People v. Hamilton

• Decision Date: 23 February 2009
• Docket Number: No. S052288.,S052288.
• Citation: 89 Cal.Rptr.3d 286,200 P.3d 898,45 Cal. 4th 863
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Bernard Lee HAMILTON, Defendant and Appellant.

200 P.3d 898

89 Cal.Rptr.3d 286

45 Cal. 4th 863

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Bernard Lee HAMILTON, Defendant and Appellant.

No. S052288.

Supreme Court of California.

February 23, 2009.

Michael J. Hersek, State Public Defender, under appointment by the Supreme Court, and Arnold A. Erickson, Deputy State Public Defender, for Defendant and Appellant.

Bill Lockyer and Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorneys General, Robert R. Anderson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Gary W. Schons, Assistant Attorney General, William M. Wood, Pat Zaharopoulos and Holly D. Wilkens, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

MORENO, J.

On January 5, 1981, a jury found defendant Bernard Lee Hamilton guilty of the murder of Eleanore Buchanan (Pen.Code, § 187),¹ and of robbery (§ 211), kidnapping (§ 207), and burglary (§ 459). The jury found true special circumstance allegations of robbery, kidnapping, and burglary. (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(17)(A), (B), (G).) After a penalty trial, the jury returned a verdict of death, and the court imposed judgment accordingly.

On direct appeal, this court affirmed the judgment of guilt but set aside the special circumstance findings because of instructional error under Carlos v. Superior Court (1983) 35 Cal.3d 131, 197 Cal.Rptr. 79, 672 P.2d 862, and reversed the sentence of death. (People v. Hamilton (1985) 41 Cal.3d 408, 221 Cal.Rptr. 902, 710 P.2d 981 (Hamilton I).) The United States Supreme Court vacated the judgment and remanded the case to this court for further consideration in light of Rose v. Clark (1986) 478 U.S. 570, 106 S.Ct. 3101, 92 L.Ed.2d 460. (California v. Hamilton (1986) 478 U.S. 1017, 106 S.Ct. 3328, 92 L.Ed.2d 734.) This court again affirmed the judgment of guilt and, contrary to the determination in Hamilton I, concluded the special circumstance findings must be upheld under People v. Anderson (1987) 43 Cal.3d 1104, 1147, 240 Cal.Rptr. 585, 742 P.2d 1306 (overruling Carlos v. Superior Court, supra, 35 Cal.3d 131, 197 Cal.Rptr. 79, 672 P.2d 862), and affirmed the penalty judgment of death. (People v. Hamilton (1988) 45 Cal.3d 351, 247 Cal.Rptr. 31, 753 P.2d 1109.) On March 22, 1994, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed the penalty judgment because of instructional error under Boyde v. California (1990) 494 U.S. 370, 380, 110 S.Ct. 1190, 108 L.Ed.2d 316, and remanded the case to the trial court for a penalty phase retrial. (Hamilton v. Vasquez (9th Cir.1994) 17 F.3d 1149.)

On December 13, 1995, after the penalty phase retrial, at which defendant represented himself, the jury returned a verdict of death. The court denied a motion for a new trial and the automatic application to modify the verdict (§ 190.4, subd. (e)) and sentenced defendant to death. This appeal is automatic. (§ 1239, subd. (b).)

For the reasons that follow, we affirm the judgment.

I. FACTS

Defendant kidnapped and murdered Eleanore Buchanan after she left a night college math class in San Diego. He dismembered her body, disposed of her headless and handless corpse in California, and drove to Texas and Oklahoma where he was caught driving her stolen van.

Defendant represented himself at the penalty retrial; throughout the trial, however, counsel appointed to assist defendant conducted the majority of the voir dire, examination, and arguments.

A. The Prosecution's Case

In the penalty phase retrial, the prosecution introduced as evidence in aggravation under section 190.3 the facts and circumstances of the underlying capital crime, evidence of 10 incidents of criminal activity involving force or violence or the threat of force or violence, and victim impact evidence. In most respects, the evidence presented differed little from that presented at the earlier trial.

1. The Underlying Crime

a. The events of May 30, 1979 to June 8, 1979

On May 30, 1979, 24-year-old Eleanore Buchanan, known as "Fran," attended an evening math class that was scheduled to meet from 7:00 until 10:00 p.m. at San Diego Mesa College. Because she had missed several classes due to the birth of her second child, she chose not to take an optional quiz, given at approximately 9:15 or 9:30 p.m., and left the class. She was last seen walking toward the campus parking lot or a nearby street. She had driven the new blue van she and her husband Terry Buchanan had purchased weeks earlier; Terry used the van during the day to make deliveries for a dental lab.

