People v. Galloway
| Decision Date | 08 June 2012 |
| Docket Number | B232165 |
| Parties | THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. JAYVION T. GALLOWAY et al., Defendants and Appellants. |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS
California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.
(Los Angeles County Super. Ct. No. YA071844)
APPEAL from judgments of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County. Steven R. VanSicklen, Judge. Judgments affirmed as modified.
Donald R. Tickle, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant Jayvion T. Galloway.
Susan K. Shaler, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant Zecorey T. Marcus.
Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Lance E. Winters, Assistant Attorney General, Scott A. Taryle and Michael C. Keller, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
A jury convicted Jayvion Galloway and Zecorey Marcus of one count of special circumstance murder and the court sentenced them to life without possibility of parole. Galloway and Marcus were also convicted of various other crimes and given a variety of sentences. We affirm the convictions and modify the sentences.
Anna Sanchez, a friend of defendants Galloway and Marcus, testified that she drove defendants to a convenience store in Gardena and waited for them in her car while they went into the store to buy rolling papers for marijuana and orange juice. After a short time, Galloway came out of the store and told Sanchez to park her car across the street because he was going to rob a man he had seen in the store cashing a check. Moments after Sanchez moved her car, defendants came running toward her. Galloway was holding a black revolver. Defendants jumped into Sanchez's car and Galloway told Sanchez: "Go, go, go." Sanchez drove away as Galloway handed the gun to Marcus in the backseat. She asked them what happened "and they said they robbed the man that was in the store cashing his check." Sanchez identified defendants from a surveillance video shot from within the store.
Pedro Guerrero testified that he went to a store in Gardena to cash a check for $450.00. As he sat in his car, putting away his money, two men walked up. One man pointed a black gun at Guerrero's head. "They told me to give them the money or that they would kill me," Guerrero testified. Guerrero gave the money to the man with the handgun. He did not report the robbery to police because he was afraid but he told the storekeeper about it. A week later the police located Guerrero and showed him photographic lineups and he identified a photograph of Galloway as the man who robbed him with a handgun.
Five days after the Guerrero robbery, at approximately 6:45 p.m., Arthenia Thomas heard gunfire coming from the direction of a T-shirt shop in Gardena and saw two men running from the shop and down the street toward a restaurant where she lost sight of them. Her only description of the two men was that they were wearing black "hoodies" and had bandanas over their faces. A few minutes later a silver four-door car drove "really fast" out of the restaurant parking lot. Because the windows were tinted, Thomas could not tell how many people were in the car. Thomas testified that the car depicted in People's exhibit 4 looked like the car she saw leaving the parking lot.
When the police responded to the shooting, they found the body of Hae Sook Roh, who had worked at the T-shirt shop, lying dead behind the counter near the cash register.
The prosecution showed the jury an audio and video recording from a surveillance camera in the T-shirt shop. The video showed a black male with a gun in his left hand entering the area in front of the cash register. The man wore white pants, a long white T-shirt and an open waist-length jacket. He had a white cloth tied across his face below his eyes. The bottom left hand portion of the video showed the pant leg and shoe of a second person. The audio portion of the tape contained the voice of the man with the gun saying: A second voice said "Give him the money" and then the gunman fired at Roh saying, He repeated "Give it up" and then shot Roh two more times, grabbed the money from the register and ran. The gun was not recovered. The take from the robbery-murder was approximately $35.
Sanchez testified that she was at Galloway's house on the day of the murder. When it started to get dark, Galloway went to the trunk of his mother's car and changed into basketball shorts, a white T-shirt and waist-length jacket. He then began waiting in front of the house. A gray Chevrolet Impala with tinted windows pulled up in front of the house. Someone inside the car opened the back door, and as Galloway got in, Sanchez saw Marcus lean over. Sanchez identified the car shown in the People's exhibit 4 as thecar she saw that evening. The same car returned to Galloway's house 20 to 30 minutes later and Galloway got out. Sanchez observed that Galloway was breathing heavily, his palms were sweating and he was acting "like he was nervous and scared." Galloway told her that "he shot a lady at the T-shirt place." He "started laughing like it was funny" and said Sanchez asked Galloway why he shot the lady and Galloway replied that he was mad because he wanted to rob the store but "right before he walked in, she dropped the money [in the floor safe] [a]nd so he shot her."
A few days later Galloway showed Sanchez a YouTube video of the murder and robbery at the T-shirt shop. He laughed again while he watched it. Sanchez recognized Galloway on the video because he was wearing the same clothes he wore when he left his mother's house the evening of the murder. She also recognized the gun in the video as the gun Galloway had used in the robbery of Pedro Guerrero.
After defendants were arrested, they were seated next to each other on a bench in a hall of the jail. The bench had a hidden recording device. The prosecution played the recording of the defendants' conversation to the jury. In that conversation Galloway told Marcus that the police showed him a picture of Marcus inside the store just before the Guerrero robbery. Marcus acknowledges he will have to serve 15 years for the robbery but told Galloway that if he got bailed out "I'm gone." Galloway told Marcus not to worry because he admitted the robbery and told the police Marcus had nothing to do with it and that he didn't even know Marcus. Later in the conversation, Galloway admitted his involvement in the murder. Marcus also admitted being at the scene of the murder, noting that the video showed him wearing the same shoes that he was wearing when he was arrested.
Sanchez admitted she played a role in the robbery of Guerrero, that she pleaded guilty to that crime, that she was in custody at the time of her trial testimony and that she was receiving lenient treatment in her sentencing in exchange for her testimony against defendants. She also admitted that she had previously been convicted of forgery and the unlawful taking of a motor vehicle.
Sanchez further admitted that she had been a regular user of marijuana for six to nine months prior to the murder of Roh; that she "smoke[d it] every day;" and that she had smoked marijuana just before the Guerrero robbery and was feeling "mellow" at the time. Sanchez testified that she smoked a type of marijuana known as "Chronic" which, she agreed, is a "particularly potent" and "intense" form of the drug. In addition to smoking marijuana, Sanchez stated that on weekends she used Ecstasy. (We take judicial notice that the T-shirt robbery and murder were not committed on a weekend.) She testified that she stopped using any drugs after May 12, 2008, the date of the robbery-murder.
The defense called a forensic toxicologist who testified that in his opinion someone who smoked Chronic every day over a six- to nine-month period would suffer from confusion, delusion and "disoriented perception."
Deputy Sheriff Christopher Cuff testified as the prosecution's gang expert.
After testifying that the Shotgun Crips met the definition of a criminal street gang under Penal Code section 186.22, subdivision (f) and that Galloway and Marcus were active members of that gang, Deputy Cuff testified that he was familiar with the facts of the Guerrero robbery and the Roh murder, and that in his opinion, both crimes were committed for the "benefit" of the Shotgun Crips. Deputy Cuff explained that both crimes were committed in the gang's territory which covers the Northwestern part of Los Angeles between El Segundo Boulevard on the North and Rosecrans Boulevard on the South and between Crenshaw Boulevard on the West and Western Avenue on the East.Cuff further stated that both crimes enhanced the reputations of the perpetrators and the gang. He also testified that it was typical for gang members to commit crimes together to build trust between themselves and if they obtained money through crimes such as robbery, they were "expected to kick something back" to the gang.
Deputy Cuff did not testify about the defendants' "specific intent" to promote, further or assist the criminal conduct of the gang's members but, as Galloway concedes, there was sufficient evidence to support this element of the gang enhancement.
A jury convicted defendants of the robbery and murder of Roh with the special circumstance...
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