People v. Laursen

• Decision Date: 20 October 1972
• Docket Number: Cr. 16246
• Citation: 8 Cal.3d 192,501 P.2d 1145,104 Cal.Rptr. 425
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: , 501 P.2d 1145 The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Raymond Ross LAURSEN, Defendant and Appellant. In Bank

Page 425

104 Cal.Rptr. 425

8 Cal.3d 192, 501 P.2d 1145

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Raymond Ross LAURSEN, Defendant and Appellant.

Cr. 16246.

Supreme Court of California,

In Bank.

Oct. 20, 1972.

Rehearing Denied Dec. 7, 1972.

Roger S. Hanson, Woodland Hills, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for defendant and appellant.

Evelle J. Younger, Atty. Gen., Herbert L. Ashby, Chief Asst. Atty. Gen., William E. James, Asst. Atty. Gen., Marjory Winston Parker, James D. Garbolino, Jack R. Winkler, Craig Stalker and Edward W Bergtholdt, Deputy Attys. Gen., for plaintiff and respondent.

WRIGHT, Chief Justice.

Defendant Raymond Ross Laursen appeals from a judgment entered on jury verdicts convicting him of armed robbery (Pen.Code, §§ 211, 211a) and kidnaping for the purpose of robbery (Pen.Code, § 209). ¹ The penalty for kidnaping was fixed at life imprisonment with possibility of parole. ² The principal issue presented is whether a kidnaping committed while in the act of escaping from the site of a robbery falls within the meaning of 'kidnaping for the purpose of robbery' as proscribed by section 209. For reasons which will appear we conclude that it does.

On the morning of October 14, 1964, shortly after 9 o'clock, defendant and Vincent Roosevelt Lowrie committed a robbery at a food market in Fresno. They drove to the scene of the robbery in a 1955 Mercury sedan which was registered to defendant's wife and which bore Alabama license plates. Defendant parked the vehicle on a side street where it could not be observed by persons from within the market. Upon entering the market, he drew a handgun and ordered the clerk at one of the check stands to empty into a paper grocery sack all the money in the cash registers. Lowrie, meanwhile, located the manager at the rear of the business establishment and forced him to the front where defendant was waiting. Following an unsuccessful attempt to compel the manager to open a safe, the robbers fled.

Defendant and Lowrie rushed out the front exit of the market, rounded the corner and hastily entered the Mercury parked a few feet away. Unable to start the motor, they promptly left the stalled car in search of substitute transportation. Defendant ran to a parking lot behind a furniture store across the side street while Lowrie searched elsewhere. A bystander, who saw the gun in defendant's hand and suspected that a robbery was in progress, flagged down a passing motorcycle patrolman, Maurice Regan, and the officer immediately started to pursue the fleeing suspects. By this time defendant and Lowrie had captured Donald Teeter in the furniture store parking lot. They entered Teeter's vehicle and ordered him at gunpoint to drive them to a place of safety. As the vehicle sped toward the exit of the parking lot, Regan approached on his motorcycle. Defendant, sitting in front on the passenger side of the commandeered automobile and leaning from the window, attempted to shoot at the patrolman. Before defendant could fire his weapon, Teeter grabbed defendant's arm, the car slammed to a halt and stalled and a struggle between Teeter and defendant ensued during the course of which Teeter was shot in the hand. Regan abandoned his motorcycle and took refuge behind a parked automobile. Teeter was thereafter subdued by his captors and forced to drive the vehicle from the lot. Regan fired five or six rounds from his service revolver into the escaping automobile but without effect.

After Teeter drove a distance of about one-and-a-half miles, he was ordered by defendant to stop. Taking the grocery sack containing the money with him defendant alighted from the vehicle, walked to a nearby service station and called a taxicab. Teeter then drove Lowrie to an orchard a few blocks away where the former was bound and the latter drove off in the car.

Immediately after the unsuccessful attempt by Regan to capture defendant and Lowrie other officers arrived at the site of the robbery. They were told by eyewitnesses that the suspects had first attempted to make their escape in the Mercury automobile. The officers searched the passenger compartment of the Mercury but were unable to open the trunk. While they were involved with the search and before procuring appropriate tools to force the trunk, they received radio information that Lowrie had been taken into custody. Without completing their search they hurried to the place where Lowrie had been apprehended, hoping that they might locate and arrest defendant as well. ³

By midafternoon the investigating officers discontinued their immediate efforts to locate defendant and resumed their search of the Mercury for additional clues. Without obtaining a search warrant, the officers went to the impound garage to which the car had been removed and opened the rear trunk. Inside they discovered papers and documents with the names Eddie Pierce, Edwin Cash Pierce and David Lee Rose, all aliases previously used by defendant. The information thus discovered not only led to defendant's arrest in Kansas and his return following extradition proceedings, but was also received in evidence at trial as tending to prove that defendant had been at the scene of the crime on the date it was committed.

