People v. Nye
| Decision Date | 12 July 1965 |
| Docket Number | Cr. 7825 |
| Citation | 63 Cal.2d 166,403 P.2d 736,45 Cal.Rptr. 328 |
| Court | California Supreme Court |
| Parties | , 403 P.2d 736 The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Robert Lee NYE, Defendant and Appellant. |
Vincent Hallinan, Carl B. Shapiro, Patrick Sarsfield Hallinan and LeRoy W. Rice, San Francisco, for defendant and appellant.
Stanley Mosk and Thomas C. Lynch, Attys. Gen., William E. James, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Gordon Ringer, Deputy Atty. Gen., for plaintiff and respondent.
Defendant was found guilty after jury trial of murder of the first degree, and the penalty was fixed at death. Thus his appeal automatically comes before this court pursuant to section 1239, subdivision (b), of the Penal Code.
Defendant does not question that the victim met her death at his hands on January 9, 1963. His primary contention is that the killing, in view of the circumstances, did not constitute murder in the first degree, and that several errors which occurred in the guilt phase of the trial require reversal. He further urges error in the penalty phase of the trial.
As to this latter contention the People concede error in the admission of evidence concerning practices of the Adult Authority, argument of counsel and instructions of the court to the jury relating to the possibility of parole for those felons committed for life. Accordingly, the judgment must be reversed insofar as it relates to the penalty. (People v. Morse, 60 Cal.2d 631, 36 Cal.Rptr. 201, 388 P.2d 33.)
The relevant facts are briefly these: On January 1, 1963, the defendant, then twenty years of age, met Susan Doctors, the daughter of his victim. After a short conversation he was given her telephone number, and a few days later he called and made arrangements to visit Susan at her home. During the visit he met Mrs. Doctors.
On January 9, defendant again went to the Doctors' residence. What transpired on that date is known only from the physical evidence and the testimony of defendant. He testified that Mrs. Doctors was alone in the house upon his arrival; that he was admitted and offered a cup of coffee; that a long conversation took place in the kitchen concerning his request to be allowed to date with Susan; that, after he had volunteered information concerning various aspects of his experiences and life, Mrs. Doctors denied his request; that during the course of his declaration and pleading that Mrs. Doctors' attitude was unfair, she requested on several occasions that defendant leave the premises; that he refused to do so in spite of her declaration that she was going to telephone the police or her husband; that during this conversation Mrs. Doctors had been cleaning kitchen utensils with a hunting knife; that she suddenly ran toward the telephone, near which he was sitting, with a hunting knife in her hand; that he arose and seized her; that he remembers nothing from that time until he found himself standing over the then dead Mrs. Doctors; that he then changed from his bloody clothing into clean clothing belonging to Mr. Doctors; that he took money and jewelry from the Doctors' bedroom in order to expedite his escape; that he then decided to make it appear that the killing had occurred during the course of a rape, and to this end he pulled down around her ankles the 'capri pants' and underclothing worn by Mrs. Doctors and then fled. The prosecution's physical evidence did not contradict this testimony, but the prosecutor sought, largely through cross-examination, to weaken it as it related to defendant's intent and state of mind.
The People's evidence was to the effect that Mrs. Doctors had been stabbed 37 times, 30 of the wounds being independently adequate to cause her death. There was a mass of circumstantial evidence connecting defendant with the killing. Such evidence consisted, in part, of his bloody fingerprints near the body, his fingerprints and bloody shoe prints throughout the house, his discarded clothing containing smears of blood of the same type as his victim's blood, a knife, concealed in a room occupied by defendant, which could have been the murder weapon and contained evidence of human blood of the victim's type. The knife was not the one with which the victim had been cleaning kitchen utensils, according to defendant's account. Furthermore, a knife sheath found beside the body did not belong in the Doctors' household.
