People v. Ramos

• Decision Date: 29 November 2004
• Docket Number: No. S030956.,S030956.
• Citation: 21 Cal.Rptr.3d 575,101 P.3d 478,34 Cal.4th 494
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. William James RAMOS, Defendant and Appellant.

21 Cal.Rptr.3d 575

34 Cal.4th 494

101 P.3d 478

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. William James RAMOS, Defendant and Appellant.

No. S030956.

Supreme Court of California.

November 29, 2004.

Rehearing Denied January 19, 2005.

Certiorari Denied October 3, 2005.

Katherine Alfieri and Mark R. Vermuellen, under appointments by the Supreme Court, for Defendant and Appellant.

Bill Lockyer, Attorney General, Robert R. Anderson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Ronald A. Bass, Assistant Attorney General, Ronald S. Matthias and Herbert F. Wilkinson, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

Certiorari Denied October 3, 2005. See 26 S.Ct. 91.

CHIN, J.

In 1991, an information charged defendant with three counts of murder (Pen.Code, § 187),¹ with a personal use of a firearm enhancement on each count. (§ 12022.5, subd. (a).) The information included a multiple-murder special-circumstance allegation (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(3)), and charged two violations of section 12021, subdivision (a) (felon in possession of a firearm). In addition, defendant was charged with two enhancements under section 667.5, subdivision (b) (prior violent felony prison convictions). He was held in the Martinez Detention Facility.

Nearly a year later, county prison officials considered defendant a continuing threat to staff and inmate safety. A judge ordered him removed from Martinez to San Quentin, where he engaged in criminal and other questionable activity. He attacked a jailhouse deputy, threatened the same deputy, and allegedly hoarded medication for a possible suicide attempt. Defendant also filed numerous complaints about staff procedural violations.

Three months after he was placed in San Quentin, defendant pleaded guilty to all charges. The court determined that the murders were of the first degree and made a specific finding that defendant was competent to make the plea. (§ 1368.) In November 1992, after a penalty trial, the jury returned a verdict of death. The trial court denied defendant's motions for new trial (§ 1181) and to modify the penalty verdict (§ 190.4, subd. (e)), and sentenced him to death. This appeal is automatic.

I. FACTS

A. The Charged Crimes

1. Tonya Karr Murder

On March 7, 1991, at approximately 7:20 p.m., neighbors in the vicinity of 706 J Street in Antioch heard a male shouting, followed by two gunshots. They saw a stocky White male with long hair leave 706 J Street, walk to an adjacent parking lot, and get into a Ford pickup truck with a camper shell on the back. When Antioch police responded to the scene, they found Tonya Karr lying in a pool of blood with two gunshot wounds to her head. She died the next day. Mary Cagle, defendant's ex-wife and Karr's mother, had seen defendant leaving the parking lot next to Karr's apartment earlier in the evening.

2. Minnie Mae Coombs Murder

Minnie Mae Coombs was Cagle's sister. At 8:30 p.m. on March 7, 1991, Coombs's daughter, Theresa Bodkin, went to Coombs's residence looking for her mother. She heard Ramos's voice on Coombs's answering machine stating that Coombs could be found in the parking lot next door. Coombs was found dead in her car. She had been shot once in the chest and once in the head.

3. Janice Butler Murder

On March 6, 1991, defendant picked up his girlfriend, Janice Butler, from her house. Two days later, her body was found in the camper portion of defendant's pickup truck as it was parked at the River-view Lodge in Antioch. That same day, defendant surrendered to police after they spotted him in a white van he also owned. Police then conducted a probation search of defendant's home and found evidence indicating that Butler had been shot and killed in defendant's home on the evening of March 6.

B. Other Crimes

1. Prior Convictions

The prosecution presented evidence of defendant's prior felony convictions. (§ 190.3, subd. (c).) In October 1976, defendant attempted to kill his former girlfriend, Patricia Mowery, in Reno, Nevada. After Mowery, a card dealer at a Reno casino, ended her relationship with defendant, he damaged items in her house and was arrested for destruction of property. As he was led away, defendant threatened Mowery that he would return. That same evening, defendant approached Mowery at work and shot her in the chest. Defendant then surrendered his weapon to the pit boss, folded his jacket, sat down, and watched Mowery as she bled from the mouth and chest.

While awaiting trial, defendant asked his brother Steve to "do something" to Mowery. In early 1977, Steve told the Nevada Grand Jury that his brother had said: "I want her dead." Defendant was convicted of attempted second degree murder and sent to the maximum security Nevada State Prison in Carson City.

