People v. Hines

• Decision Date: 05 April 1967
• Docket Number: Cr. 8624
• Citation: 66 Cal.2d 348,425 P.2d 557,57 Cal.Rptr. 757
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: , 425 P.2d 557 The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Walter Clayton HINES, Defendant and Appellant. In Bank

Page 757

57 Cal.Rptr. 757

66 Cal.2d 348, 425 P.2d 557

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Walter Clayton HINES, Defendant and Appellant.

Cr. 8624.

Supreme Court of California,

In Bank.

April 5, 1967.

Rehearing Denied May 4, 1967.

Burton Marks, Beverly Hills, and Harold J. Ackerman, Los Angeles, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for defendant and appellant.

Thomas C. Lynch, Atty. Gen., Albert W. Harris, Jr., and Robert R. Granucci, Deputy Attys. Gen., for plaintiff and respondent.

BURKE, Associate Justice.

Defendant pleaded guilty to first degree murder, and a jury fixed the penalty at death. On appeal the judgment was reversed insofar as it related to the penalty but affirmed in all other respects. (People v. Hines, 61 Cal.2d 164, 37 Cal.Rptr. 622, 390 P.2d 398.) At the second penalty trial a jury again imposed the death penalty. Motions for a new trial and for reduction of penalty were denied, and defendant's second automatic appeal is now before us (Pen.Code, § 1239, subd. (b)).

About midnight on July 1, 1962, the body of Billy Cooper was found behind the counter of Mary's liquor store, where he had worked, on Lincoln Boulevard in Venice. An autopsy revealed that death was caused by multiple gunshot wounds, the major ones being in the head and heart. The bullets removed from the body were .32 caliber.

The police found one .32 automatic cartridge case on the customer's side of the counter and four such cases on the other side of the counter. A .22 revolver was by the body. No .22 caliber slugs were found in the store but in the store ceiling the police saw what appeared to be bullet holes of a .22 caliber projectile.

The police had but few clues, had no idea that defendant was involved in the killing, and so, of course, were not looking for him. Although a description of the killer was secured and published, this description only vaguely resembled defendant.

About 2:15 p.m. on July 11, 1962, defendant walked into the Venice police substation. The desk officer took him into the office of Officer Hestand and said, 'This man just came to the desk next door and he put the gun and a sack of ammunition on the desk, and he said, 'Are you looking for the man that killed the clerk in the liquor store on Lincoln Boulevard a couple of weeks ago?', then he said, 'Here's the gun, and I am the one that did it. '' Officer Hestand and three other officers thereupon talked with defendant for 55 minutes, ¹ and the conversation was tape-recorded.

At the outset of the conversation Hestand told defendant to 'start from the bottom.' Defendant said he 'killed the guy, and that is all.' Hestand asked him whom he had killed, and defendant said the victim was a liquor store attendant but he did not know the man's name. In response to questions as to the location of the store and its name, defendant said it was on Lincoln Boulevard and was named 'Mary's.' Hestand then asked for the circumstances of the killing. Defendant said that he lived near Mary's, so it was a 'logical place to hit'; that he went into the store, asked for a pack of cigarettes, pulled out his gun, and said 'this is a stick-up'; that he saw the attendant start to push a button which would notify the police; that after defendant told him not to push the button, the attendant pulled out a gun and fired; that defendant thought he was hit and shot at the clerk who fell; and that defendant then 'reached over the counter and shot (the victim) some more.'

In response to ensuing questions by Hestand, defendant stated that he did not know who fired first, that his first shot hit the decedent in the temple over the right eye and another wound was in his chest (such wounds are shown by the autopsy report), and that the killing occurred either at 11:30 or 12:30 at night 'a week ago last Sunday' (which was the night of the killing).

Hestand then inquired where defendant got the gun, and why he selected Mary's to rob. Defendant said he bought the gun, and robbed Mary's because he did not have a car and the store was near his home. Hestand asked if he had ever had an argument with decedent, and defendant said no, denied knowing decedent's name, stated that he killed to prevent identification, and that he felt sorry for the attendant. He also said that he intended to kill the clerk after taking money from him, that the attendant's shooting at him 'threw me off,' and that he did not take any money, but only a pack of cigarettes. When asked what ammunition he used, he replied 'thirty-two automatic.'

