People v. Noguera
| Decision Date | 28 December 1992 |
| Docket Number | C,No. S005170,No. 26428,S005170,26428 |
| Citation | 15 Cal.Rptr.2d 400,4 Cal.4th 599,842 P.2d 1160 |
| Court | California Supreme Court |
| Parties | , 842 P.2d 1160 The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. William Adolf NOGUERA, Defendant and Appellant. rim. |
Daniel E. Lungren, Atty. Gen., George Williamson, Chief Asst. Atty. Gen., Harley D. Mayfield, Asst. Atty. Gen., Rudolf Corona, Jr., and Janelle B. Davis, Deputy Attys. Gen., for plaintiff and respondent.
Defendant William Adolf Noguera was convicted by a jury of one count of first degree murder. (Pen.Code, §§ 187, 189; all statutory references are to this code except as indicated.) The jury also found that in committing the murder, defendant used dangerous and deadly weapons, namely, a martial arts tonfa and a wooden dowel ( § 12022, subd. (b)); it also found true a special circumstance allegation that the murder was committed for financial gain. ( § 190.2, subd. (a)(1).) Following a penalty trial, the jury returned a verdict of death. We affirm the judgment.
Sometime between 11:30 on the night of April 23, 1983, and 4:30 the following morning, Jovita Navarro was murdered in the bedroom of her La Habra bungalow. La Habra police found Jovita's body after being summoned by a "911" call from Mindy Jackson, Jovita's next-door neighbor. After securing the area, investigating officers went to the Jackson residence where they interviewed Dominique Navarro, Jovita's After a few minutes, Dominique heard her mother cry out, "get out, mi hija ("hija" is Spanish for "daughter"), get out, mi hija." Frightened, and unsure what was afoot in the darkened house, Dominique told Mindy Jackson that she sat at the end of her bed for "about 5 to 15 minutes," before running blindly down the hall and out the back door. As she ran, she heard a "thumping" sound coming from her mother's bedroom, followed by what sounded like the footsteps of someone close behind her.
[842 P.2d 1165] 16-year-old daughter. Dominique told them she had returned from a date with her then-18-year-old boyfriend around 2:00 that morning; after chatting briefly with her mother, who was reading in bed, and removing her makeup, Dominique had gone to bed and to sleep. She was awakened a few hours later, she said, by muffled noises coming from her mother's adjacent bedroom.
Reaching Mindy Jackson's house, Dominique banged on the door until Jackson answered. In tears and near hysteria, according to Jackson, Dominique said that someone was hurting her mother; she begged Jackson to return to the house with her. Jackson refused. Instead, she managed to telephone 911. Authorities logged in the emergency call at 4:43 a.m.
To the casual observer, the murder scene suggested that Jovita had been killed in the course of a combined rape and burglary. Her body was found lying across the bed, her feet touching the floor. Her nightgown had been pulled up around her neck, and a pair of blue women's underpants was wadded between her thighs. The contents of the bedroom were in disorder--bedding and blankets had been pulled from the bed and thrown haphazardly on the floor; a jewelry box, normally resting on a dresser, was found upended on the hall floor, its contents of costume jewelry scattered along the hallway.
Jovita had been badly beaten, mainly on the face and head. She had suffered extensive facial injuries, including dental and eye damage from at least 18 blows to the face and head; her skull had multiple depressed fractures and her scalp had been loosened and torn by the force of the beating; her nose almost touched her left cheek and "defensive wounds" were evident on her arms and hands. On her left thigh, examiners found oval shaped wounds. 1 Blood was spattered on the walls, furniture, and ceiling of the bedroom.
The pathologist who examined the body testified that the proximate cause of Jovita Navarro's death was not the beating but asphyxiation--induced by pressing a rounded object against her throat with such force that her larynx was crushed, choking off her airway. Extensive cyanosis, or blueing, of her lips and pinpoint hemorrhaging beneath her eyelids confirmed that Jovita had, in effect, been strangled. Had she not died from a lack of oxygen, the pathologist concluded, the severity of the beating would have resulted in her death.
