People v. Lucero

• Decision Date: 13 July 2000
• Docket Number: No. S012568.,S012568.
• Citation: 23 Cal.4th 692,3 P.3d 248,97 Cal.Rptr.2d 871
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Philip Louis LUCERO, Defendant and Appellant.

97 Cal.Rptr.2d 871

23 Cal.4th 692

3 P.3d 248

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Philip Louis LUCERO, Defendant and Appellant.

No. S012568.

Supreme Court of California.

July 13, 2000.

As Modified on Denial of Rehearing August 30, 2000.¹

Certiorari Denied February 26, 2001.

Peter Dodd, under appointment by the Supreme Court, Hornbrook, for Defendant and Appellant.

Daniel E. Lungren and Bill Lockyer, Attorneys General, George Williamson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Gary W. Schons, Assistant Attorney General, William M. Wood, Esteban Hernandez and Vincent L. Rabago, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

Certiorari Denied February 26, 2001. See 121 S.Ct. 1190.

KENNARD, J.

This is the second time this case is before us. In 1981, defendant Philip Louis Lucero was sentenced to death after a jury found him guilty of two counts of murder (Pen.Code, § 187² and one count of arson (§ 451, subd. (c)), and found true an alleged multiple-murder special circumstance. In 1988, we affirmed the judgment of guilt, including the special circumstance finding, but we reversed the judgment of death, holding that the trial court had improperly excluded certain mitigating evidence at the penalty phase of trial. (People v. Lucero (1988) 44 Cal.3d 1006, 245 Cal.Rptr. 185, 750 P.2d 1342.) At retrial, the jury again imposed the death penalty. This appeal, like the earlier one, is automatic. (§ 1239.) We affirm the judgment of death.

I. FACTS

A. Prosecution's Evidence

The prosecution's case-in-chief at the penalty retrial consisted solely of evidence of the two murders of which defendant was convicted.

The murder victims, seven-year-old Linda Christine Hubbard (Chrissy) and 10-year-old Teddy Engilman (Teddy), lived in Yucaipa, a town in San Bernardino County. On April 12, 1980, Chrissy asked her father if she could go with Teddy to a nearby park. He agreed, and the two girls left around 4:00 p.m. Lisa Willis, an acquaintance of Teddy's older sister, saw the two girls at the park.

Defendant lived in a house across the street from the park. Teddy's brother had shown Chrissy a shortcut to the park that passed alongside defendant's house. Between 4:30 and 4:45 p.m., Ruth Schultz, who lived next door to defendant, heard the goose in defendant's yard cackle. From her window, she saw Teddy and Chrissy outside defendant's backyard, and she saw defendant walking toward them. He told the girls the goose would not hurt them and they could come into the yard.

At 5:00 p.m., the Hubbards discovered that Teddy and Chrissy were not in the park and had not returned home. They called the sheriffs office, and a search for the girls began. At 6:45 p.m., Delores Gwaltney, who lived across the street from defendant, saw him drive away from his house. Defendant returned five or 10 minutes later but soon left again. Shortly thereafter, Gwaltney saw that defendant's house was on fire. She telephoned defendant at his father's home and told him about the fire. Defendant seemed unconcerned. San Bernardino Sheriffs Deputy Charles Long, who had been looking for Chrissy and Teddy, also saw the fire and rescued defendant's dog from defendant's enclosed front porch.

Dennis Draeger, Chief of the Calimesa Volunteer Fire Department, together with Captain Charles Bryant and Firefighter Steven Beightler, both of the California Department of Forestry, were among those who arrived to put out the fire in the house, they saw a large bloodstain on the living room carpet. Defendant soon arrived. Captain Bryant asked him about the origin of the bloodstain, but defendant had no explanation. Defendant then left to examine his dog, and when he returned he told Bryant the dog had a cut on its leg that could have caused the stain. Firefighter Beightler had seen the dog and it appeared uninjured. In defendant's conversations with Captain Bryant and Chief Draeger, he seemed unconcerned about the fire but wanted to know how long the firefighters intended to stay in his house.

About 9:00 o'clock that evening, Donald Burton was rummaging through a dumpster behind a nearby market when he saw an object that he thought was a mannequin. When he touched the object's leg, it was warm and felt like a child's leg. He called the San Bernardino County Sheriffs Office. Sheriffs deputies summoned to the scene found the bodies of Chrissy and Teddy in the dumpster, wrapped in plastic garbage bags. They were fully dressed, but Teddy's shoes were missing. Defendant was arrested later that night. Deputy Sheriff Dennis O'Rourke saw what appeared to be bloodstains on defendant's T-shirt and pants leg, and the sock on his left foot was saturated with blood.

