People v. Najera

• Decision Date: 05 June 2008
• Docket Number: No. S141654.,S141654.
• Citation: 43 Cal. 4th 1132,184 P.3d 732,77 Cal.Rptr.3d 605
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Michael Jesse NAJERA, Defendant and Appellant.

184 P.3d 732

77 Cal.Rptr.3d 605

43 Cal. 4th 1132

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Michael Jesse NAJERA, Defendant and Appellant.

No. S141654.

Supreme Court of California.

June 5, 2008.

Laura G. Schaefer, under appointment by the Supreme Court, San Diego, for Defendant and Appellant.

Bill Lockyer and Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorneys General, Robert R. Anderson and Mary Jo Graves, Chief Assistant Attorneys General, Gary W. Schons, Assistant Attorney General, Raquel M. Gonzalez, Steve Oetting and Lynne G. McGinnis, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

BAXTER, J.

Defendant was spotted driving a stolen car less than a day after the owner had reported it missing. Defendant was using a shaved key—a key whose teeth have been shaved down to bypass the pins in the ignition cylinder—and the ignition system was, in the words of the arresting officer, "very loose." Personal property belonging to the car's owner was found in possession of the passenger, defendant's sister. Defendant was convicted of the unlawful taking of a vehicle and possession of burglary tools. On appeal, he asserted that the trial court had erred in failing to instruct the jury on its own motion that possession of recently stolen property was insufficient by itself to establish guilt of the charged offenses. (See CALJIC No. 2.15.) We agree with the Court of Appeal that the trial court had no sua sponte duty to provide such an instruction and therefore affirm.

BACKGROUND

Around 8:00 p.m. on July 21, 2004, Joseph Donato parked his white 1991 Acura Integra in the parking lot of his apartment complex in Escondido. When he returned to the lot around 6:00 a.m. the next morning, the car was gone. Donato promptly filed a report of the stolen car with the police.

Escondido Police Officer Tim Reiley spotted a white Integra driving unusually slowly in downtown Escondido around 12:30 a.m. on July 23 and recalled that a vehicle matching that description had been reported stolen the previous day. He ran a computer check on the license plate, verified that this was the stolen car, and ordered a stop. Defendant was driving; his sister, Erica Najera, was the passenger.

The key in the ignition had been "shaved." Officer Reiley explained that a shaved key is a standard vehicle key that has been shaved down with a metal file or other hard object to make it much slimmer than a regular key. A shaved key enables the user to bypass the pins in the ignition cylinder, so that the key may be used to start cars other than the one for which the key was designed, and to enter such cars as well. A second key on the same key ring also showed signs of alteration. Officer Reiley inserted a flathead screwdriver into the ignition to see whether it had been damaged. He found that the ignition system was "sloppy" and "very loose" and that he could start the car with the screwdriver. In his opinion, a person trying to start the car would have noticed that the ignition had been altered.

From Erica Najera's person or purse, police recovered three additional shaved keys as well as Donato's watch, pepper spray, and "player card" from Valley View Casino.

A jury convicted defendant of unlawfully driving or taking a vehicle (Veh.Code, § 10851, subd. (a)) and unlawful possession of burglary tools (Pen.Code, § 466). Defendant then admitted previous convictions of unlawfully driving a vehicle (Pen.Code, § 666.5, subd. (a)) and two prior prison term enhancements (id., § 667.5, subd. (b)). The trial court sentenced defendant to four years in prison, awarded credits of 264 days, and ordered defendant to pay restitution.

On appeal, defendant raised only one issue—i.e., that the trial court prejudicially erred in failing to instruct the jury sua sponte, in accordance with CALJIC No. 2.15, that recent possession of stolen property alone is insufficient to establish his guilt of theft-related offenses. The Court of Appeal, in a published opinion, held that CALJIC No. 2.15 was not the type of instruction that must be given sua sponte in every theft-related case.

DISCUSSION

"It is settled that in criminal cases, even in the absence of a request, the trial court must instruct on the general principles of law relevant to the issues raised by the evidence. [Citations.] The general principles of law governing the case are those principles closely and openly connected with the facts before the court, and which are necessary for the jury's understanding of the case." (People v. St. Martin (1970) 1 Cal.3d 524, 531, 83 Cal.Rptr. 166, 463 P.2d 390.) Defendant Najera claims that CALJIC No. 2.15 satisfies this standard, in that it directs the jury not to convict a defendant of a theft-related offense based solely on the defendant's possession of recently stolen property, and thus ought to have been given to the jury on the court's own motion in this case.¹

Defendant relies in particular on our previous recognition of a similar sua sponte duty to instruct the jury concerning the requirement that accomplice testimony be corroborated. (People v. Warren (1940) 16 Cal.2d 103, 117-119, 104 P.2d 1024.) He points to CALJIC No. 3.11 (Fall 2006 rev.), which informs the jury that a defendant may not be found guilty based upon the testimony of an accomplice "unless that testimony is corroborated by other evidence which tends to connect [the] ... defendant with the commission of the offense." For the reasons set forth below, we do not agree with defendant that the corroboration requirement for accomplices is sufficiently analogous to the corroboration requirement for the possession of recently stolen property for purposes of defining the scope of a trial court's duty to instruct on its own motion in this case.

