People v. Myles, A114601 (Cal. App. 4/30/2007)

• Decision Date: 30 April 2007
• Docket Number: A114601
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. ELNORA MYLES, Defendant and Appellant.

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THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. ELNORA MYLES, Defendant and Appellant.

A114601

Court of Appeals of California, First Appellate District, Division One

April 30, 2007

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED

Appeal from the Alameda County Super. Ct. No. 150006.

MARGULIES, J.

Defendant pleaded no contest to a charge of second degree murder. On the morning of defendant's sentencing, the trial court received a handwritten letter from defendant seeking to withdraw her plea. In the letter, defendant claimed that a witness to the killing had admitted to an investigator that she had lied in prior accounts. The letter did not identify the investigator or the witness, nor did it describe the nature of the claimed admission. The trial court denied the request to withdraw defendant's plea after concluding that her decision to plead was undertaken freely and voluntarily.

Defendant claims that the trial court abused its discretion in denying her request to withdraw her plea and that her attorney provided ineffective assistance by not speaking in support of her request. We affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

Defendant was charged in an information, filed May 27, 2005, with murder (Pen. Code, § 187, subd. (a)), identity theft (Pen. Code, § 530.5, subd. (a)), forgery (Pen. Code, § 470, subd. (d)), and four counts of making false financial statements. (Pen. Code, § 532a, subd. (1).) The information further alleged that defendant personally inflicted great bodily injury. (Pen. Code, § 1203.075.)

According to the probation report, defendant reported the victim missing in February 2004. At the time, defendant was living in the victim's home. In April, police executed a search warrant in the home. They found the victim's body wrapped in cellophane and entombed beneath a basement workbench, hidden behind installed particleboard. An autopsy revealed signs of blunt trauma to his head. Police also found evidence that defendant had used the victim's identification to open a number of credit accounts in his name, with defendant an authorized user. Purchases on the accounts totaled over $13,000.

Defendant pleaded no contest to a charge of second degree murder, and the remaining charges were dismissed. On the morning of defendant's sentencing, June 29, 2006, the trial court was given a handwritten letter from defendant in which she asked to withdraw her plea. The letter read in full, "Within the last few months I have been able to get new information regarding my case. This information is enough to prove I did not kill [the victim]. I would like to withdraw my no contest plea. I am also financially able to hire my own [attorney] to handle my case, now that I have evidence to prove it. I feel that because I did not have the money for an investigator or [attorney] I had no chance at all. [The victim's] death was a[n] accident that I did not handle properly but I did not kill him. One of the people that was there that night can prove this but both lied. For two months now a[n] investigator has befriended her. She admitted to the [sic] it on tape. Please give me a chance to go to trial."¹

Given an opportunity by the trial court at the sentencing hearing to explain her request, defendant added nothing to the generalities in her letter, concluding, "I found new things in the case that hadn't been brought up." The trial court denied the motion without further discussion, explaining, "I have here the transcript of the plea that I took from you . . . . If you recall, we had a lengthy discussion concerning the fact that you wanted more time to talk to your daughter and to think about the case, and I said no, we were in the trial court, we were in the posture of actually going to trial. I reminded you that witnesses were subpoenaed and now is the time to put closure on the matter. [¶] I have the transcript before me and I have reviewed it very carefully. I explained to you the rights that you had; you waived those rights. You indicated to me that you were doing this freely and voluntarily. At one point [counsel] pointed out to me that this was your decision to enter the plea, that it was not pressured by counsel. [¶] I see nothing here that would indicate that this plea was in any way coerced, forced. I certainly did not think you were under the influence of anything when we discussed this, so I see no reason to change my determination that you entered this plea voluntarily and knowing the consequences there have [sic]. [¶] I cannot see any reason to allow you to withdraw this plea just because at this point you changed your mind. [¶] Your motion to withdraw the plea is denied."

The transcript from the plea hearing, conducted two months before in April 2006, confirms the trial court's account. Defendant expressed no ambivalence in entering the plea and appeared fully to understand its consequences. Her only concern was that she would be allowed to have a visit from her young daughter before being sent to prison. During the plea proceedings, defense counsel asked defendant, "[M]y understanding is this is a decision initiated by [defendant], and I've always told her I was perfectly prepared to try this case, so do you have any doubts about what you're doing at this point?" Defendant responded, "No."