In the bedroom, La Habra police investigators found a "tonfa," a martial arts weapon fashioned from red oak and resembling a police baton; it lay shattered in two pieces, testimony to the savagery of the beating. In a neighboring yard, police recovered a piece of wood shaped like a broom handle, with traces of blood on it. In another yard, they found a bloodstained tan leather glove; bloodstains were also found on a cinder block wall adjoining a nearby lot. The bloodstains on the tonfa, the wooden dowel, and the glove were the same type as Jovita's. An analysis of fibers removed from the brick wall and the glove were consistent with those found on the bedroom blanket.
La Habra and Orange County authorities began an extensive forensic investigation of the crime scene. As a result, investigators concluded that much of the evidence pointing to a burglary and rape/murder of Jovita had been faked. An autopsy failed Although the bedroom appeared to have been rifled, nothing of value was missing, including a clear plastic change purse stuffed with small bills that the intruder could not have overlooked. The jewelry box had been knocked from its place and its contents scattered, but none of the jewelry had been taken. An analysis of the blood-spattering pattern on the bed linen suggested that it had been removed from the bed and arranged on the floor after the murder, rather than during a struggle. Moreover, the spatter analysis indicated that Jovita had probably been murdered before the contents of the bedroom had been upended. Finally, investigators could find no evidence that Jovita's killer had gained entry into the house by force.
[842 P.2d 1166] to reveal the presence of sperm in Jovita's vagina. An analysis of vaginal swabs was consistent with a finding that the victim might have had intercourse several hours earlier the preceding evening, but there was no external evidence of sexual trauma consistent with a forcible rape. Tests of the blue underwear for semen or other stains indicative of forcible sex were negative.
The on-scene criminalist, examining the body at 6:30 that morning, initially estimated the time of death at between three and six hours prior to his examination, or between 12:30 and 3:30 a.m. Although routine examinations for lividity and rigor mortis--two crude measures used to approximate time of death--confirmed that estimate, it was later revised upward, to 4:45 a.m., based on Dominique's statement to the police that she had heard her mother cry out around 4:30 that morning.
After conducting an autopsy on the morning of April 24, the examining pathologist concluded on the basis of the quantity and state of the contents of her stomach that Jovita died sometime between 12:30 and 2:30 that morning. Another criminalist, who observed the body at the autopsy, testified that the 4:45 a.m. time of death stated in the certificate of death was based on Dominique's account of the murder. Although that hour was not substantially out of line with the results of the lividity and rigor tests, had it not been for Dominique's statement the condition of the body suggested that death had occurred between three and seven hours earlier, or between 11:30 the preceding evening and 3:30 that morning. 2
An inquiry into Jovita's financial circumstances disclosed that she carried $13,000 in life insurance and at the time of her death had approximately $14,000 in accumulated retirement benefits from her job as an Orange County welfare clerk. The house, with a market value of around $90,000, had an existing mortgage balance of $7,000; Jovita carried mortgage insurance in the event of her death. Dominique was her sole heir.
As their investigation deepened, police learned from interviews with Margaret Garcia, a coworker, and Mindy Jackson that relations between Jovita and Dominique's boyfriend, the defendant, were not always pleasant. Jovita had quarrelled with both over Dominique's repeated violations of curfew hours, over her pregnancy and subsequent abortion, and over what Jovita regarded as a steep decline in Dominique's schoolwork and attendance beginning with the onset of her relationship with defendant. Garcia and Jackson both testified that Jovita was planning to sell the house and move to the beach, or to enlist Dominique in the Army, in an attempt to separate her from defendant. According to Garcia, Jovita had considered hiring a "hit man" to kill defendant. About two weeks before her death, Garcia said, Jovita told her that she had awakened in the middle of the night to find the front door open and all the outside lights off. Jovita found Dominique wandering the house; Dominique told her that she had opened the front door, but could not explain why.
About two or three weeks before Jovita's murder, Jackson had witnessed her screaming into the telephone and had seen Dominique Through interviews with Dominique and defendant, authorities learned that on the night of Jovita's death the two had gone to a party in West Covina about 7:00. They left around 11:30 that evening, they told police, and went for a hamburger with a friend; after dropping their friend off, they parked for an hour or two, returning to Jovita's house between 1:30 and 2:00 a.m. Dominique let herself in, locked the front door, opened a sliding glass door at the rear of the house in order to let the family dogs out,...
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