We first address ourselves to defendant's principal contention that his conduct did not constitute a violation of section 209. ⁴ The argument proceeds on either one or both of two related theories: (1), that inasmuch as the Intent to kidnap Teeter was not formulated until after the commencement of the robbery, the kidnaping was merely an afterthought and, hence, not conduct proscribed by the provisions of section 209; and (2), that the Asportation of Teeter was unrelated to the robbery since it occurred after that crime had been completed. ⁵

As amended in 1951, section 209 makes punishable every person, inter alias, 'who kidnaps or carries away any individual to commit robbery. . . .' In People v. Daniels (1969) 71 Cal.2d 1119, 80 Cal.Rptr. 897, 459 P.2d 225, we held 'that the intent of the Legislature is amending Penal Code, section 209 in 1951 was to exclude from its reach not only 'standstill' robberies (citation omitted) but also those in which the movements of the victim are merely incidental to the commission of the robbery and do not substantially increase the risk of harm over and above that necessarily present in the crime of robbery itself.' (Id., at p. 1139, 80 Cal.Rptr. at p 910, 459 P.2d at p. 238.) Thus, the primary purpose of the statute is to impose harsher criminal sanctions to deter the carrying away of persons during the commission of a robbery in a manner which substantially increases the risk that someone will suffer grave bodily or psychic injury or even death.

In accordance with the foregoing purpose, we have enunciated the rule that a kidnaping in which a robbery occurs does not constitute kidnaping for the purpose of robbery unless the specific intention to rob is present at the time of the original asportation. (People v. Tribble (1971) 4 Cal.3d 826, 94 Cal.Rptr. 613, 484 P.2d 589.) In Tribble, it was reasoned that a defendant who kidnaped a woman at an airport, drove her to an isolated place nearby, raped her and subsequently robbed her, 'was entitled to have the jury determine whether he intended to commit robbery at the time the kidnaping commenced or whether the intent to commit robbery was an afterthought to a kidnaping that was sexually motivated.' (Id., at p. 832, 94 Cal.Rptr. at p. 617, 484 P.2d at p. 593.)

Contrary to defendant's contentions, we have never held that section 209 requires that the separately defined crimes of robbery and kidnaping be tied together by a coexistence of the elements of intent at the commencement of the criminal transaction; or, to state it in a different fashion, that kidnaping, as well as robbery, must be simultaneously premeditated as a part of a single course of criminal conduct. Such a conclusion does not follow from the reasoning of Tribble. Since a robbery committed as an afterthought to a kidnaping generally does not substantially increase the risk that someone will be injured or killed such conduct may not be proscribed by the provisions of section 209. On the other hand, the carrying away of the victim or some other individual during the commission of a robbery, even though motivated by events occurring after the commencement of a robbery still in progress, most certainly increases the risk that he will be injured or killed and is specifically the type of conduct made punishable by section 209. The soundness of such a conclusion, in the context of the instant circumstances, becomes painfully evident. Fortuitously snatched as a hostage, Teeter was, as might reasonably be expected, wounded in the gun battle which occurred during the robbery, notwithstanding the fact that the kidnaping clearly was not premeditated at the commencement of the robbery. In sum, we are of the view that where a kidnaping is in furtherance of a robbery during which the kidnaping occurs, a violation of section 209 is committed even though the intent to kidnap was formulated after the robbery commenced.

Turning now to the second theory which defendant urges in support of his contention that his conduct did not constitute a violation of section 209, we are confronted by his claim that the kidnaping and the robbery are separate, divisible crimes because the kidnaping was not committed until after the robbery, that is, the taking of the money, had been accomplished. Since an intent to kidnap for the purpose of robbery necessarily implies that the robbery is in progress when the intent to kidnap is formed, this argument must be considered.

This court has consistently recognized that '(r)obbery . . . is not confined to a fixed locus, but is frequently spread over considerable distance and varying periods of time.' (People v. Boss (1930) 210 Cal. 245, 251, 290 P. 881, 883; see also People v. Salas (1972...