People v. Manriquez

• Citation: 37 Cal.4th 547,36 Cal.Rptr.3d 340,123 P.3d 614
• Decision Date: 05 December 2005
• Docket Number: No. S038073.,S038073.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court (California)
• Parties: The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Abelino MANRIQUEZ, Defendant and Appellant.

36 Cal.Rptr.3d 340

37 Cal.4th 547

123 P.3d 614

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Abelino MANRIQUEZ, Defendant and Appellant.

No. S038073.

Supreme Court of California

December 5, 2005.

Lynne S. Coffin and Michael J. Hersek, State Public Defenders, under appointment by the Supreme Court, and William Hassler, Deputy State Public Defender, for Defendant and Appellant.

Bill Lockyer, Attorney General, Robert R. Anderson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Pamela C. Hamanaka, Assistant Attorney General, John R. Gorey and Sharlene A. Honnaka, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

GEORGE, C.J.

Following the guilt phase of the trial, a Los Angeles County jury found defendant Abelino Manriquez guilty of the murders of Miguel Garcia, George Martinez, Efrem Baldia, and Jose Gutierrez, each murder having been committed on a separate date. (Pen.Code, § 187, subd. (a).)¹ As to each of the crimes, the jury found that defendant personally used a handgun. (§§ 1203.06, subd. (a)(1), 1192.7, subd. (c)(8).) The jury found true the special circumstance of multiple murder. (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(3).)

At the conclusion of the penalty phase, the jury returned a verdict of death. This appeal is automatic. (Cal. Const., art. VI, § 11; § 1239, subd. (b).)

We affirm the judgment in its entirety.

I. GUILT PHASE EVIDENCE

A. The Prosecution's Case

1. Overview

On January 22, 1989, at approximately 4:40 a.m., defendant was a patron at the Las Playas restaurant, located in Paramount. An argument ensued between defendant and Miguel Garcia, ending when defendant shot Garcia several times, after which defendant departed from the premises.

On February 22, 1989, at approximately 10:00 p.m., defendant was a patron at Fort Knots, a topless dance bar, located in South Gate. While Daneen Baker, one of the dancers, performed on stage with her back to the audience, she felt a customer touch her thighs. Such conduct was prohibited, and believing that defendant had touched her, she asked the doorman, George Martinez, to evict him. Martinez did so, after which defendant attempted to reenter the bar on several occasions that evening, finally returning with a firearm and fatally shooting Martinez at point-blank range.

On November 29, 1989, at approximately 2:00 p.m., defendant and his girlfriend, Sylvia Tinoco, were drinking beer and ingesting cocaine at the Rita Motel, located in Compton. Efrem Baldia (occasionally referred to by witnesses by his nickname, "Arnulfo") drove to the motel and defendant, knowing that Baldia had been romantically linked to Tinoco, left the motel room looking angry, confronted Baldia (who was unarmed) in the motel parking lot, and fatally shot him.

On January 21, 1990, shortly after midnight, defendant was drinking beer at the Mazatlan Bar, located in Compton. Defendant approached the bar to order another beer and encountered Jose Gutierrez who, according to one witness, had been sitting at the bar, asleep, with his head resting on his arm. Defendant grabbed Gutierrez by the neck and shot him repeatedly.

Approximately one month later, on February 22, 1990, law enforcement officers arrested defendant at the Charter Suburban Hospital, located in Paramount, where he was being treated for a fresh gunshot wound in the shoulder.

2. The Murder of Miguel Garcia, January 22, 1989

John Guardado testified that after leaving a nightclub after 2:00 a.m. on January 22, 1989, he "ran into a couple of friends [Miguel Garcia, whom Guardado knew only as `Kaliman,' and John Dorame] on the street where we hang out at." Garcia and Dorame asked Guardado whether he wanted to go to the Las Playas restaurant, and Guardado joined his friends in walking there. Having already consumed beer and a "lot of mixed drinks" at the nightclub, Guardado described his own condition at the restaurant as "exhausted" and "dazed out, drunk." At approximately 4:40 a.m., Guardado observed a "medium-buil[t]" man wearing a gray "Spanish style" suit walk by him, pull a gun from his waistband, and cock it. He then heard six or seven shots. Guardado did not see the man's face, nor did he see him actually fire the gun. After the shots were fired, Guardado saw the assailant run out of the restaurant. Guardado ran toward the door, turned around, returned to the victim, felt him, and then departed. He explained: "He was dead. I closed his eyes, and I left. Because I was on probation."

