People v. Pearson

• Court: California Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: WERDEGAR
• Citation: People v. Pearson, 12 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 336, 53 Cal.4th 306, 135 Cal.Rptr.3d 262, 266 P.3d 966, 2012 Daily Journal D.A.R. 238 (Cal. 2012)
• Decision Date: 09 January 2012
• Docket Number: No. S120750.,S120750.
• Parties: The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Kevin Darnell PEARSON, Defendant and Appellant.

12 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 336

135 Cal.Rptr.3d 262

2012 Daily Journal D.A.R. 238

266 P.3d 966

53 Cal.4th 306

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent,

v.Kevin Darnell PEARSON, Defendant and Appellant.

No. S120750.

Supreme Court of California

Jan. 9, 2012.

Conrad Petermann, Ojai, under appointment by the Supreme court, for Defendant and Appellant.

Edmund G. Brown, Jr., and Kamala D. Harris, Attorneys General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Pamela C. Hamanaka, Assistant Attorney General, Sharlene A. Honnaka and Yun K. Lee, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

WERDEGAR, J.

Defendant Kevin Darnell Pearson was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1998 first degree murder of Penny Sigler, also known as Penny Keptra. The jury found the murder was committed during the course of robbery, kidnapping, rape, and sexual penetration by foreign object, and that it involved the infliction of torture. (Pen.Code, §§ 187, 189, 190.2, subd. (a)(17), (18).) ¹ In addition, defendant was convicted and sentenced to state prison for robbery, forcible rape, sexual penetration by foreign object, forcible rape and sexual penetration by foreign object while acting in concert, kidnapping for purposes of rape, and torture. ( §§ 206, 209, subd. (b)(1), 211, 261, subd. (a)(2), 264.1, 289, subd. (a)(1).) On this automatic appeal (§ 1239, subd. (b)), we affirm the convictions of first degree murder and the other charged felonies, but reverse the judgment as to the penalty of death due to the trial court's improper excusal of a prospective juror because of her views on capital punishment.

Factual Background

The evidence showed defendant and two other men, Jamelle Armstrong and Warren Hardy, killed the victim, a stranger to them, during a brutal robbery and sexual assault. The crimes took place late on the night of December 29, 1998, by a freeway embankment in Long Beach.

Guilt Phase Evidence

Between 11:00 p.m. and midnight on December 29, 1998, the victim, Penny Sigler, left her Long Beach home to go to the store. She had $6 worth of food stamps given to her by her roommate. Her nude body was found the next day on the freeway embankment of northbound Interstate 405, near the intersection of Wardlow Road and Long Beach Boulevard. The body was 10 to 15 feet from the bottom of the embankment, separated from the surface streets by a drainage ditch and, above the ditch, a nylon mesh fence supported by wooden stakes. One of the stakes was broken, a tennis shoe lay on the embankment, and there was blood on the fence and in the drainage area.

The victim's injuries were extensive. The medical examiner counted 114 injuries, including around 25 fractures, all of which appeared to have been inflicted before death. Blunt force trauma to the head and neck was a component of her death, but the medical examiner also found signs of asphyxiation. Sigler had sustained multiple blunt force injuries to her head , face and neck, including abrasions and bruising on her neck, bruising around both eyes, an exposed fractured left cheekbone, a laceration of the forehead exposing the skull bone, a wounded left cheek, a partially torn-off right ear, internal bruising and bleeding in the muscles of the neck, and broken neck bones. She also had blunt force injuries on her back, chest, abdomen, arm and thigh. Some of the wounds could have been inflicted with a piece of wooden stake.

Sigler also suffered bruising, abrasions and lacerations in and around her genitalia, perineum and anus. A small splinter of wood was found in her vagina. Her genital injuries could have been caused by penetration with a wooden stake but not by penetration with a human penis.

On the night of December 29, defendant was at his friend Monty Gmur's house in Long Beach. He left around 10:00 p.m. with Warren Hardy and Jamelle Armstrong. According to Gmur, the men were drunk and boisterous when they left his house, though they were walking without difficulty.

The next day, defendant told Gmur he and the men he was with had killed “a white woman” after they left Gmur's home. After seeing a news report about Sigler's murder, Gmur asked defendant for more information. Defendant told Gmur the men had gone to the Wardlow Metro station, where they momentarily became separated. On hearing a commotion across the way, defendant went to see what was happening, found Hardy “stomping” on a woman, and tried to get him to stop. The victim had said she did not have any money; when they found her food stamps, Hardy became angry and beat her with a stick. Defendant told Gmur he helped Hardy and Armstrong move the victim from the street, over a fence to the freeway embankment, but attributed all the violence committed to Hardy. A few days later, Gmur contacted the police and told them what defendant had told him.

