People v. Sakarias

• Decision Date: 27 March 2000
• Docket Number: No. S024349.,S024349.
• Citation: 995 P.2d 152,94 Cal.Rptr.2d 17,22 Cal.4th 596
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Peter SAKARIAS, Defendant and Appellant.

94 Cal.Rptr.2d 17

22 Cal.4th 596

995 P.2d 152

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Peter SAKARIAS, Defendant and Appellant.

No. S024349.

Supreme Court of California.

March 27, 2000.

Rehearing Denied May 24, 2000.

Cliff Gardner, under appointment by the Supreme Court; Gardner & Derham and Robert Derham, San Francisco, for Defendant and Appellant.

Daniel E. Lungren and Bill Lockyer, Attorneys General, Robert R. Anderson, Acting Chief Assistant Attorney General, Carol Wendelin Pollack, Assistant Attorney General, Lance E. Winters, Susan Lee Frierson and Michael Keller, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

WERDEGAR, J.

Defendant Peter Sakarias was convicted of first degree murder in the death of Viivi Piirisild, with special circumstances of murder in the commission of robbery and burglary (count 1; Pen.Code, §§ 187, subd. (a), 190.2, subd. (a)(17)),¹ and of robbery (count 2; § 211), two counts of burglary (counts 3 and 4; § 459), theft of telephone services (count 5; § 502.7, subd. (a)(1)), and concealing and selling stolen property (count 6; § 496, former subd. 1, now subd. (a)). After a trial on penalty and denial of defendant's motions for new trial and modification of penalty (§ 190.4, subd. (e)), defendant was sentenced to death for the murder and to a determinate term of 18 years, stayed, for the remaining counts. This appeal is automatic. (§ 1239, subd. (b).) We affirm the judgment.

Facts

Defendant was accused and convicted of killing Viivi Piirisild in her North Hollywood home on July 12, 1988. Piirisild was stabbed, cut and bludgeoned with a knife and hatchet by defendant and his friend, Tauno Waidla. Waidla was tried separately before defendant's trial and was also convicted of the murder and sentenced to death.

Guilt Phase Evidence

Prosecution

Defendant, Waidla, Viivi Piirisild and Avo Piirisild, the victim's husband, were all of Estonian background. The Piirisilds were active in the Baltic American Freedom League, an organization seeking to focus public attention on the Soviet occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and to help immigrants from those states. Through that group, they met defendant and Waidla, who had defected together from the Soviet Army and had come to the United States in 1987. Avo Piirisild took defendant and Waidla to the Estonian House, and the Piirisilds had the men to dinner. Defendant later moved to Georgia. With Viivi Piirisild's assistance, Waidla obtained a job in Washington, D.C., but, when that did not work out, he returned to the Los Angeles area. Because he had no place else to stay, the Piirisilds invited him to live at their home, which he did for about a year.

Waidla performed various chores in exchange for his room and board, including remodeling work on the guesthouse in which he stayed. At some point, Viivi Piirisild said that if Waidla finished his work around the house he could have an inoperable Triumph Spitfire sports car that was in the backyard. Although unhappy with his wife's promise, Avo Piirisild agreed to uphold it.

One day in early 1988, defendant visited the Piirisild house while the Piirisilds' daughter, Rita Hughes, was also visiting. In conversation with Hughes and Waidla, defendant said he preferred life in Estonia because there one could take advantage of the corrupt government to get rich. He spoke with disdain of "working stiffs" he had met in the United States, who worked all their lives only to achieve material success when they were old. He and Waidla, he said, would instead go to Hawaii and live on the beach.

In May 1988, Waidla refused to do any more work on a sprinkler system he was installing in the yard and demanded $3,000 or $4,000 from Viivi Piirisild, threatening otherwise to report to the building department the existence of the guest-house, which had been built or rebuilt without proper permits. Viivi telephoned Avo at his office; they agreed to tell Waidla to leave. Although angry and making threats against Avo, Waidla packed his belongings, and defendant picked him up. Sometime after Waidla left, Viivi received a postcard from him and defendant with a picture of a snake on it.

On the weekend of July 4, 1988, the Piirisilds went to their second home, a cabin in Crestline. On departing, they left the cabin in a clean and orderly state. On the afternoon of July 4, after the Piirisilds returned to their North Hollywood house, defendant and Waidla came by unannounced in a pickup truck. When Avo answered the door, Waidla said he wanted the Triumph. Avo told him he did not have the pink slip at home, could not get it that day, and was leaving the next day for a two-week business trip. Waidla said they needed money for gas to get to San Francisco. Avo did not give them money, but went with them to the gas station and filled the tank on his credit card, after which they drove him home and left.

