People v. Griffin
| Decision Date | 19 July 2016 |
| Docket Number | E062831 |
| Parties | THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. RAYMOND GRIFFIN, Defendant and Appellant. |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS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 This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.
OPINIONAPPEAL from the Superior Court of Riverside County. Richard Todd Fields, Judge. Affirmed.
Eric R. Larson, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General, Gerald A. Engler, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Julie L. Garland, Senior Assistant Attorney General, and Eric A. Swenson and Lynne G. McGinnis, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
In 2003, a man and a woman were shot in the head, execution-style, in a parking lot on University Avenue in Riverside. Three key witnesses — Sheila Chapman, Robert Pruitt, and Michael Newell — implicated defendant Raymond Griffin in the shooting. Each witness was a crack cocaine user; each witness had multiple prior felony convictions; each witness had a motive to lie; and each witness made various inconsistent statements.
In 2007, after a jury trial in which these three witnesses testified, defendant was found guilty on two counts of murder, as well as other offenses, arising out of the shooting. In 2013, however, we held that the 2007 trial was fatally infected by both ineffective assistance of counsel and prosecutorial error, which combined to give these three witnesses a false aura of veracity.
In 2014, after another jury trial in which the same three witnesses testified, defendant was once again found guilty as charged. We will hold that this time, there was no ineffective assistance of counsel and no prosecutorial error. Moreover, this time, the credibility of these three witnesses was fully litigated in front of the jury; we will hold that their testimony constituted substantial evidence sufficient to support the verdict. Finally, we will hold that the trial court did not err by failing to give accomplice instructions, or if it did, the error was harmless. Accordingly, we will affirm.
I
FACTUAL BACKGROUND
As defendant admitted at trial, he and his younger brother Bryant sold crack at a house on Seventh Street near Chicago Avenue in Riverside. Defendant also sold crack atan apartment on Chicago Avenue near Linden Street. Defendant had a burgundy Acura with tinted windows.
As of 2003, Sheila Chapman1 was working as a prostitute. She used heroin daily; she also used cocaine.
Chapman had a close friend named Tanya Morris. Morris, too, used cocaine, which she bought from defendant. According to Chapman, a lot of people told her that she resembled Morris when seen from behind; they both wore burgundy ponytails.
Chapman testified that on the night of February 27-28, 2003, sometime after 12:30 a.m. or 1:00 a.m., she was walking west on University Avenue. A red Honda Civic going in the opposite direction slowed down as it went past her. The driver made a U-turn and started following her slowly. At one point, he pulled up next to her. She looked at him and he looked at her; they were about three feet apart. But "when he seen I wasn't who he thought I was," she testified, "he kept going." Shortly after that,2 she heard four gunshots.
Chapman then saw a man wearing a black hoodie come out of a parking lot next to a Mexican restaurant and go across University, "walking fast." She saw police in the area, and somebody told her that her friend Morris was dead in the parking lot.
At trial, Chapman identified defendant as the driver of the red car. In December 2003, she identified defendant in a photo line-up.
Chapman testified that the red car did not have tinted windows. However, she also testified that she could not remember whether the windows were up or down — just that she could see the driver's face.3
Chapman identified Robert Pruitt as her boyfriend. At some point,4 Pruitt told Chapman that he saw defendant shoot Morris in the head.
As of 2003, Pruitt5 was using crack cocaine daily. He denied that Chapman was his girlfriend; he testified that they just "h[u]ng out" and used drugs together. He knew Morris "from the streets" and he had also used drugs with her.
Pruitt saw defendant almost every day and knew him well enough for them to say "hi" to each other. He understood that defendant was a member of the Main Street Crips. Pruitt himself had previously been a member of the East Coast Crips, a rival gang.
On the night of February 27-28, 2003, Pruitt was staying at the Economy Inn on University Avenue. Sometime after midnight, he was sitting out on the steps in front of the Economy Inn.6 By dint of using cocaine, he had not slept for nearly three days.
He saw Morris, with three other people,7 walking west on University. One man with her was holding a paper bag that "looked like [it] had a bottle or something in it." They went into the parking lot of the Mexican restaurant next door.