Defendant had two other felony convictions, namely, battery with a deadly weapon in July 1979 in Washoe County, Nevada, and driving under the influence causing bodily injury in Sacramento, California in August 1990.

2. Prior Criminal Activity

On December 2, 1976, while awaiting trial on the attempted murder charge in Washoe County Jail, defendant exploded in a rage against jail personnel. He threw a cup of what he said was urine at Deputy Richard Pico, who was supervising the evening meal service. Later that night, defendant pounded his head against the wall for several hours, and told a supervising sergeant that he was going to kill Deputy Pico.

In March 1979, while serving time in Nevada State Prison on the attempted murder conviction, defendant heaved a tray of hot food at a correctional officer in charge of serving the dinner meal. Later that day, defendant threw a hard-boiled egg at the officer and later threatened him that he would get him "on his mother's grave." Defendant was moved to the prison segregation unit the next morning, where he threw a cup of urine at an officer who entered his cell.

In 1992, while awaiting trial in the present matter in Contra Costa County Jail, defendant attacked Sheriff's Deputy Sean Dexter as he accompanied a jail nurse on her "pill call" rounds, breaking Dexter's thumb and punching his head. Defendant later threatened to kill Dexter.

C. Defense Evidence

Dr. Harry Kormos, a psychiatrist hired to examine defendant, testified that defendant suffers from a paranoid personality disorder due to the influence of several factors, including an abusive childhood and time spent fighting in Vietnam as a soldier during the Vietnam War. He characterized defendant's condition as a long-term behavior pattern that will last throughout defendant's lifetime. Dr. Kormos also noted that defendant's disorder does not mean that he is insane or that he does not appreciate the gravity of his acts; indeed, defendant knows what he is doing. Defendant's aunt testified that his mother, who eventually committed suicide, physically abused her children. His father isolated the family and actively discouraged contact with other people. He taught the children that "if you fight, fight to win." Defendant was known for his quick temper, which became more severe, with the potential for greater violence, after his Vietnam experience. Although there is no evidence defendant ever attempted to take his own life, defense counsel presented the evidence to show that defendant may have intended to commit suicide at a later date, thus supporting defendant's claim that he had a "death wish."² He apparently hoarded medication while in prison awaiting his penalty trial.

In addition, defendant's brother, Steve Ramos, testified that he and defendant were extremely close when they were children, but that trouble seemed to find them. Former Warden James Park testified that he believed defendant would adjust well to prison life and would remain in high-security prison for the remainder of his life.

II. DISCUSSION

A. Motion to Suppress Evidence

Before pleading guilty, defendant raised several claims in a motion to suppress the evidence found in a police search of defendant's house and pickup truck, including Janice Butler's body, a blood stained blanket, an empty box of .38-caliber ammunition, receipt for a Mossberg shotgun (all found in the pickup truck), women's clothing, blood swabs from the metal frame of a sofa bed, shot wads on the ground outside, and other items connecting him to the murders. The police opened the pickup truck by prying off the lock and opening the camper. The police searched defendant's house and truck pursuant to a probation search condition imposed after defendant was convicted of violating Vehicle Code section 23153, subdivision (a) (felony driving under the influence (DUI) with injury) in 1990. The blanket search condition required defendant to "submit his person, property and automobile, and any object under the defendant's control, to search and seizure by any probation officer or other peace officer at any time of the day or night with or without a warrant." The officers were aware of the search condition prior to their search.³

Defendant contends (1) the court improperly imposed the probation search condition; (2) the condition was overbroad; (3) the police relied on the condition as a subterfuge in order to avoid the warrant requirement; (4) the police had no reasonable cause to search even with the probation condition; and (5) the police, not a probation officer, initiated the searches, making them invalid. The trial court denied the motion to suppress, concluding that the probation search condition was reasonably related to the DUI offense.

Initially, we note that defendant's challenge to the propriety of the search condition is timely because the condition was imposed before we adopted a rule requiring defendant to object to the condition at the time of sentencing or forfeit the claim. (People v. Welch (1993) 5 Cal.4th 228, 237, 19 Cal.Rptr.2d 520, 851 P.2d 802.) Welch, however, made its objection and forfeiture rule prospective in application only. (Id. at p. 238, 19 Cal.Rptr.2d 520, 851 P.2d 802.) The Welch rule,...