People v. Guzman

• Decision Date: 28 June 1988
• Docket Number: No. S002482,S002482
• Citation: 755 P.2d 917,45 Cal.3d 915,248 Cal.Rptr. 467
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: , 755 P.2d 917 The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Gary Lee GUZMAN, Defendant and Appellant. In re Gary Lee GUZMAN on Habeas Corpus. Crim. 22418.

Page 467

248 Cal.Rptr. 467

45 Cal.3d 915, 755 P.2d 917

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Gary Lee GUZMAN, Defendant and Appellant In re Gary Lee GUZMAN on Habeas Corpus.

Crim. 22418.

No. S002482.

Supreme Court of California In Bank.

June 28, 1988.

Rehearing Denied Aug. 18, 1988.

Certiorari Denied Jan. 23, 1989.

See 109 S.Ct. 882.

Frank O. Bell, Jr., State Public Defender, under appointment by the Supreme Court, Edward H. Schulman, Chief Asst. State Public Defender, Steven Parnes, Larry R. Pizarro, Michael Tanaka, Cheryl Lutz, Richard Lennon and Antonia D. Radillo, Deputy State Public Defenders, for defendant and appellant and petitioner.

John K. Van de Kamp, Atty. Gen., Steve White, Chief Asst. Atty. Gen., Joel Carey and J. Robert Jibson, Deputy Attys. Gen., for plaintiff and respondent.

LUCAS, Chief Justice.

This is an automatic appeal from a judgment imposing a penalty of death under the 1978 death penalty law. (Pen.Code, § 190.1 et seq.; see id., § 1239, subd. (b).) ¹

Defendant was charged with murder ( § 187), burglary ( § 459), robbery ( § 211), kidnapping ( § 207), and rape ( § 261, subd. (3)). Felony-murder special circumstances were charged as to each of the latter four felonies. ( § 190.2, subd. (a)(17).) Defendant was also charged with, and admitted, two prior rape convictions for which he had served separate prison terms. ( § 667.5, subd. (c).) The jury found defendant guilty as charged, found all of the special circumstances true, and fixed the sentence at death. Additionally, the court imposed an aggregate sentence of 37 1/2 years in prison on the burglary, robbery, kidnapping and rape counts. A petition for a writ of habeas corpus has been filed in conjunction with the appeal. For the reasons discussed below, we affirm the judgment in its entirety and deny the petition.

I. FACTS

A. Guilt Phase

About 5 p.m. on Friday, August 1, 1980, Linda Rogers, the sole salesperson on duty at the Treehouse Boutique in Modesto, was robbed and kidnapped. Rogers's disappearance was discovered a short while later when a customer, Linda Spinelli, entered the store. Spinelli reported Rogers's disappearance to the clerk of another store next door. That person called Rogers's mother, who notified the owner of the Treehouse and the police.

The police found the Treehouse cash register empty. Rogers' slacks and panties were found in a dressing room. Her car was still in the parking lot. Spinelli told the police that just before she entered the Treehouse she had seen a suspicious-looking man in a "ratty" car parked on the street. She considered locking her car, but decided that the day was too hot. When she left the Treehouse about 15 minutes later, the man was gone.

Several days later, Spinelli selected a photograph of defendant as looking "very much like" the man in the car. She also selected defendant from a live lineup as the man she had seen.

On the morning of August 2, Rogers's body was found in an orchard outside Modesto. A coat from the Treehouse was wrapped around her; it had holes in it consistent with knife wounds. She had been stabbed numerous times in the chest and back with a single-edged eight-inch knife and had been hit over the head with an object that might have been a baseball bat. Her bra was wrapped around her waist. A strip of blue cloth had been used with the bra to tie her hands. A pair of glasses was found near the body. The autopsy indicated sexual intercourse no more than 24 hours before her death. Bruises, which could have been caused by fingertips, were found on her thighs.

On Sunday, August 3, defendant's girlfriend, Dixie Jean Wallace, told the police defendant was involved in Rogers' murder. Wallace and defendant had been living together for several weeks at the home of Wallace's nephew, Richard Gardner, and his wife, Debbie. The following story emerged:

On the morning of August 1, Wallace and defendant had a fight about money. Wallace's welfare check was due that day but had not arrived in the mail. She was angry with defendant for not working or earning money. Defendant said, "What do you want me to do, a robbery?" She told him to do "whatever it takes," and defendant drove off in his car around noon. Debbie Gardner saw him take a kitchen knife as he left.