A couple of minutes later, Pruitt saw defendant, also walking west. Defendant was wearing a black hoodie. Pruitt hailed defendant, but defendant replied, He kept walking toward the parking lot.
"Because there was word on the street that something had happened," Pruitt got up and moved to a planter, from which he could see into the parking lot. Morris and her companions were standing in a circle in the parking lot. Defendant was standing about three feet away from them.
Suddenly, defendant pulled out a semiautomatic handgun and started shooting at the people in the circle. Pruitt saw somebody fall. At the preliminary hearing, he hadtestified that he saw the male victim get shot. At trial, he testified variously that he did not see who was shot, that he saw Morris get shot, and that he saw both victims get shot.
After the first or second shot, Pruitt "got out of there." He went up to his motel room, looked out the window, and saw two bodies in the parking lot. After the police arrived, he "went back down there like everybody else" and saw the bodies again.
A few days later, defendant told Pruitt, "Don't snitch." He added, "[My] homies think [I] should . . . smoke you" because Pruitt had seen the shooting.
According to Chapman, Pruitt told her that he was at a vacant house on Seventh Street when he saw the shooting, not at the Economy Inn.
In March 2003, Pruitt was arrested for transportation of cocaine. As a three-striker, he was facing a potential sentence of 25 years to life.8 In January and February 2004, he testified at defendant's preliminary hearing. He admitted that he was "hoping to get some kind of deal for [his] testimony . . . ."
In July 2004, Pruitt was in fact sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. In July 2007, over the prosecution's objection, a judge told him that, if he testified in defendant's case both truthfully and "relatively consistently with his preliminary hearing testimony," his sentence would be reduced to 10 years. In November 2007, Pruitt testified in defendant's case, and in January 2008, he was duly resentenced to 10 years.
On March 29, 2003, Detective Jeffrey Joseph interviewed Pruitt. Pruitt said that he saw defendant and Morris in the parking lot immediately before the shooting, but he added that he only heard the shooting — he did not see it.
Around 1:30 a.m., the police received "numerous" calls of shots fired near Douglass and University. They found the dead bodies of two people — later identified as Morris and Darrin Hutchinson — lying in the parking lot. Hutchinson was clutching a black plastic bag. On the ground, there were three unopened cans of malt liquor.
Autopsies revealed that Morris and Hutchinson had each been shot twice in the head. Two bullets, at least one of which was fired from close range, hit Morris in the right side of the head; they did not exit.9 One bullet, fired from close range, hit Hutchinson in the left side of the head and one bullet hit him in the back of the head.
Michael Newell10 was a member of the Main Street Crips until he quit in 2012. He had known defendant since either 1983 or 1988; however, for much of that time Newell was in prison. He testified that defendant and defendant's brother were also members of the Main Street Crips.
In February 2003, Newell moved from Los Angeles to Riverside. Defendant and defendant's brother let him live at their house on Seventh Street. All three of them sold crack there. The drug sales were for "personal gain," not for the benefit of the Main Street Crips.
In February or March 2003, Newell heard that Morris had been murdered. He asked defendant about the murder. Defendant said he had killed Morris and a second person because they had robbed him of drugs.
Thereafter, Newell was arrested for a drug offense. As a three-striker, he was facing a potential sentence of 25 years to life.
In March 2003, while in custody, Newell said he wanted to speak to someone about Morris's murder. He did so because he was upset with defendant's brother and also because he "didn't like the way [defendant] talked to [him]."
As a result, Detective Joseph interviewed Newell. Newell said he had talked to defendant about the shooting, and defendant had said, Newell also told Detective Joseph about defendant's and defendant's brother's drug enterprise.
According to Detective Joseph, initially, Newell said that as long as he was in custody, he had nothing to say. Detective Joseph offered to contact the district attorney if Newell...
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People v. Griffin
...a claim that the evidence was insufficient to support the jury's finding that he was the shooter. We affirmed. (People v. Griffin (July 19, 2016, E062831) [nonpub. opn.].)In 2018, the Legislature enacted Senate Bill 1437, which amended sections 188 and 189 to eliminate criminal liability fo......