 p.m. to get some food. Shalini would not see him again alive.

Meanwhile, at approximately 10:15 p.m. on August 6, 2010, after he had spoken with Shalini, defendant met Cindy Pau at the North Avenue Apartments. Pau had earlier contacted defendant to buy Ecstasy pills, and they negotiated the sale in her car at the apartment complex. Defendant told Pau he would return with the drugs. Pau waited and sent at least one text message to defendant. At 10:26 p.m., defendant sent a text message to her saying he could not get the drugs. The apartment complex's surveillance video filmed Pau leaving the complex at approximately 10:28 p.m.

The surveillance video filmed defendant and two others leaving the complex on foot at 11:01 p.m. August 6, 2010, and returning at about 11:52 p.m. Defendant was wearing a long white T-shirt. The video also filmed defendant and two others from 1:23 a.m. until 1:25 a.m. hanging out in the complex's parking lot. In this later segment, defendant was wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt and white tennis shoes.

Sometime after 2:00 a.m. on August 7, 2010, Shalini received a telephone call from her upstairs neighbor. She learned her apartment was on fire and her father was dead. Her father's wallet and car keys were never found.

Shalini's upstairs neighbor, Dion Brent, testified the complex's fire alarm sounded sometime after 2:00 a.m. Brent and his son entered Shalini's apartment and saw a fire in the living room. They attempted to put it out with a fire extinguisher. Others arrived and doused the fire with a water hose. Brent saw a body in the apartment's living room. To him, the body appeared not to have legs or arms. The fire department arrived at 2:50 a.m.

Quentin Watts and Lazarus Bolton shared an apartment at the North Avenue Apartments. In the early morning hours of August 7, 2010, Watts returned home with his friend Leonard Gray and some female friends. He noticed emergency vehicles in the area. After he and his group went inside his apartment, a few others came in. In a later interview with police, Watts told the detective one of the persons who had come in had something on his hands that Watts believed was blood, and he did not want that person reaching into the chips. In the same interview, Watts viewed a photo lineup and identified defendant as the person who had blood on him. He also identified Laki Lee Lopa and Fine Tupuo as two others that were with defendant. At trial, Watts could not remember making these identifications.

Bolton, in a later interview with detectives, also identified defendant, Lopa, and Tupuo as people who were inside his apartment or right outside his door the night of the murder. Police investigators later determined defendant, Tupuo, and Lopa knew each other. Tupuo lived at the North Avenue Apartments, and Lopa lived one block away.

Watts left his apartment about 45 minutes after he had arrived. As he left, he saw a fire on a stairwell or landing area near his apartment that was smoldering. He walked past the fire and left.

Investigations

Fire investigators viewed the apartment. The apartment's front door had no obvious signs of damage. The victim's body was discovered in the living room. Investigators observed water from the overhead sprinkler system on the floor, the victim, and the furniture. They saw charring on the carpet, the victim, and some cushions. The apartment appeared ransacked. Fires had also been started in two bedrooms. Two smoke detectors were missing. The investigator determined the fires were deliberately set with an open flame device and were incendiary in nature.

Investigators also determined another fire had been deliberately set with an open flame device on the landing of an exterior stairwell of another apartment building at the North Avenue Apartments during the early morning hours of August 7, 2010. Investigators collected charred, fabric remains of what appeared to have been a black jacket.

Investigators found a broken knife blade underneath the victim's body. The knife contained the victim's DNA, but no unknown profiles were found in the recovered DNA. Fingerprints found in the apartment belonged to the victim or the apartment's residents. Heat, smoke, and fire can affect the recovery of fingerprints and DNA.

On August 9, 2010, fire investigators found two smoke detectors in a field adjacent to the apartment complex. The victim's DNA was recovered from one of the smoke detectors.

The forensic pathologist determined the victim died from blunt force head injuries

, multiple stab wounds, and asphyxia by neck compression. The victim's upper teeth, nose, face bones, skull and larynx were fractured. His face “was basically caved in.” He had numerous bruises and lacerations on his face, head, and neck. Some of the bruises were “pattern” bruises, or a bruise caused by an object's impact, with the object's impression marking the skin. There were three distinctive patterns on the victim's head. Some marks looked like the tread of a shoe. Elongated parallel marks went across the right eyebrow. A patterned mark consisting of “concentricular” marks like a target in three pairs existed on the scalp.

The victim was stabbed approximately 20 times in the back, neck, head, shoulder, arm, jaw, and torso. Blunt force injuries and the stab wounds

were inflicted contemporaneously. The victim's left hand had been cut off after he had died. His right hand had cuts and hacks in what looked like an attempt to cut it off after he had died. The fingernails were clipped short and did not extend to the fingertips. The victim's body had also been set on fire after he had died.

Natalie Jackson's tip

In August of 2010, defendant and Natalie Jackson were “friends with benefits,” and had contact with each other once a week.² On the morning of August 16, 2010, Jackson e-mailed law enforcement about the North Avenue Apartments murder. In her e-mail, Jackson stated she had overheard “a guy that I know very well” talking about the murder. She said there should be a bag with a hand and a knife in it by the freeway and the apartment complex's surrounding area, and she asked the police to search for it. She also asked the police to check the victim's fingernails for DNA, because he had scratched the suspect a few times. She wanted the police to find this evidence before she gave them the suspect's name. If they took him in for questioning before then, he would know she had something to do with it and her life would be in danger.

The police asked Jackson for more details. She wrote that she knew there was a hand and a knife in a bag “near the [I]-80 freeway behind the apartments some where around the field.” (Sic. ) She also stated she believed the victim still had a hand attached to him, and asked police to check his fingernails for DNA from the suspect. She again would not release the suspect's name.

Later that day, a detective spoke with Jackson by phone. Jackson repeated the information she had given the police earlier. She also informed the detective that defendant was the perpetrator. She had been at a party and overheard defendant and others talking about the crime. She stated the victim had a history of selling drugs, and defendant intended to rob him for Ecstasy pills and maybe some marijuana. Jackson...