During July 5-10, telephone calls were made from the Crestline cabin to various places in North America and Europe, even though Viivi was in North Hollywood and no one else had permission to stay at the cabin. When, after Viivi's death, Avo accompanied police to the cabin, he found it messy and disordered. There were signs of forced entry. Defendant's fingerprints, along with Waidla's, were found in the cabin, although defendant had never accompanied the Piirisilds there. A storage area underneath the cabin in which the Piirisilds kept a hatchet, among other equipment, had been broken into. A radio telephone was missing, and was later recovered from a pawnshop where defendant had pawned it on July 11.

On July 8, Viivi Piirisild telephoned FBI Special Agent George Charon. She told him defendant and Waidla had called her, asking if they could come to her house to retrieve some things they had left there. Viivi told Charon she was certain they had not forgotten anything and had told them not to come over, but that their call concerned or frightened her, especially because they knew Avo was out of town. At Charon's suggestion, Viivi agreed she would call 911 if defendant and Waidla came to her house.

On July 11, Viivi talked by phone to her daughter, Hughes. Hughes offered to come stay with her mother while Avo was gone, but Viivi declined, saying it was not safe for Hughes to come home. Over the next few days Hughes called several times but the phone went unanswered.

On the morning of July 12, 1988, Viivi Piirisild went to the dentist. She left there around 10:45 a.m. The same morning, Donald Hussey, a neighbor of the Piirisilds, saw two men, whom he later identified as defendant and Waidla, walk past his house toward the Piirisilds' house. They gave him "hard looks" as they passed. About 45 minutes later Hussey saw the two men leave the Piirisilds' front yard and walk back past his house, now carrying several shopping bags, and without the jackets they had been wearing earlier. When they passed Hussey, defendant asked where Hart Street was. Hussey told them it was back in the direction from which they were coming, but they continued in the same direction they were going.

When Avo Piirisild was unable to reach Viivi by telephone for a few days, he asked Bernard Nurmsen, a friend, to check on her. Nurmsen went to the house on July 14, entered and discovered Viivi's body lying on the floor of her bedroom.

Police detective Victor Pietrantoni, with his partner David Crews, investigated the crime scene. The back door showed signs of forced entry: the glass was broken and the deadbolt cover unscrewed. From the odor of decomposition and the condition of Viivi Piirisild's body, Pietrantoni estimated she had been dead two or three days.

The detectives found bloodstains on the floor of the living room, including a dried pool of blood covered by a throw rug, and on the living room walls, including an area behind a sofa, where they also found unopened, bloodstained mail. From blood drops on the hall carpeting and the depressed nap of the carpet itself, Pietrantoni inferred Viivi's body had been dragged from the living room down the hall to the bedroom, where it was found lying on the bedroom floor, partly covered with bedclothes. Blood spatters were on the bedroom ceiling and wall, and on a photograph standing on the bureau. From the fact some of these spatters formed an approximate line and from the nature of the victim's injuries, Pietrantoni inferred the spatters were the result of blood flying off a weapon as it traveled in an arc. There were also spatters along a piece of furniture near Viivi's head, consistent with blows being struck to her head as she lay on the floor.

Detective Pietrantoni saw many blunt force and cutting-type injuries on the victim's body, most to the front and top of her face. Based on the injuries and the physical evidence, he opined she had been first attacked shortly after entering the house, had lain bleeding for several minutes in the living room, and then had been dragged to the bedroom, where she was again attacked.

Dr. James Ribe, the deputy medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Viivi Piirisild, testified to her wounds. Viivi had been stabbed four times in the left chest with a single-edged knife. Two of those wounds passed through internal organs and were potentially fatal. She had two chopping wounds to the forehead and one on the top of her head, which penetrated the skull. Because the two forehead wounds were nonhemorrhagic, Dr. Ribe concluded they were probably inflicted near or after the victim's death. The higher chopping wound was hemorrhagic and had been inflicted with "tremendous" force. Viivi also suffered at least five blunt force impacts to the head and neck, which fractured her skull and facial bones, knocked out her teeth and broke her larynx. The facial injuries were inflicted by "powerful blows with a heavy, blunt object." Dr. Ribe attributed Viivi's death to the combination of all her wounds, rather than to any single one of them.

At 2:30 p.m. on ...