Long Beach Police Detective Bryan McMahon interviewed defendant on January 6, 1999. After initially denying all involvement, defendant said that he, Hardy and Armstrong, together with a man named Chris, had left Gmur's house late on the night of December 29 after drinking together. Chris soon left the group, and the remaining three took a Metro train to the Wardlow station. As they walked toward Long Beach Boulevard, Hardy lagging behind, defendant heard a woman screaming for help and turned to find Hardy punching her. The woman momentarily escaped Hardy, running to a nearby fence. The victim either climbed and fell over the fence or was lifted over it; Hardy then jumped the fence and dragged her into a drainage ditch area. Defendant and Armstrong followed to find Hardy sitting on the woman's chest, gesturing to his crotch and demanding she orally copulate him. When defendant told Hardy that was disgusting and he could get AIDS from the blood on the victim's face, Hardy got up, zipped his pants, and resumed beating the victim with a stick, as he had been doing (while also stomping on her) earlier. Hardy and Armstrong then repeatedly jabbed the stick into the victim's vagina.

When Hardy and Armstrong stopped, defendant suggested they move the woman's body. Wrapping shirts around her, the three carried her farther up the freeway embankment. They then collected her clothing in a bag and carried the bag and stick to a bus stop on Long Beach Boulevard, where Armstrong threw the stick into a field. The three then rode the bus to Los Angeles, leaving the clothing in a trash can at a transfer point. They went to Hardy's girlfriend's house, where they stayed until the next day, when defendant and Hardy returned to Long Beach for some clothing; there was blood on the clothes they had worn during the killing.

On January 7, 1999, police arrested Hardy and Armstrong and searched their residences. Later that day, after receiving information from Hardy and Armstrong, Detective McMahon reinterviewed defendant. Without telling defendant what Hardy and Armstrong had said, McMahon informed defendant it was not entirely consistent with what defendant had told him. “More [had] happened out there” than defendant had admitted, and defendant “needed to tell the truth and take responsibility” for his own actions. Defendant nodded affirmatively and gave a significantly more incriminating version of events.

As the three men were walking to Long Beach Boulevard from the Wardlow station, defendant said, they were shouting “Happy New Year” and “Merry Christmas.” They heard a woman yell back, “Yeah, Merry Christmas. Happy New Year.” The men crossed the street and talked with the woman. At some point Hardy asked the woman where her money was; she said she didn't have any, but defendant started looking through her jacket pockets. When she tried to get away, defendant and Armstrong wrestled her to the ground and started pulling her clothes off and going through them, looking for valuables. Once she was naked, Hardy said, “We have to finish the job,” and he and Armstrong began stomping on the victim's head and upper body. Defendant and Armstrong then threw the victim over the fence onto the freeway embankment, the three men jumped the fence, and Armstrong dragged her farther off the road.

Defendant, according to his January 7 statement, then unzipped his pants and raped the victim for a minute or less, while she struggled and Armstrong held one of her legs. When he quit, Hardy approached and began beating the victim with a stick or stake on her head and neck. Hardy and Armstrong again stomped on her, and defendant also did so, kicking or stomping on her upper body five or six times. Finally, Hardy and Armstrong vaginally penetrated the victim with the stick. The remainder of defendant's January 7 statement accorded with his earlier account: the three moved the victim's body up the embankment, collected clothing from the scene, and took the bus to Los Angeles, discarding the stick and clothing as previously described. The next day, Hardy spent food stamps they had taken from the victim at a Mexican market near his girlfriend's apartment.

In letters defendant wrote and sent after he was arrested, he said he did not kill the victim but kicked her in the head several times, and the victim was raped but he did not remember by whom.

The serial numbers of two food stamps that originated at a check cashing agency in Long Beach and were exchanged at Lorena's Market in Los Angeles matched those on a food stamp booklet cover found at the crime scene. DNA matching Hardy's was found in saliva on the victim's body. DNA matching that of Sigler, the victim, was found on boots and pants defendant had left at Hardy's girlfriend's house, items of clothing similar to those Gmur had seen defendant wearing on the night of December 29. Shoe prints at the crime scene were similar to the sole pattern of the boots.

Defendant testified in his own defense. In December 1998, he was living on the second floor of his mother's house; Gmur lived next door. On December 29, defendant drank a six-pack of Olde English 800...