Defendant received a prison sentence of 15 years to life.

II. DISCUSSION

Defendant contends that the trial court abused its discretion in denying her motion to withdraw her plea of no contest.

"[Penal Code] section 1018 provides that `[o]n application of the defendant at any time before judgment . . . the court may . . . for . . . good cause shown, permit the plea of guilty to be withdrawn and a plea of not guilty substituted. . . . This section shall be liberally construed to effect these objects and to promote justice.' A no contest plea is treated the same as a guilty plea for this purpose. [Citations.] `Mistake, ignorance or any other factor overcoming the exercise of free judgment is good cause for withdrawal of a guilty plea,' but must be shown by `clear and convincing evidence.' [Citation.]" (People v. Ramirez (2006) 141 Cal.App.4th 1501, 1506.) "Other factors overcoming [a] defendant's free judgment include inadvertence, fraud or duress. [Citations.] However, `[a] plea may not be withdrawn simply because the defendant has changed his mind.' [Citations.]" (People v. Huricks (1995) 32 Cal.App.4th 1201, 1208.)

"A decision to deny a motion to withdraw a guilty plea ` "rests in the sound discretion of the trial court" ' and is final unless the defendant can show a clear abuse of that discretion. [Citations.] Moreover, a reviewing court must adopt the trial court's factual findings if substantial evidence supports them. [Citation.]" (People v. Fairbank (1997) 16 Cal.4th 1223, 1254.)

There was no evidence presented to the trial judge to suggest that defendant's plea of no contest was made with anything less than the exercise of her free judgment. Her motion did not contend, for example, that she was under duress or that her plea had been entered on the basis of misinformation. (See, e.g., People v. Panizzon (1996) 13 Cal.4th 68, 76.) Instead, taking defendant's representations at face value, she wanted to withdraw her plea because an investigator was able, by befriending a witness to the killing, to capture on tape the admission of the witness that he or she had lied. The development of new testimony is not generally a basis for allowing the withdrawal of a plea, in the absence of deception that interfered with a defendant's knowing exercise of judgment at the time the plea was entered. (See, e.g., People v. Ramirez, supra, 141 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1506-1508.)

Even assuming that the development of new evidence could support a claim that defendant's plea was entered with less than her free judgment, however, the facts alleged in her motion are so vague that they could not constitute the necessary "clear and convincing evidence" to support withdrawal of her plea. Neither the investigator nor the witness is identified, and there is no indication of the witness's relationship to the events in question. Further, the defendant did not provide any information about the content of the witness's original statements, her admission of falsity, or the helpful testimony that presumably could be developed from that admission. In short, the purported "new information . . . . [which] is enough to prove I did not kill" is never specified. Accordingly, there was no way for the court to determine whether the new developments could have been material to defendant's decisionmaking in entering her plea. In these circumstances, we have no basis for finding the trial court's denial of the motion to be an abuse of discretion.

Defendant contends that the trial court did not "address[] the actual stated grounds" upon which her motion was based. We do not agree. The trial court was plainly aware of the standard for evaluating a motion for withdrawal of plea and reviewed the evidence regarding defendant's exercise of free judgment at the time her plea was entered. As noted above, the "stated grounds" for defendant's motion—the development of new testimony—are not generally regarded as a basis for permitting withdrawal of a plea.

Defendant cites People v. Clark (1968) 264 Cal.App.2d 44, in which the court faulted the trial court's acceptance of a guilty plea when, at the time the plea was taken, the defendants suggested that they were not, in fact, guilty of all elements of the crime. (Id. at pp. 45-46.) This is not such a situation. Defendant did not, of course, plead guilty. She pleaded no contest. Further, there was no suggestion at the time of the plea that defendant was concerned about its appropriateness. Unlike the defendants in Clark, she showed no hesitation in entering the plea. The fact that she later proclaimed her innocence does not require the court to permit its withdrawal. On the contrary, her claim of innocence indicates only that, as the trial court observed, defen...