People v. Roberts

• Citation: 45 Cal.Rptr. 155,403 P.2d 411,63 Cal.2d 84
• Decision Date: 29 June 1965
• Docket Number: Cr. 7466
• Court: United States State Supreme Court (California)
• Parties: , 403 P.2d 411 The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Daniel Allen ROBERTS, Defendant and Appellant. The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. Mae Blanche COLEMAN, Defendant and Respondent.

Page 155

45 Cal.Rptr. 155

63 Cal.2d 84, 403 P.2d 411

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Daniel Allen ROBERTS, Defendant and Appellant.

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. Mae Blanche COLEMAN, Defendant and Respondent.

Cr. 7466.

Supreme Court of California, In Bank.

June 29, 1965.

Nancy A. Rossi, Oakland, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for defendant and appellant.

Stanley Mosk and Thomas C. Lynch, Attys. Gen., Albert W. Harris, Jr., and Edward P. O'Brien, Deputy Attys. Gen., for plaintiff and appellant and plaintiff and respondent.

John A. Ertola, San Francisco, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for defendant and respondent.

TRAYNOR, Chief Justice.

A jury found the defendants guilty of first degree murder and fixed the penalty at death for Daniel Allen Roberts and life imprisonment for Mae Blanche Coleman. The trial court denied Roberts' motion for new trial but granted Mrs. Coleman's motion on the ground that involuntary statements were admitted in evidence against her. The People's appeal from the order granting Mrs. Coleman a new trial has been consolidated with Roberts' automatic appeal. (Pen.Code, §§ 1239, subd. (b).)

Mr. and Mrs. Luther Popejoy managed the apartment house in which they lived in San Francisco. At approximately 10 p. m. on June 20, 1962, Popejoy left the building to go to his job at a steel plant. When he returned the next morning he found his wife dead under a bed in their bedroom. She had been strangled, possibly with an electrical extension cord, after having suffered a blow on the nose. The time of death was sometime between 10:30 p. m. on June 20, when she was last seen alive, and 2:30 the following morning. There was testimony that it would have required considerable strength for one person to place the body under the bed. A man's watch, the victim's purse, a pair of red shoes with small steel heels, the rental agreements between the Popejoys and their tenants, and a rent receipt book were missing. There was no evidence that the apartment had been entered forcibly.

Defendants had lived in the apartment house as man and wife for several months. Popejoy testified that on his way to work on the night of the killing he saw them sitting on the front steps of the building. Another tenant testified that he met defendant Roberts in the cellar of the building at approximately 10:30 p. m. that night. Roberts offered him several dozen books of matches, which he was throwing away because he was 'cleaning up.' Roberts and the witness walked out of the cellar together and separated in front of the victim's door when Roberts said he intended to pay his rent. As the witness walked upstairs Roberts knocked on the door. The victim called, 'what do you want at this time of night?' and Roberts said that he wished to pay the rent. The witness saw the victim open her door and Roberts enter the apartment.

The police found Roberts' palmprint on the arm of a chair in the Popejoy apartment and his fingerprint near the bottom of the door between the living room and bedroom. In the defendants' apartment the police found a radio, two pairs of men's pants, and a note addressed to Roberts signed by Mrs. Coleman stating that she planned to leave him to go to Santa Barbara because he was being unfaithful to her. The card on the defendants' mailbox near the front door of the building with Roberts' name on it was missing.

Charles Roberts, defendant Roberts' brother, was the chief prosecution witness. He testified that he visited the defendants on June 20 at approximately 6 p. m. Defendant Roberts said that he planned to hold up a garment factory at 10 p. m. that evening. Charles agreed to take some of defendants' clothing to his home, and he left with the clothes by a side door at Roberts' direction to avoid being seen by the Popejoys. Charles next saw the defendants when they arrived at his home at approximately 2:30 a. m. on June 21. Roberts then told Charles, 'I think I hit her too hard,' and in response to Charles' question, 'hit who too hard?' Roberts answered, 'my landlady.' Roberts said that his landlady was under or by the bed. Mrs. Coleman was not present during this conversation. Charles agreed to drive the defendants to Sacramento. On the way Mrs. Coleman said that she had searched the Popejoy apartment and indicated that she had been present when Roberts killed the victim. Mrs. Coleman said she thought it would be best if the victim were dead so that they could not be identified. When they arrived in Sacramento Roberts had Charles pawn a watch that was identified at the trial as the one taken from the Popejoy apartment. They then went to the American River and threw in an electrical cord and a blue purse, which Roberts indicated had come from the Popejoy apartment. Mrs. Coleman told Charles that she had left a note in their apartment designed to mislead the police.

