People v. Hoover

• Decision Date: 29 October 1986
• Citation: 231 Cal.Rptr. 203,187 Cal.App.3d 1074
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Crossan David HOOVER, Defendant and Appellant. A030282.

Page 203

231 Cal.Rptr. 203

187 Cal.App.3d 1074

The PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Crossan David HOOVER, Defendant and Appellant.

A030282.

Court of Appeal, First District, Division 5, California.

Oct. 29, 1986.

Rehearing Denied Nov. 19, 1986.

Review Denied Feb. 25, 1987.

John K. Van De Kamp, Atty. Gen., Dane R. Gillette, Landra E. Rosenthal, Deputy Attys. Gen., San Francisco, for plaintiff and respondent.

Phillip H. Cherney, Palo Alto, for defendant and appellant.

KING, Associate Justice.

In this multi-issue criminal appeal we hold that the trial court erred in instructing the jury on the elements of legal insanity, but the error was harmless.

Crossan David Hoover appeals from a judgment of conviction for murder (Pen.Code, § 187) and use of a deadly weapon (Pen.Code, § 12022, subd. (b)). We affirm.

The killing occurred within the context of a bizarre conspiracy, led by Mark Richards, for a paramilitary takeover of Marin County and creation of a modern-day Camelot with Richards as King Arthur and his crew of teenaged construction workers as his knights. Richards, a 29-year-old contractor, employed a number of teenagers, including 17-year-old Hoover. In regular meetings Richards promoted his plan to isolate Marin County by destroying the Golden Gate and Richmond-San Rafael bridges and to defend the new kingdom through the use of laser guns placed on Angel Island and Mt. Tamalpais. The conspiracy was called Pendragon. ¹

Richards developed financial difficulties in mid-1982. He decided to kill his friend Richard Baldwin in order to obtain money. Baldwin was known to carry large amounts of cash.

After failing in an attempt to solicit two of his followers to kill Baldwin, Richards turned to Hoover and another teenaged employee, Andrew C. He told them Baldwin owed him money and was a "Nazi" and a "faggot," and it "would be a service to the public to get rid of such a menace." The two agreed to participate in the killing in exchange for a share of proceeds from the sale of property to be taken from Baldwin's house, as well as lodging in a remodeled portion of Richards' house. Hoover later stated he had expected to receive $5,000, a car, and a place to live.

On July 6, 1982, Richards drove Hoover and Andrew to Baldwin's house to work on a construction job there. In the afternoon, pursuant to a plan devised by Richards, he asked Baldwin to show him and Hoover classic cars located in Baldwin's auto shop. The three left around 2 p.m. in Richards' truck. Andrew stayed behind and searched the house.

At the shop, upon a prearranged signal from Richards, Hoover struck Baldwin on the head with a baseball bat. Hoover then stabbed Baldwin in the head with a screwdriver and in the chest with a chisel.

Richards and Hoover returned to Baldwin's house. With Andrew, they took $3,000 in cash and various other items from the house, including guns and marijuana. Later that day Richards bought a boat, using Baldwin's money to make a down payment. He and the two teenagers retrieved Baldwin's body from the auto shop and used the boat to dump the body in San Francisco Bay.

Over the next few days Hoover admitted the killing to several persons. Baldwin's body was found on July 13. The next day the Marin County Sheriff's Department received an anonymous telephone call which led to the arrest of Hoover and Richards on July 16.

An information charged Hoover, as an adult, with murder and use of a deadly weapon. He pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity.

Richards was tried separately, and shortly before Hoover's trial was convicted of first degree murder. Andrew received immunity in exchange for a statement and trial testimony.

Hoover's jury trial was bifurcated into a guilt phase and a sanity phase. At the close of the guilt phase the jury convicted him of first degree murder and use of a deadly weapon. Five days later the jury found Hoover was not legally insane at the time of the killing. The court sentenced him to a term of 26 years to life.

I.

Hoover contends the judgment must be reversed as to the question of insanity because of error in the court's instruction on the elements of legal insanity.

Penal Code section 25, subdivision (b), added by Proposition 8 on June 8, 1982, provides that the defense of insanity "shall be found by the trier of fact only when the accused person proves by a preponderance of the evidence that he or she was incapable of knowing or understanding the nature and quality of his or her act and of distinguishing right from wrong at the time of the commission of the offense." (Emphasis added.) In accordance with the conjunctive language of the statute, the trial court in the present case instructed the jury that both of the prescribed elements were required for a finding of legal insanity.