Further questioning dealt with details relating to the crime and information as to defendant's background. He was asked, among other things, if he had ever been in a mental institution, whether he had any 'mental trouble,' whether he had read about the crime in a newspaper, and why he was seeing a named doctor whose card was in defendant's wallet. At one point when asked if he felt remorseful, defendant replied, 'Well, I don't know. I can't say that I am sorry that I killed the guy, you know, because I wanted to kill him, you know, and I had planned to kill him.' At another point, when asked about the gun battle, defendant said, 'I thought that dirty son of a bitch, I will get him, you know.' At the conclusion of the conversation one of the officers asked, 'Do you think we ought to get him over and get him booked?,' and another officer replied, 'Okay.'

Defendant took the stand in his own behalf at the instant penalty trial and testified to the following effect: On the night of the crime he went to the liquor store to rob and murder whoever was there but after entering the store and talking to the clerk he realized he 'couldn't shoot him just like that.' He thinks that he and the decedent shot simultaneously. He expressed remorse for having killed the decedent and stated that he committed the murder because he had a suicidal impulse to be executed by the state.

Defendant contends that the trial court erred in admitting his tape-recorded confession over his objection based on Escobedo v. State of Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 84 S.Ct. 1758, 12 L.Ed.2d 977, and People v. Dorado, 62 Cal.2d 338, 42 Cal.Rptr. 169, 398 P.2d 361. ² We do not agree.

The instant penalty retrial was after the decision was rendered in Escobedo v. State of Illinois, supra, 378 U.S. 478, 84 S.Ct. 1758, 12 L.Ed.2d 977, but before the decision in Miranda v. State of Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694. The principles enunciated in Escobedo and People v. Dorado, supra, 62 Cal.2d 338, 42 Cal.Rptr. 169, 398 P.2d 361, but not those in Miranda are therefore applicable here. (Johnson v. State of New Jersey, 384 U.S. 719, 86 S.Ct. 1772, 16 L.Ed.2d 882; People v. Rollins, 65 A.C. 731, 56 Cal.Rptr. 293, 423 P.2d 221.)

The police had no evidence connecting defendant with the crime when he voluntarily walked into the police station, admitted the killing, and produced a gun that he claimed was the murder weapon. At that time there thus appeared to be a substantial possibility that he was a mentally disturbed person or a fraud falsely confessing to the crime. It is a matter of common knowledge that many such persons have confessed to crimes which investigation develops could not have been committed by them. In the unsolved so-called 'Black Dahlia' case in Los Angeles County the number of such persons ran into several hundred. In the present case the object of the 55-minute conversation clearly was not to elicit a confession but to eliminate the possibility that defendant was a mentally disturbed person or a fraud. Accordingly, there was absent one of the conditions essential to render the conversation inadmissible under Escobedo v. State of Illinois, supra, 378 U.S. 478, 84 S.Ct. 1758, 12 L.Ed.2d 977, and People v. Dorado, supra, 62 Cal.2d 338, 42 Cal.Rptr. 169, 398 P.2d 361. It is true that early in the conversation defendant showed considerable familiarity with the details of the crime, such as the date and place of the killing, the fact the attendant had a gun, roughly the number of times he was shot, and the location of the wounds, but such knowledge could have been obtained from a source such as a newspaper or the actual killer, and it would not have been unreasonable for the police still to have believed that there was a substantial possibility that defendant was a mentally disturbed person or fraud. An indication that the police retained that belief after defendant showed his familiarity with the crime appears from their asking him questions such as whether he had ever been in a mental institution and why he was seeing the doctor whose card was in his wallet. It is apparent that in the present case the officers were not engaging in tactics of the type that in the past have spawned involuntary confessions, the evil Escobedo sought primarily of prevent (In re Lopez, 62 Cal.2d 368, 372--373, 42 Cal.Rptr. 188, 398 P.2d 380) but rather were seeking to ascertain whether defendant's voluntary confession was untrue.

As this court pointed out in People v. Cotter, 63 Cal.2d 386, 393, 396, 46 Cal.Rptr. 622, 626, 405 P.2d 862, 866 (vacated on another ground in 386 U.S. ---, 87 S.Ct. 1035, 17 L.Ed.2d ---), Escobedo and Dorado 'were aimed at restraining law enforcement officers, once the accusatory stage has been reached, from the use of inquisitorial techniques in seeking to prove the charge against the accused out of his own mouth. They were never intended to discourage a defendant from volunteering to the police his complicity in the perpetration of a crime nor to prohibit the police from receiving and acting upon such confessions. * * * Neither this court, nor the United States Supreme Court, has ever taken the position that the desire of a guilty man to confess his crime should be stifled, impeded, discouraged, or hindered in any way. The contrary is true.'

A confession written by a stenotypist and signed by defendant after 4 p.m. on July 11, 1962, at the Los Angeles police...