People v. Proctor

Decision Date28 December 1992
Docket NumberNo. S004555,No. 23185,S004555,23185
CourtCalifornia Supreme Court
Parties, 842 P.2d 1100 The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. William Arnold PROCTOR, Defendant and Appellant. Crim.

Edward L. Lascher and Wendy C. Lascher, Ventura, under appointments by the Supreme Court, for defendant and appellant.

John K. Van de Kamp and Daniel E. Lungren, Attys. Gen., Steve White, Chief Asst. Atty. Gen., J. Robert Jibson and William G. Prahl, Deputy Attys. Gen., for plaintiff and respondent.

GEORGE, Justice.

Following the guilt phase of a jury trial held in Shasta County, defendant William Arnold Proctor was found guilty of various offenses committed against Mrs. Bonita Stendal: first degree murder (Pen.Code, §§ 187, 189), 1 forcible rape ( § 261, subd. (2)), and first degree burglary ( § 460). The jury also found that defendant inflicted great bodily injury ( § 12022.8), and found true the special circumstance allegations that he committed the murder in the course of rape ( § 190.2, subd.(a)(17)(iii)), in the course of first degree burglary ( § 190.2, subd. (a)(17)(vii)), and with the infliction of torture ( § 190.2, subd. (a)(18)). After the court declared a mistrial as to the penalty phase of the trial, defendant's motion for change of venue was granted as to that phase, and after further proceedings a jury in Sacramento County imposed the death penalty. After denying defendant's motion for modification of the verdict, the court sentenced defendant to death. This appeal is automatic. ( § 1239, subd. (b).) We affirm the judgment in its entirety.

FACTS

The evidence at trial established that on the evening of April 21, 1982, defendant entered the residence of Mrs. Bonita Stendal, a widow living alone, and sometime that evening or early the next morning, raped, tortured, and murdered her. Defendant then transported her body in the trunk of her automobile to a site near a lake 12 miles away, where he pushed the body off an embankment.

I. GUILT PHASE EVIDENCE
A. The prosecution's case.
1. The crimes.

Mrs. Bonita Stendal, 55 years of age, lived on Ponderosa Street in Burney, a small mountain community located 35 miles east of Redding in Shasta County. Mrs. Stendal taught first grade students at the East Burney Elementary School. The last person (other than defendant) to see her alive on the evening of April 21, 1982, was a fellow schoolteacher, Robert Schmidt, who briefly spoke with her at the supermarket in Burney and then encountered her 10 minutes later at the nearby drugstore, approximately 7:50 p.m.

Later the same evening, Mrs. Stendal's neighbor, Patty Olinger, was seated in her automobile as it was being pushed through the intersection at Marquette and Ponderosa Streets, when she observed Mrs. Stendal's muddy vehicle parked in the driveway of Mrs. Stendal's residence on Ponderosa Street. 2 During the two-year period of their acquaintance, Olinger had known Mrs. Stendal always to park her vehicle inside her garage and never in the driveway, and had known her always to keep her vehicle clean. Olinger observed the lights on inside Mrs. Stendal's residence at this time.

Approximately 8:55 a.m. the following morning, Dena Humble, the secretary at Mrs. Stendal's school, was notified that Mrs. Stendal had failed to arrive. Upon telephoning Mrs. Stendal's residence and receiving no response, she telephoned Mrs. Stendal's next-door neighbor and teaching assistant, who informed Humble she did not know where Mrs. Stendal was. Humble then proceeded to Mrs. Stendal's residence, letting herself in the unlocked door and walking through the house when no one responded to her knock. Humble noticed a fork was on the kitchen counter, and the oven door was open. Inside the garage, Humble noticed a light was on and both of Mrs. Stendal's automobiles were inside. Returning to school, Humble notified the police.

Approximately 9:30 that morning, Sergeant Larry Jarrett of the Shasta County Sheriff's Department conducted a brief search of the Stendal residence. He observed that the house was very neat overall. There was an open pickle jar and carving fork on the kitchen counter, and a drawer containing carving forks and large knives was partly open. In the bedroom, the bed was covered only by a sheet.