There was substantial evidence from which the jury might properly have found that the deceased had been sexually attacked by defendant at the time of the killing. The body lay on its back, the capri pants and undergarments had been pulled down to the ankles and the upper legs were spread apart. There were smears of blood of the victim's type around and on the inside of the fly of the trousers, on the front of the shorts and on the lower part of the jacket worn by defendant. The blood stains on the victim appeared to be either smeared or wiped in and around her pelvic area, and there were also smears and markings in the very extensive blood stains on either side of her body, including defendant's right palm print about five inches from the left hip. Other fingerprints which could not be lifted were found in the blood around the body. Pubic hairs were found on the floor between the outspread legs.
Numerous items were missing from the home, including the victim's wallet, containing approximately $50 in cash, three wrist watches, earrings, rings, pendants and other jewelry having a value in excess of $3,000, and clothing. Many of the missing items were traced to defendant through the testimony of prosecution witnesses.
The prosecution also introduced extrajudicial statements made by defendant wherein he admitted that he had visited the Doctors' home on the day of the killing, had a conversation with Mrs. Doctors concerning Susan, ransacked the home while Mrs. Doctors was absent for a short while, and left after her return and further uneventful conversation. The circumstances under which these statements were given, and the effect of their admission will be discussed later.
Defendant contends, among other things, that the trial court abused its discretion when it allowed the prosecution to introduce over objection pictures he describes as 'monstrous' and 'blown up almost to full size of the nude body of the decedent as well as the whole gory scene of the killing.' We have viewed the photographs of which defendant complains. They are not pleasing to the eye. They are in black-and-white, and measure twenty by sixteen inches. Their relevance to the prosecution's claim that the killing occurred during the course of a rape is clear, for they show, inter alia, the position of the body and the disarray of the clothing. The record clearly shows that the trial court, in ruling on the objection to the admission of the pictures after extended argument out of the hearing of the jury, properly weighed the probative value of the photographs against their prejudicial effect (compare People v. Ford, 60 Cal.2d 772, 801, 36 Cal.Rptr. 620, 388 P.2d 892). It does not appear that its determination constituted an abuse of discretion.
Defendant next contends that he was denied a fair trial in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution when he was compelled in the courtroom, over his personal objection, to physically demonstrate certain acts claimed to have been done by him after the killing had occurred. The demonstration complained of occurred during cross-examination when the prosecutor asked that defendant, using first a chair and then a live policeman to represent the body of Mrs. Doctors, show low he pulled down the capri pants and underclothing in order to simulate a rape. For a time defendant took part in this demonstration without objection, but as it progressed he personally objected, and refused to proceed. During the course of defendant's expostulations and exchanges between the court, the prosecutor and defense counsel, the prosecutor remarked, in response to defendant's declaration that it bothered him to proceed with the demonstration:
On another occasion the court stated that the matter was not a dramatic spectacle but a serious affair. Defense counsel agreed that it was serious because a young boy's life was at stake, to which the prosecutor responded: 'A life at stake because a young lady's life was forfeited.'
On still another occasion where, in spite of the court's order to proceed with the demonstration, defendant refused to do so for the reason of conscience, the prosecutor remarked: 'Is that the same conscience that's now bothering you that bothered you at the time that you put your shorts in her blood?' The reference to defendant's shorts was consistent with defendant's earlier statement that he had not raped the victim but had arranged the physical evidence to give the appearance that the killing had been committed in the perpetration of a rape.
The frustrated demonstration and the foregoing and other similar remarks by the prosecutor without admonitions are assigned as prejudicial error. While such comments are not to be commended, there is no basis for defendant's claim that the demonstration was sought 'not as a means of impeaching the defendant or of achieving justice, but as a means of exposing the defendant to calumny and disgrace.' Defendant had testified on direct examination, in furtherance of his account only a contrived rape, that he had changed from his bloody clothing to clean clothing belonging to the victim's husband, and then had arranged the physical evidence to give the appearance of rape. The record is clear that the prosecutor on cross-examination sought to have defendant demonstrate his position over the body when, as he cl...
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