People v. Landers
| Decision Date | 14 January 2019 |
| Docket Number | A145037 |
| Citation | 31 Cal.App.5th 288,242 Cal.Rptr.3d 501 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE, Plaintiff, v. Adrian LANDERS, Defendant; Manohar Raju, Objector and Appellant. |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
Jeff Adachi, Public Defender (San Francisco), Matt Gonzalez, Chief Attorney, and Christopher F. Gauger, Deputy Public Defender for Objector and Appellant.
Laura Arnold for California Public Defender's Association as Amicus Curiae on behalf of Objector and Appellant.
Brendon D. Woods, Public Defender (Alameda), and Brian Bloom, Assistant Public Defender as Amici Curiae on behalf of Objector and Appellant.
Elizabeth K. Barker, Supervising Attorney and Garrick Byers, Special Assignment Attorney for Alternate Defender Office of Contra Costa County as Amici Curiae on behalf of Objector and Appellant.
George Gascón, District Attorney (San Francisco), Louise Ogden, Assistant District Attorney, and Joseph Frislid, Assistant District Attorney for Plaintiff.
The trial court imposed a $950 sanction on Deputy Public Defender Manohar Raju, counsel for defendant Adrian Landers in a two-defendant joint criminal trial, for violating a reciprocal discovery order. The court found that Raju failed to disclose to the People the name and statements taken from Talika Fletcher, a witness called by Landers's co-defendant, Dylan Lemalie.
Raju contends the sanction order was improper because he never intended to call Fletcher at trial, and in fact did not call her. Rather, he contends, he relied on a state-of-the evidence defense for Landers, putting on no affirmative defense case and eliciting what he needed through cross-examination of various witnesses, one of whom was Fletcher. We conclude Raju did not violate the reciprocal discovery order, and accordingly, shall reverse the sanctions order.
A formal sanctions order of any kind necessarily tarnishes an attorney's reputation, the most precious professional asset any member of the bar possesses. ( Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp. (1990) 496 U.S. 384, 413, 110 S.Ct. 2447, 110 L.Ed.2d 359 (conc. & dis. opn. of Stevens, J.) ( Cooter & Gell ).) Just as it is the duty of the court imposing sanctions to do so only when truly warranted, it is our duty on appeal to review the facts of such a case with great care to determine whether the sanctions were properly imposed. We thus recite the facts of this case in some detail.
Raju represented Landers on charges he carried an illegal firearm and was an aider and abettor in the September 16, 2012 shotgun slaying of Jesus Solis by Lemalie. Both Lemalie and Landers were charged with murder under Penal Code section 187, subdivision (a).1 The murder charge against Landers was discharged at the preliminary hearing due to insufficient evidence, but was later re-filed by amended information in early February 2014. A section 995 motion seeking to strike the amendment was heard and denied, and a few weeks later, on March 4, 2014, the case was assigned to Judge Anne Bouliane for trial.
Relying heavily on a collection of video surveillance clips taken on the afternoon of the shooting, the People argued at trial that Solis, his girlfriend Sara Herrera, and his friend Hugo Fuentes, encountered Lemalie and Landers on Kamille Court, near the Bernal Dwellings public housing complex. According to the People, both Landers and Lemalie were armed, Landers with a handgun and Lemalie with a shotgun. At first there was an exchange of threats at a distance between Fuentes and Landers, and then, in a "coordinated attack," Landers chased Solis towards the corner of 26th and Treat, where a waiting Lemalie shot him to death.
Lemalie argued self-defense. He contended that Solis and Fuentes, known to him as members of the Norteño street gang, arrived in the Bernal Dwellings neighborhood looking to stir up trouble; that they had threatened to "blow up" the neighborhood a few weeks before the shooting; that, watching Fuentes from a distance, Lemalie saw Fuentes put his hands in his waistband, appearing to grab a weapon, while yelling racially-charged taunts and beckoning nearby compatriots to back him up; that Lemalie was fearful, so he went in his house and grabbed a shotgun; that when he came out, Solis charged toward him at the corner of 26th and Treat, yelling threats and holding a metal object (Lemalie thought it was a gun, but it turned out to be a knife); and finally that, to save himself, Lemalie fired two shotgun blasts at Solis, killing him.