The California Supreme Court subsequently held, however, that the electorate intended to return the California law of legal insanity to the traditional M'Naghten test, under which a finding of insanity requires only the presence of either of the two prescribed elements. (People v. Skinner (1985) 39 Cal.3d 765, 775-777, 217 Cal.Rptr. 685, 704 P.2d 752.) The Supreme Court characterized the use of the conjunctive "and" rather than the disjunctive "or" as "apparently inadvertent." (Id., at p. 777, 217 Cal.Rptr. 685, 704 P.2d 752.)

Thus in the present case the trial court erred in instructing the jury on the elements of legal insanity, and the Attorney General concedes the error. The question presented is whether the error was prejudicial. Reversal on the insanity issue is required only if it is reasonably probable that a finding of insanity would have been made absent the error. (People v. Leever (1985) 173 Cal.App.3d 853, 869, 219 Cal.Rptr. 581; see People v. Watson (1956) 46 Cal.2d 818, 836, 299 P.2d 243.) ²

More specifically, the only issue on appeal is whether it is reasonably probable the jury found Hoover was incapable of distinguishing right from wrong at the time of the killing. As the court explained in Leever, "had the jurors been persuaded that [defendant] did not know the nature and quality of his act ..., the instruction [requiring both elements] would have been harmless as a matter of law, for 'a person who is unaware of the nature and quality of his act by definition cannot know that the act is wrong. In this circumstance the "nature and quality" prong subsumes the "right and wrong" prong.' (Fn. omitted, People v. Skinner, supra, 39 Cal.3d 765, 777-778 [217 Cal.Rptr. 685, 704 P.2d 752]; cf. People v. Richardson (1961) 192 Cal.App.2d 166, 172-173 .) Thus, the only potential harm in the instruction would be the converse situation--that is, if they found that he did not know his act was wrong but nevertheless found him sane because they believed that he knew the nature and quality of his act." (173 Cal.App.3d at p. 869, 219 Cal.Rptr. 581.) If it is not reasonably probable that the jury found Hoover was incapable of distinguishing right from wrong at the time of the killing, then the instructional error was harmless.

Two key factors demonstrate an absence of prejudice in this regard: (1) Hoover's own comments several months after the killing, indicating an awareness at the time of the killing that the act was wrong, and (2) the equivocal nature of testimony by the only defense expert to testify on the sanity issue.

Defense counsel conceded in closing argument on the sanity issue that "since the time of the homicide ... Crossan Hoover realizes that what he did was wrong." Hoover's defense was temporary insanity. Counsel argued that just prior to the killing Hoover slipped into a temporary psychotic state which rendered him legally insane at that time.

In September 1982, however, Hoover made the following comments to a clinical psychologist regarding his state of mind just before the killing: "It was like [Richards] was coaching me. He would listen to what I said and push me on. When I was with Baldwin, I kept thinking this is the guy standing between me and money. It made me excited. I thought about guns I could buy and all the other stuff. I knew it was wrong, but I didn't give a shit. Did you ever think of getting $5,000? Did you ever think of wanting to be with your mother? My mother could come back to Marin County. I could have my own room so I wouldn't have to look at her all the time. Oh, man. I was just thinking of how happy I'd be, how much love I would get, how many things I'd have." (Emphasis added.)

This admission of contemporaneous knowledge of wrongfulness clearly demonstrates Hoover was capable of distinguishing right from wrong at the time of the killing, and the prosecutor made it a fundamental part of his closing argument on the insanity issue. Hoover claims the statement could be construed as indicating awareness of only legal wrongfulness and not moral wrongfulness. (See People v. Skinner, supra, 39 Cal.3d at p. 783, 217 Cal.Rptr. 275, 583 P.2d 1318.) But nothing in the statement suggests Hoover was referring only to legal wrongfulness, and the contrary is suggested by another comment by Hoover, to a psychiatrist, that killing "just takes a few minutes, but it fucks with your conscience."

In cross-examining a prosecution expert, Hoover's trial counsel brought out the fact that the expert's written report of a January 1983 interview with Hoover indicated Hoover said, "He thought at the time that it was not wrong; that Richards told him to do it 'for the better of the country.' " Despite this comment, however, the report concluded "it is obvious from my interview with him and from the reports I have read as well, that he does, and did at the time, appreciate that what he was doing was wrong, so far as his taking the life of another person was concerned; however, he felt that greater benefit might come to mankind if he continued to carry this out, but this was not as the consequence of a delusion or hallucination." (Emphasis...