About 1:30 p.m. the following day, May 31, 1979, Harry Piper, a target shooter, discovered a body, later identified as that of Eleanore Buchanan, in a cul-de-sac in Pine Valley,² south of Interstate Highway 8. The head and hands were missing and there were ligature marks on the ankles and wrists.

Forensic pathologist Dr. Joseph Luibel, who conducted the autopsy, testified the cuts around the head and right hand were smooth and consistent with marks made by a saw, while the cut on the left wrist was consistent with having been made by a knife. All of the amputation marks were consistent with having been made by someone without much knowledge of anatomy and with rudimentary knowledge of the use of a knife and saw. Although the body was exsanguinated, he was unable to determine with certainty the cause of death, and noted several postmortem wounds to the chest and abdomen. He noted that when the body was discovered, it was lying on its back and both forearms were raised several inches off the ground, a common result of rigor mortis. Based on an examination of the stomach contents he concluded the victim died between 10:00 and 10:30 p.m. on May 30, 1979. Based on the stage of rigor mortis and the condition of the forearms at the time of discovery, he concluded the body was left in Pine Valley approximately six hours after death, or between 4:00 and 4:30 a.m. on May 31, 1979.

Defendant lived with his parents on Comstock Street in Linda Vista, California, approximately one mile from San Diego Mesa College. Donna Hatch lived in Terrell, Texas. She and defendant had corresponded since 1973, and first met in person in 1976. Telephone records from the Hamilton residence in Linda Vista revealed that at 1:52 a.m. on May 31, 1979, just hours after Eleanore Buchanan's classmates last saw her alive, defendant telephoned Hatch. Hatch testified defendant told her he planned to head for Texas that morning after he got some gas. During the evening of June 1, 1979, defendant showed up at Hatch's house in Terrell, Texas, driving a van. Hatch noted that the van had a broken window, a broken armrest, and a bent inside curtain rod. The next day, Hatch and her sister, niece, and daughter drove with defendant to Oklahoma and Ft. Worth, Texas, and back to Terrell, Texas, stopping to sleep at a rest stop where defendant used Buchanan's credit cards to buy gas. On June 4, 1979, defendant and Hatch stopped at a phone booth near a hotel where defendant made two telephone calls. After the second call, defendant's demeanor changed and he became nervous.³ Hatch overheard defendant say he had traveled to Texas by airplane, which she knew to be untrue, and that "he thought he had killed somebody," or thought he had killed "a man." Defendant asked Hatch to go to a car lot and steal Texas license plates to exchange with the California plates on the van, but she refused. Defendant and Hatch talked about his former wife; defendant had led her to believe that his former wife was dead, but on this day he told her she was alive. When Hatch became upset about the lie, defendant asked her if she wanted him to kill his former wife. Hatch decided to end her relationship with defendant.

On June 8, 1979, from Greenwood, Louisiana, defendant phoned Hatch at her house. Her grandmother answered the phone, and when Hatch got on the line, she heard defendant say, "I'll kill you, too."

On June 8, 1979, the use of Terry Buchanan's credit card at a Stuckey's restaurant in Marietta, Oklahoma triggered an alert to the Love County Sheriff's Office to be on the lookout for the Buchanans' blue Dodge van bearing Oklahoma license plates. Officers thereafter found defendant driving the van. Upon his arrest, defendant told the officers he got the van from a friend of his sister in Oklahoma City. Love County Sheriff's deputies searched a site south of Marietta and, in a pile of dumped trash, found fast food wrappers, unset false teeth, dental equipment, literature and pamphlets dealing with dental supplies, a Texas Department of Public Safety traffic warning slip bearing defendant's name and dated June 7, 1979, a collection of school notes and a quiz from a math class, a license plate bracket that said "National City, Stanley Dodge" (the dealership where the Buchanans purchased the van), and credit cards, courtesy cards and receipts bearing Eleanore Buchanan's and Terry Buchanan's names and bearing signatures that were not in Terry Buchanan's handwriting.

b. Forensic evidence

A sheriff's deputy found a saw, two shanks of rope, a butcher knife, a screwdriver, credit cards, a spiral notebook entitled "Math 118," and a handwritten note addressed "Look, Donna" inside the van.

Blue fibers from the carpet in the van matched fibers found on top of Eleanore Buchanan's abdomen, on her socks and feet, and on the exposed bone of her right wrist. The rear of the van had a couch seat spanning the two rear fender wheel wells; the seat folded up to reveal the spare tire and additional storage space. San Diego County Sheriff's officers found a "fairly extensive" bloodstain on the inside, top, and side carpeting covering the right fender wheel well and running down over the edge of the fender wheel well onto the flat surface of the carpet bed and van floor underneath the couch seat; blood drops on the rim and wheel of the spare tire; blood on the couch rail; two small bloodstains in the middle of the van forward of the couch seat and behind the driver's seat; and blood on the inner right toe of a pair of shoes identified as...