Wallace spent the afternoon at the home of her sister-in-law, Betty Gardner. Defendant drove to that house about 7 p.m., and Wallace left with him in the car. They drove back to Richard and Debbie's house, where he washed off a baseball bat in the lawn sprinkler and burned some blue cloth. He told Wallace he had "killed a dude," and offered her some money, which she refused.

That evening, defendant and Wallace drove to the orchard so he could find and dispose of the glasses and the coat, which he suspected might have his fingerprints on them. At trial, Wallace testified defendant had forced her at knifepoint to drive him. She also testified, however, that at his request she dropped him off at the orchard and returned to pick him up 10 minutes later. He had been unable to find the body or any clothing in the dark. Wallace drove him back to Richard and Debbie Gardner's home, where defendant told Richard he had killed a "biker."

Early on Saturday, August 2, Wallace told defendant he would have to leave the Gardners' home. She suggested, and he agreed, that he stay with her friends Peggy and Bill Foster in Turlock. He arrived at the Fosters' home at 7 a.m., and told them he was running from the police because he had killed a dope dealer. He spent the morning sleeping on the Fosters' couch.

Meanwhile, Wallace read of Rogers' rape and murder in the newspapers. When she called defendant to tell him the news, he admitted to her for the first time that the person he killed was a woman. He denied committing a rape.

There were several more phone calls between defendant and Wallace, arranged through Peggy Foster. Sometime on Sunday, August 3, Wallace contacted the police and arranged for them to listen to and record the calls. By that time, defendant had been asked to leave the Fosters' house, but he continued to receive messages there from Wallace.

During one of the recorded conversations, defendant said he was sleeping in a car in the Bay Area but would soon have to leave for Fresno. He described the killing as "purely business," and explained that he had been caught in a situation in which he "did not have any choice." He said he had thrown the murder weapon out of his car a few miles from the orchard. He also said that he "should've just went and did it to Mike Dennis [the father of Wallace's daughter] that night" because "that's where all the anger was."

When defendant was arrested on August 7, the arresting officer told him he was charged with murder. He said, "And rape, too?"

The murder weapon was never found. Nor were any fingerprints from the Treehouse matched to defendant. No usable prints were taken from the coat or the glasses. A criminologist, however, did match the blue fibers found on Rogers's bra and on her person with those found at the orchard and in defendant's car. The fibers also matched those from the cloth given to the police by Wallace after defendant had attempted to burn it. Some gold fibers matching the carpet at the Treehouse were found on defendant's car floor on the driver's side.

The defense theory was that Wallace, perhaps with the help of an accomplice, killed Rogers to avenge the murder of a friend, Susan Atkins, by Rogers's brother several years earlier. Allegedly, Wallace then enlisted the cooperation of her relatives and friends to frame defendant for the Rogers's murder. Leslie Bailey testified for the defense that he lived with Wallace during June and part of July 1980. According to Bailey, during that time, Wallace said she could not "get at" Rogers' brother, who was in prison.

Defendant testified that at the time of the murder he was drinking beer and smoking marijuana by himself near the Gardners' house. His account of the events on the morning of August 1 corresponded generally to those of Wallace. He testified that he left on August 2 because of the fight about money, and stayed with a friend in Pittsburg until his arrest.

B. Penalty Phase

The prosecution presented evidence of four previous rapes and an attempted rape committed by defendant. In January 1966 defendant accosted Karen K. in a Berkeley laundromat, escorted her at gunpoint to his room, tied her up, forced her to disrobe and attempted to have sexual intercourse with her. He was later convicted of this offense, and sentenced to prison.

In March 1973 defendant entered the bedroom of Deborah B. at 3 a.m. He placed a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her if she resisted or made any noise. He then tied her up, cut off her panties with his knife, took some money from her purse, dragged her to the floor, and committed several forced sex acts against her.

In April 1973 defendant, armed with a knife, attacked Kathrina O. in her apartment in the early morning hours. He tied her up, gagged her, and blindfolded her before committing multiple sex acts against her. Later in the afternoon of the same day, defendant attacked Linda H. and Martha G. in their Berkeley apartment. Again, he was armed with a knife, tied the victims' hands behind them and sexually assaulted them numerous times. He also forced them to perform sex acts with each other. After taking some money from Linda H. and tearing the telephone cord out of the wall, he fled. Defendant was convicted of each of the 1973 assaults and sentenced to prison.

Although defendant's two trial counsel in the present case had gathered evidence which in counsel's view would have demonstrated the appropriateness of a sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole, counsel never presented this evidence to the jury. Before commencement of the penalty phase trial, defendant informed his counsel and the court that he preferred a death sentence...