People v. Lee

• Docket Number: F086828
• Decision Date: 22 April 2024
• Parties: THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. WILLIAM BLOWHEART LEE, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

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THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent,
v.
WILLIAM BLOWHEART LEE, Defendant and Appellant.

F086828

California Court of Appeals, Fifth District

April 22, 2024

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED

APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Kern County. No. BF181306A David R. Zulfa, Judge.

Candace Hale, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.

Office of the State Attorney General, Sacramento, California, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

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OPINION

THE COURT ^[*]

APPEALABILITY

This is an appeal from a final judgment imposed following a resentencing hearing. (Pen. Code,^[1] § 1237, subd. (b); see Teal v. Superior Court (2014) 60 Cal.4th 595, 601.)

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

We recite the facts of the underlying offenses for which Lee was convicted verbatim from our prior opinion. (People v. Lee (May 5, 2023, F083261) [nonpub. opn.], rev. denied July 19, 2023, S280491.) All but one of our previously footnoted peripheral facts have been omitted where indicated; all date references were to 2020.

"At about 9:40 p.m. on the night of June 3 [year and fn. omitted], Lee was standing outside a Bakersfield marijuana dispensary when he claimed he heard someone call out something like, 'Hey.' He was not certain, but he suspected it had been Jerry Lee Tibbs, Jr. (Tibbs), a security guard at the shop and someone with whom Lee was familiar. Lee took out the handgun he was carrying and fired five times through the glass doorway of the dispensary where Tibbs was sitting, killing him. As a twice-convicted felon, Lee was prohibited from having a gun or ammunition.

"Those were the charged crimes, but it is their back story that is the focus of our discussion.

"When these events occurred, Lee was a 33-year-old former gang member who had turned informant and prosecution witness. About six years before the current incident, in a case involving Lee's old gang (the Country Boy Crips) and their primary gang rival (the East Side Crips), Lee had testified against members of his own gang. Obviously, such a 'snitch' forever thereafter runs a serious risk of threats, assaults, and even being killed. Police relocated Lee to Visalia for his protection, but he quickly violated the terms of the witness protection agreement, the police stopped supporting him, and he returned to Bakersfield. Lee said that despite being labeled a 'rat' in the

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intervening years he 'was able to move around a little bit just between the cracks.'

"Because of various unrelated domestic difficulties, Lee was basically homeless and was living in a car parked in his sister's carport a block away from the marijuana shop. The dispensary was an East Side Crips hangout ostensibly owned by McKinley Womack, an East Side Crip. A police detective opined that Tibbs was also an East Side Crip affiliate.

"On May 19, two weeks before the killing, Lee was drinking beer in the alley behind the dispensary when Tibbs came outside and told him to leave. Lee thought he 'wasn't causing any problems,' so he refused. Tibbs went inside but soon came back out and again told Lee to leave. Lee said he did not have to leave, and that Tibbs could not tell him where to go or what he had to do. Lee said Tibbs took a few swings at him but missed. He claimed Tibbs then asked him if he wanted some 'weed' or money, but Lee replied that he did not need anything. Meanwhile, Womack had come up from behind, knocked Lee down with a punch to the jaw, and then followed by brandishing a derringer. [Fn. Omitted.]

"Lee gave two inconsistent accounts of what happened next. When originally interviewed by police, Lee said that he felt like 'standin' up for [him]self,' so he started 'talkin' mess' and 'talkin' smack, talkin', talkin', talkin' smack.' 'And it escalated. So I started talkin' smack, talkin' smack, talkin' smack.' About '6-10' other men then came out of the shop and beat him up: 'They just jumped me because I started talkin' smack.' Notably, Lee admitted nothing gang-related was ever said or implied; he believed they were just trying to get him to leave the area.

"At trial, however, Lee said that after being knocked down by Womack, he went home and noticed his cell phone was missing. He came back to the dispensary to see if they had his phone, but when he went up to the front door to ask, someone pepper-sprayed him in the face, 'six to seven' people came out of the shop, backed him down the

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alley, like a 'deer with six hyenas backing it into a corner,' and then beat him up. However, none of them was armed.

"Lee made a cell-phone video of himself afterwards, showing and describing his injuries from the beating. They were minor, however, and he did not seek medical attention. In this video, he said, 'I have no choice ... but what they did to me is not acceptable. So, I have to defend myself because now, I'm in fear that they gonna come back and do something more to me knowing that I'm on the streets. ... To be continued.'