Sergeant Jarrett departed to report to his superior, Lieutenant Phil Eoff, and shortly thereafter, accompanied by Sergeant Michael Shaeffer, an officer specializing in evidence and identification, they searched the residence more thoroughly. This time, the officers noticed that the telephone lines leading to the kitchen and den telephones had been severed, and the drapes in the den had been pulled off the hooks at one end. The officers also observed that one of the two vehicles in the garage was muddy, water was dripping from its fender wells, and there were wipe marks across the entire outside lid of its trunk. After a locksmith opened the trunk, it was discovered that the items inside appeared to have been pushed into the outer edges of the trunk, and the dust inside recently had been disturbed.

At 4 p.m. that same day, April 22, 1982, newlyweds Robert and Susan Porter stopped their vehicle on the shoulder of the road near an embankment at Lake Britton, located 12 miles from Burney, in order to let out their dog and take a photograph of the scenery. When Robert Porter looked over the embankment, he discovered a body lying approximately 11 feet from the road. The couple telephoned law enforcement authorities and waited by the body for their arrival.

Sergeant Jarrett identified the body as that of Mrs. Stendal. It appeared to have been thrown from the roadway. Tire tracks of the same design as those made by the tires on Mrs. Stendal's automobile ran perpendicular to the road, and, from the tire tracks, drag marks led to the top of the embankment. The body was clad in a nightgown pulled up to the waist, and an unknotted scarf was draped around the neck. A green electric blanket covered the body. The hands were tied behind the victim's back with four sets of ligatures, made of cloth and nylons, by means of various types of "half-hitch" knots. There were some cuts and "damage" to the face.

On the morning of April 23, Sergeant Jarrett, accompanied by Shaeffer and several other experts, returned to Mrs. Stendal's house in order to take photographs and obtain fingerprints. Beneath an area rug on the bedroom floor, they discovered a small pool of blood, still damp, which proved to be the same type as Mrs. Stendal's blood. Other bloodstains were located on the knob of the bedroom dresser.

That same day, the authorities brought several longtime acquaintances of Mrs. Stendal into the residence. These individuals observed that a brown or beige purse she frequently used was missing, and that certain circumstances, such as the unlocked front door and missing bedspread and blanket, were unusual because Mrs. Stendal always locked the residence and kept it very neat.

On April 24, Dr. Boyd Stephens of the San Francisco City and County Coroner's office performed an autopsy on the body. He estimated that Mrs. Stendal had been killed sometime between the early evening hours of April 21 and the early morning hours of April 22. She was not killed at the location at which her body was found but had been transported there after death.

In Dr. Stephen's opinion, Mrs. Stendal's death was caused by asphyxiation, initiated by nonfatal manual strangulation and later by ligature strangulation. The face had suffered numerous cuts and bruises from a blunt force. The eyes were swollen shut and the nose and lips also were swollen. Dr. Stephens believed that most of these injuries resulted from seven to nine blows. There were various internal injuries in the area of the neck. There were a number of shallow stab wounds and incisions caused by dragging a weapon across the skin in the area of the neck. The curvature of some of the injuries indicated they had been inflicted slowly and deliberately. There were seven wounds less than two inches deep to the area of the right breast which had been inflicted while Mrs. Stendal still was alive but unable to move away from her assailant. In Dr. Stephens' opinion, these wounds were inflicted for the purpose of causing pain or fear.

Prior to death, Mrs. Stendal had suffered four stretching injuries on the labia and a fifth injury which extended into the opening of the vagina. In the coroner's opinion, four of these probably were caused by a foreign object, and the fifth, probably by a penis. There was no semen inside or on the body.

Also while alive, Mrs. Stendal had received a blunt-force injury to the area of her right kidney. There also were blunt-force injuries to her left foot. The ligatures used to tie her hands were tied so tightly they had cut into her wrists. There were post mortem abrasion injuries attributed to dragging the body.

On April 30, the officers returned to the Stendal residence to perform a systematic investigation. On this occasion, they noticed small amounts of blood on the bedroom nightstand. After dismantling and removing the bed, they found, near the location of the head of the bed, approximately one dozen pamphlets. Some of the pamphlets had blood on them and one appeared to contain a bloody palm print. Other latent palm prints were obtained from the booklets. The blood on some of the pamphlets later was identified as being of the same type as Mrs. Stendal's. The door to the master bedroom on the side facing the den appeared to have been wiped with a damp, dirty rag.

On May 2, Sergeant Jarrett returned to the residence and noticed a cigarette butt from an unfiltered cigarette lying outside a window of the residence; there were also indications a hand had been on the window sill (although no fingerprints could be obtained).

2. Evidence of defendant's involvement.

In view of the circumstantial nature of...

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