Deputy Sheriffs Ronald Durling and James Stalnaker examined defendant's car. They found bloodstains on the driver's side door, the armrest, the dashboard, the steering wheel, and the gearshift lever. There was a pool of blood on an inner tube stored in the trunk of the car. Homicide Detective Larry Malmberg, Deputy Carl Swanlund, and criminalist Phillip Kellet searched defendant's house. In the living room, they found Teddy's shoes (partly covered by a comforter), a bloodstained sheet, an electrical cord, several large soft drink bottles, and pieces of another bottle. Other fragments of the broken bottle were in the garbage bag in which Teddy was found. A price of rope was in the doorway, and in the kitchen were garbage bags similar to the ones used to wrap Chrissy and Teddy.

A pathologist, Dr. Harry Scott, conducted an autopsy of the two girls. He found a large bruised area on Teddy's right eye and cheek, a laceration of her right earlobe, and a penetrating wound through her right lip that had knocked out three of her teeth. Her skull was fractured in several places as a result of being hit several times with a blunt object, which could have been a soft drink bottle. Dr. Scott determined that the blows to Teddy's head had knocked her unconscious, and that while unconscious she had aspirated blood from the wound to her face which caused her death. Chrissy had abrasions on her wrists that could have been caused by being tied up and abrasions on the left side of her neck. She had been strangled to death. Based on the marks on Chrissy's neck, Dr. Scott testified she could have been strangled with a necklace she was wearing.

Serologist Daniel Gregonis testified that the blood found on defendant's sock, on the carpet and sheet in his house, and on the inner tube in the trunk of his car was human blood, none of which could have come from defendant. He concluded that the blood was consistent with Teddy's ABO blood type and her serum protein and enzyme types, a profile that appears in 5.4 percent of the population.

Deputy Sheriff Charles Wideen, an arson expert, investigated the fire in defendant's house. He concluded that the fire had started in one of the bedrooms, and that it had been deliberately set by a person pouring a flammable liquid, like gasoline, on and beneath the bed, and lighting it. In a storage shed on defendant's property, Deputy Wideen found a partially full gasoline can. Deputy Wideen concluded, based on indentations in the dust on the carpet where he round the can, that it had been recently moved.

B. The Defense Case

Defendant presented expert testimony that the bodies of Chrissy and Teddy showed no signs of sexual assault.

Relatives and family members testified about defendant's childhood. Defendant spent his earliest years in a poor section of Denver, Colorado. His father was an alcoholic who had little time for his children. At the age of five, defendant and his mother moved to Texas, but the next year defendant's father came and took him back to Denver. Except for one brief visit, defendant never saw his mother again until after his arrest in this case, when he was 33 years old.

Back in Denver, defendant was raised by his great-aunt, an elderly woman who lived in Goat Hill, a shantytown on the outskirts of Denver. They lived in a shack without electricity, running water, or indoor plumbing. Defendant essentially raised himself. He had little communication with his great-aunt, because she spoke only Spanish and he spoke only English. He became a loner.

When defendant was 11, he and his father moved to California. At the age of 17, lying about his age, he enlisted in the Army, where he remained for the next seven years.

Defendant served three tours of duty in Vietnam. Although the defense offered no witnesses who remembered defendant while he was there, several men who had served in the same units as defendant testified that the units came under sniper and mortar fire in their encampments and that they suffered casualties when their supply convoys were attacked and when they went on "search and destroy" missions. Defendant was wounded and awarded a Purple Heart. He also received a Combat Infantry cadge for having been under enemy fire. On cross-examination, the prosecutor elicited testimony that defendant had been court-martialed for falling asleep on guard duty, that he had been disciplined for having a Vietnamese woman in his quarters and for being in villages that were off-limits, and that he had misappropriated a truck.

After his release from the Army, defendant moved to Lake Tahoe. He married his stepsister Sharla, and they moved to Vista, a city in San Diego County. They had a son, and defendant got a job as a machinist. Defendant was a hard worker but he remained a loner. Five years later, the family moved to Yucaipa, in San Bernardino County, where defendant got a job with an engineering company. He was fired about a year before the murders in this case because he was unable to adapt to the company's specialized equipment.

Dr. Tom Williams, a psychologist, testified that defendant suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), caused by his war experiences in Vietnam. Dr. Williams based this conclusion on defendant's description of these experiences, which included three...