"After the May 19 event, Lee said he had no more 'personal interactions' with Tibbs until he killed him on June 3. He admitted he had never again been 'confronted by [Tibbs] either verbally or physically.'

"On May 20, Lee went to the liquor store located next door to the dispensary. [Fn. omitted.] A group of six or seven 'gentlemen' came 'straight into the store,' '[a]ggressively telling' Lee that he had to leave, that he was not supposed to be there, and that it was not his neighborhood. Tibbs was not in this group either.

"Someone in the group used a phone to record the incident, a recording that eventually went up on Facebook. It showed Lee 'standing inside a liquor store with a startled look on his face with his hands up while you could hear several other people . . . making ... derogatory comments towards [him].' Lee told them that he did not have to leave, but later said he was afraid - so afraid in fact that he urinated on himself.

"Later, when Lee saw the video on Facebook, he realized there were gang undertones to the situation as he read the comments. There was 'a back and forth between people affiliated with the East Side Crips, as well as the Country Boy Crips….' There also were derogatory comments about Lee 'urinating on himself' and some threats; one even identified Lee as an 'ex-gang member' and a 'rat.'

"Although many of the comments merely mocked or made fun of Lee, some threatened him with future assaults, such as one promising to assault Lee and make him 'shit' himself the next time. None was a death threat, however; they were only threats to

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'beat his ass.' All told, the post had about 147 comments and was shared 39 times. As Lee read the comments, he said 'the mental anguish just built up and built up, especially after all those years of the strife that I had to go through[.]'

"Both to police and later in his trial testimony, Lee made a variety of sometimes inconsistent statements regarding his fears, plans, motivations, and his mental distress after the Facebook post had circulated.

"Because of being assaulted in the alley and intimidated in the liquor store, Lee said he was in fear of the East Side Crips and felt his life was in danger. He told police it was these fears that triggered his reaction to hearing 'Hey' just before he opened fire on June 3. He explained that when he first saw Tibbs standing near the door to the dispensary and then turn and go back inside that: '[W]hen [Tibbs] went in [the dispensary] he was like, "Hey." And I thought they was gonna come out and they was gonna try and get me.' He was 'thinkin' [Tibbs was] callin' the same guy who had a [derringer] was gonna come out.' 'I don't know who [Tibbs] was speaking to in the store. But ... I'm thinkin' that they gonna come back out and do what they did to me again.' As he subsequently put it, the 'Hey' was '[t]he reason why I got ready.' Of course, he did more than merely 'get ready' and, in actuality, no one ever came out.

"Lee also gave different stories to explain why, despite his claims of mortal fear, he had armed himself with a gun - stolen from another of his sisters sometime between May 21 and May 23 - and went back to the dispensary on the night of June 3. To the jury, he said that he just 'got up and ... went for a walk' after 'sitting there dwelling on all the things that had been going on in [his] life.'

"More revealing, during his interviews with police detectives he related two additional, and quite different, stories. Lee initially insisted he went back because his sister kept asking him to go to the liquor store for her, despite his having earlier been confronted and threatened inside the store, and even against the advice of his estranged wife. However, surveillance video taken from inside the liquor store at 7:26 p.m. that

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evening - more than two hours before the 9:40 p.m. shooting - showed Lee making a purchase, and wearing the same clothing he was wearing when he later returned and shot Tibbs. [Fn. omitted.]

"Lee eventually admitted he really went back to the area for more proactive reasons: 'The things that I did, the way I went about it, was wrong. Because ... it was more like I became the aggressor afterwards because of my mental anguish.... I became the aggressor after the fact because I was in fear of my life. So, I had to do what I had to do in order to be sure, you know, that this guy wasn't going to come and kill me. And the next guy wasn't going to come and kill me. And the next guy wasn't going to come and kill me.'

"One interviewing detective said to Lee: '[T]hat's what we're getting at. When. you walked to the [dispensary] that night, and you saw [Tibbs] at the door and you started shooting him, he wasn't assaulting you.' Lee admitted: 'He didn't assault me . [h]e didn't pull a gun on me or anything like that.. You're right. I became the aggressor at that point. I became the aggressor out of fear and wanting to make sure th[ese]...