Landers argued a variation on this defense, putting the exact locations of the events near Bernal Dwellings the afternoon of the shooting into sharp focus. He contended that the Norteños came into the neighborhood armed, and started trouble separately, in different places; that he was not present at the corner of 26th and Treat when Solis was shot; that he did not see or talk to Lemalie before the street confrontation with Solis and had no idea it even happened; that, when the shooting occurred, he was in a different location, involved in a confrontation with a gun-wielding Fuentes; that in the video clip of him running, he was fleeing from Fuentes, headed in a direction away from Solis; and that only after hearing shots fired did he go to 26th and Treat, where Lemalie handed him a shotgun, which he held for only few seconds before tossing it under a parked car.
At the conclusion of trial, the jury returned a verdict convicting Landers of illegal possession of a firearm,2 but failed to reach any verdict on the remaining counts. The case subsequently resolved through a plea to accessory after the fact by Landers and a plea of manslaughter by Lemalie.
In early January 2014, Raju's investigator, Timothy Kingston, met with Fletcher and her mother Joyce Allen to talk about what they had seen on the day of the shooting. Both women indicated that they had been nearby but did not witness what happened. They went outside and saw some of the aftermath. Both stated that they had seen a Latino waving a gun around after the shooting. They also offered background information about people involved, "some relevant and some not."
On February 26, 2014, Kingston went back to interview Fletcher and Allen, this time accompanied by Raju. Fletcher and Allen reviewed the videotape of the shooting and identified themselves in it, as well as other individuals. Among those individuals was a person named "Wes" or "Wesley" who lived a few doors down from Fletcher. Also shown on the videotape, according to Fletcher, was Wesley's brother, and a person known as Quis, to whom Landers tossed some keys. Kingston was of the opinion that neither Fletcher nor Joyce Allen would be particularly a good witness because each had a difficult time staying on topic. He described his interview with them as "long[,] winding[,] and convoluted."
Sometime "prior to March 2014," according to a declaration filed by Mark Goldrosen, Lemalie's attorney, Raju told Goldrosen that Fletcher had seen Fuentes brandishing a firearm shortly after the shooting. Goldrosen decided Fletcher was an important witness because her testimony corroborated the defense theory that Fuentes and Solis were both armed and posed threats to Lemalie before he shot Solis in self-defense. Although Goldrosen had not yet personally interviewed Fletcher, based on Raju's representations he included her on his witness list, which was filed March 10.
In "early March," according to Goldrosen, he arranged for his investigator to subpoena Fletcher and to confirm that she had seen Fuentes with a gun. When Goldrosen's investigator was unable to locate Fletcher, Raju arranged for one of his "neighborhood connections" to facilitate an interview. On March 13, 2014, Raju was present when Goldrosen's investigator met with Fletcher. At this meeting, Fletcher confirmed she had seen Fuentes with a gun. After receiving a verbal report from his investigator the same day, Goldrosen e-mailed prosecutor Heather Trevisan a summary of Fletcher's interview, along with her home address. On March 27, Goldrosen personally met with Fletcher and confirmed what she had seen on the date that Solis was shot. And on March 29, Goldrosen e-mailed these statements to Trevisan.
Because Trevisan had received virtually no discovery from Raju by March 2014 even though the case was filed in September 2012, she was suspicious. To that point, the only discovery she had received from Raju were disclosures of a potential expert witness and a witness who might testify that he picked up Landers on the day of the murder for a 49ers football game. Concerned that "this specific attorney regularly failed to disclose evidence admitted at trial," Trevisan included in her trial brief a written motion in limine for compelled defense disclosures under section 1054.3.
On March 13, 2014, a week before trial, Judge Bouliane orally granted Trevisan's discovery motion, compelling each defendant to disclose the following: "(1) The names and addresses of all persons defendant intends to call during trial ... [¶] (2) Witness statements or reports of statements, no matter how recorded or by whom recorded of all witnesses the defense intends to call at trial ... [¶] (3) Expert reports including the results of physical or mental exams ... [¶] (4) Unrecorded statements of witnesses." The fourth prong of the order, as framed in the motion, and as granted, was a catchall, without anything limiting it to witnesses the disclosing defendant intended to call.3
Upon issuing this reciprocal discovery order, Judge Bouliane emphasized that counsel should produce all witness statements of which they were aware, whether written or not, and prefaced the announcement of her ruling with the cautionary statement, ...
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