Guardado believed the weapon had been a "chrome gun," and when shown People's exhibit No. 7, a darker firearm recovered from defendant that the prosecution theorized had been the murder weapon, Guardado testified that he did not recognize it. Guardado denied recognizing the shooter in a pretrial photo lineup, nor could he identify the shooter at trial.

Angelica Contreras, a waitress at the Las Playas restaurant, testified that in the early morning of January 22, 1989, the victim and a few other individuals came into the restaurant. The victim told her to serve his friends and said he would pay for everything.² After Contreras served the men, she returned to their table a few minutes later to find the victim arguing with another patron, a man she knew only as "El Gatito." Contreras told the men to stop arguing and to pay her. The victim did so. Contreras thereafter went to a storage room and then heard some gunshots; when she emerged immediately thereafter, she saw the victim lying on the floor. She observed persons running toward the door, including one man (whom she recognized from his previous visits to the restaurant) holding a black gun in front of his chest with his arms almost completely extended.

Contreras acknowledged not telling the police everything when they initially interviewed her, because the restaurant manager told her, "If I did not want to have any problems not to say anything." Contreras subsequently identified defendant in a pretrial photographic lineup as the person she saw holding the gun, and at the preliminary hearing she again so identified defendant. Contreras also testified that People's exhibit No. 7, a .380-caliber Llama semiautomatic pistol, resembled the gun she had observed in defendant's possession.

Laura Lozano, a waitress at the Las Playas restaurant, testified she was in the kitchen when the shooting occurred. She directed the restaurant manager, a man whom she knew only as "Santos," "to take a look and see what had happened," but Santos "said that he wouldn't go." Lozano looked toward the cashier and saw several persons leaving the restaurant, including one man who carried a gun; however, she did not observe the person's face. She acknowledged untruthfully telling police investigators ("out of fear") that she had not witnessed the foregoing events, and for a similar reason misled the investigators when they showed her a photographic lineup, informing them that she did not recognize anyone when in fact she had recognized one of the individuals depicted — defendant — as someone she saw at the restaurant shortly before the shooting, exchanging words with the victim and telling him to "leave me alone, I have nothing to do with you."

Ronald Riordan, a detective employed by the Los Angles County Sheriff's Department, testified that he arrived at the Las Playas restaurant at approximately 6:30 a.m. on January 22. Riordan recalled that the victim's body bore separate gunshot wounds to the right eye, right chin area, right neck area, upper left chest, right lower back, and left groin area. Riordan also testified that he attended the autopsy of the victim, that all of the victim's wounds were consistent with having been inflicted by a .380-caliber firearm, and that there was no evidence indicating a different weapon had been used. Riordan recalled interviewing witness John Guardado on the day of the murder; contrary to Guardado's testimony at trial (in which he recalled seeing a "chrome gun"), during the interview Guardado described the murder weapon as "a blue steel automatic pistol."

Dr. Christopher Rogers, a Los Angeles County Deputy Medical Examiner, testified regarding the autopsy performed on Miguel Garcia. Rogers explained that the cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds. The victim's blood was determined to have "contained alcohol, cocaine, and a substance related to cocaine."

Donald Messer, a Long Beach police officer, testified that on March 2, 1989, he responded to a "shots fired" call at the La Ruleta bar, located in Long Beach. Shortly after he and other officers arrived at the bar, Messer observed one of his colleagues pull a handgun from defendant's waistband, which precipitated a struggle between the officers and defendant. The officers eventually handcuffed defendant and placed him under arrest. At trial, Messer identified People's exhibit No. 7 as the firearm confiscated from defendant, and testified that the weapon was loaded at the time.

Officer Messer added that, during the booking process, officers discovered in defendant's jacket pocket a "dollar bill folded up into a bindle that we booked ... as appearing to contain cocaine." A similar bindle made from a folded dollar bill was recovered from the Las Playas crime scene; criminalists employed by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department examined both bindles and confirmed that each one contained cocaine residue, a fact to which the parties stipulated at trial.

Dwight Van Horn, a deputy sheriff and firearms examiner employed by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, testified that, based on the ballistics testing he conducted in April 1989, the bullets recovered from the victim's body during the coroner's investigation and the shells recovered from the crime scene were fired from the Llama .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol seized from defendant at the La Ruleta bar.

John Laurie, a Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff, testified regarding an interview with defendant (conducted with the assistance of a Spanish-speaking detective, Deputy Joe...