Charles' wife testified that the defendants' clothes were in Charles' automobile on the evening of June 20, that when the defendants arrived at her apartment after midnight that night Mrs. Coleman gave her a pair of black shoes with laces and large wedge heels, and that the defendants left with Charles. When Charles returned the following day he showed her a newspaper story about the killing. He also disposed of the shoes Mrs. Coleman had given her.

In early October 1962 an inspector from the San Francisco Police Department and a San Francisco Assistant District Attorney, armed with warrants for the defendants' arrest for murder, went to Oregon where defendants were being held on another criminal charge. By that time the police had gathered most of the evidence recited above. The investigators questioned both defendants, and parts of tape recordings of the interrogations were played for the jury.

Roberts told the investigators that he and Mrs. Coleman left the Popejoy apartment house sometime around the middle of June at approximately midnight or 1 a. m. They did not tell Mr. or Mrs. Popejoy that they were leaving. They left because Roberts had no job and had only $17.00. They hitchhiked to Marysville and then to Oroville, where they caught a freight train to Oregon. Roberts stated that he had not seen Mrs. Popejoy on the day he left San Francisco but that he saw Mr. Popejoy at about 9 p. m. when he and Mrs. Coleman were sitting on the outside steps and Mr. Popejoy left to go to work. He had not been in the Popejoys' apartment on that day and had not been in it since the last time he paid the rent, which he always paid in the daytime and never at night. He had never attempted to pay the rent at night and had never been anywhere near the Popejoy door after Mr. Popejoy had gone to work. He had only been inside the Popejoy apartment at the desk and had never at any time been in the bedroom.

In a separate interview, Mrs. Coleman first told the investigators that she had been living with Roberts for about three months at the Popejoy apartment house before they left San Francisco sometime after June 25. They left at about 3:30 or 4 a. m., hitchhiked to Marysville, and then took a freight train to Oregon. They left because Roberts had violated his parole and they had seen his parole officer in San Francisco. She had not been in the Popejoy apartment the evening before they left. After they saw Mr. Popejoy on his way to work, the went to their apartment where they remained until 2 or 3 a. m. when they left San Francisco.

When the investigators told Mrs. Coleman that they had talked to Roberts' brother Charles and knew how she and Roberts left San Francisco, she admitted that she and Roberts had gone to Charles' apartment at about 3 or 4 a. m. and asked him for a ride to Sacramento. In the morning Charles pawned a guitar and Roberts pawned his watch. She did not see Mrs. Popejoy the evening before and neither she nor Roberts attempted to pay the rent that night. She admitted writing the note left in the kitchen but claimed that she wrote it to make Roberts leave San Francisco. She wrote it about 2 a. m. when Roberts was in the Fillmore district for about two hours. When asked if she had ever seen a pair of Mrs. Popejoy's shoes, she said that Mrs. Popejoy had given her a pair of black shoes but that she could not remember what she had done with them.

Neither defendant testified at the trial.

Because of the introduction into evidence of defendants' statements and comment by the court and prosecutor on defendants' failure to testify, we requested briefs directed to the question whether the recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court in Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1, 84 S.Ct. 1489, 12 L.Ed.2d 653, and Escobedo v. State of Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 84 S.Ct. 1758, 12 L.Ed.2d 977, were applicable to this case. In the Escobedo case it was held that 'where * * * [a criminal] investigation is no longer a general inquiry into an unsolved crime but has begun to focus on a particular suspect, the suspect has been taken into police custody, the police carry out a process of interrogations that lends itself to elicting incriminating statements, the suspect has requested and been denied an opportunity to consult with his lawyer, and the police have not effectively warned him of his absolute constitutional right to remain silent, the accused has been denied 'the Assistance of Counsel' in violation of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution as 'made obligatory upon the States by the Fourteenth Amendment,' Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. , at 342, 83 S.Ct. [792,], at 795, 9 L.Ed.2d 799, and that no statement elicited by the police during the interrogation may be used against him at a criminal trial.' (Escobedo v. State of Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 490-491, 84 S.Ct. 1758, 1765.)

Conceding that the investigation into Mrs. Popejoy's murder had focused on defendants, that they were in police custody, that the interrogations by the investigators lent themselves to eliciting incriminating statements, and that...