As we have previously explained, accomplice testimony requires corroboration not because such evidence is factually insufficient to permit a reasonable trier of fact to find the accused guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but because "[t]he Legislature has determined that because of the reliability questions posed by certain categories of evidence, evidence in those categories by itself is insufficient as a matter of law to support a conviction." (People v. Cuevas (1995) 12 Cal.4th 252, 261, 48 Cal.Rptr.2d 135, 906 P.2d 1290; see Pen.Code, § 1111.) That is, even though accomplice testimony would qualify as "substantial evidence" to sustain a conviction within the meaning of People v. Johnson (1980) 26 Cal.3d 557, 578, 162 Cal.Rptr. 431, 606 P.2d 738, the Legislature has for policy reasons created an "exception[]" to the substantial evidence test and requires accomplice testimony to be corroborated. (Cuevas, supra, 12 Cal.4th at p. 261, 48 Cal.Rptr.2d 135, 906 P.2d 1290.) In the absence of an instruction on the legal requirement that an accomplice be corroborated, there is a risk that a jury—especially a jury instructed in accordance with CALJIC No. 2.27 that the testimony of a single witness whose testimony is believed is sufficient for proof of any fact—might convict the defendant without finding the corroboration Penal Code section 1111 requires. (See People v. Williams (1988) 45 Cal.3d 1268, 1312-1313, 248 Cal. Rptr. 834, 756 P.2d 221.) The corroboration requirement for accomplices thus qualifies as a general principle of law vital to the jury's consideration of the evidence, and the jury must be so instructed even in the absence of a request. (People v. Warren, supra, 16 Cal.2d at p. 117, 104 P.2d 1024 [the accomplice instructions "deal with the vital question of the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the conviction under the salutary rule laid down in section 1111 of the Penal Code"].)

We have similarly required that trial courts instruct, sua sponte, on the corpus delicti rule, which provides that the corpus delicti or body of the crime cannot be proved exclusively by the defendant's extrajudicial statements. (People v. Alvarez (2002) 27 Cal.4th 1161, 1165, 119 Cal.Rptr.2d 903, 46 P.3d 372; see CALJIC No. 2.72.) Because the defendant's extrajudicial admissions of guilt, in the absence of the corpus delicti rule, would otherwise qualify as substantial evidence to support a conviction (see People v. Vertrees (1915) 169 Cal. 404, 409, 146 P. 890), the trial court is obligated to instruct the jury on the requirement of corroboration, which is a general principle of law "vital to a proper consideration of the evidence." (People v. Holbrook (1955) 45 Cal.2d 228, 233, 288 P.2d 1; see also People v. Starr (1970) 11 Cal.App.3d 574, 579, 89 Cal.Rptr. 906.)²

Although possession of recently stolen property, if uncorroborated, is likewise insufficient to establish the accused's guilt of a theft-related offense, the insufficiency does not derive from an extrinsic legal rule but, rather, is apparent from the general rule governing the jury's consideration of circumstantial evidence. As we long ago observed, there may be an innocent explanation for the circumstance of possession. "`The real criminal ... may have artfully placed the article in the possession or on the premises of an innocent person, the better to conceal his own guilt; or it may have been thrown away by the felon in his flight, and found by the possessor, or have been taken from him in order to restore it to the true owner, or otherwise have come lawfully into his possession.'" (People v. Chambers (1861) 18 Cal. 382, 383, overruled on other grounds in People v. McFarland (1962) 58 Cal.2d 748, 758, 26 Cal.Rptr. 473, 376 P.2d 449; see also People v. Holt (1997) 15 Cal.4th 619, 677, 63 Cal.Rptr.2d 782, 937 P.2d 213 [an inference of guilt based solely on possession of recently stolen property would be "unwarranted"].)

In this case, defendant's possession of the recently stolen vehicle, while circumstantial evidence that he intended to deprive the owner of the vehicle, did not, in itself, eliminate the possibility of an innocent explanation for defendant's presence behind the wheel of a car he did not own. However, the...