People v. Sanchez
| Decision Date | 01 December 2016 |
| Docket Number | B262845 |
| Parties | THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. JASON SANCHEZ, Defendant and Appellant. |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS
California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.
(Los Angeles County Super. Ct. No. KA101576)
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, George Genesta, Judge. Affirmed as modified.
Laura Schaefer, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General, Lance E. Winters, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Steven D. Matthews, Supervising Deputy Attorney General, and Ryan M. Smith, Deputy Attorney General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
This is a case primarily about how the natural and probable consequences doctrine applies to gang confrontations. The key questions we answer are (1) whether defendant and appellant Jason Sanchez (defendant)—a member of the North Side Pomona criminal street gang (North Side)—intended to aid and abet an assault after driving a fellow gang member and another man to a liquor store located in territory claimed by rival gang South Side Pomona (South Side), and (2) whether the shooting that resulted after the gang banging started between the rival gangsters was foreseeable. We also consider defendant's various other assignments of error to the bench trial that resulted in his conviction: that the court improperly relied on its knowledge of other gang cases to convict him, that his request to represent himself made only at the end of trial should have been granted, that his retained trial attorney provided constitutionally deficient representation, that the court wrongly prevented him from inquiring about the character of one of the South Side gang members, and that the court improperly convicted him of being both a principal and an accessory after the fact.
Late in the evening on March 29, 2013, defendant drove two men to the Sunny Liquor store in South Side territory.1North Side member Daniel Barrios (Barrios) sat in the back seat of defendant's SUV, and another man unidentified at trial sat in the front passenger seat. When the three men (collectively, the North Side group) arrived in the area of the liquor store, they encountered a group that included, among others, two South Side gang members, Everett Cervantes (Cervantes) and Marco Geary (Geary), and two women, Darlene Ruiz (Ruiz) and Rosalinda Mora (Mora) (collectively, the South Side group).
There is not much dispute about what happened after members of the North Side and South Side groups were within a few feet of each other and exchanged words. Geary punched Barrios in the face. Defendant briefly advanced closer to the fight with his hands raised. Barrios then pulled a gun and fired a shot toward the South Side group, at least some of whom began running away, and defendant and the front passenger then started heading back toward the SUV. Ruiz looked back toward Barrios when she heard the gunshot and Barrios fired another bullet, which went through her arm and lodged in her chest. Back at the SUV, defendant flipped one of his license plates up to conceal the license number, and he drove off seconds later with Barrios and his other passenger in tow.
The main factual dispute at trial was instead about the events leading up to the shooting, including who said what when. The confrontation between the two groups was captured by multiple video cameras at Sunny Liquor, but the cameras did not capture any audio of what transpired. Ruiz and Mora, who were both part of the South Side group, testified at trial and providedthe only direct evidence of the verbal exchange that preceded the assaults.
Ruiz viewed video from surveillance camera 9, which faced away from the store toward an outdoor fenced area on store property closer to La Mesa. Ruiz confirmed that it was her group that can be seen walking along La Mesa in the background at the top of the video screen. Ruiz explained that prior to that scene, the group had been hanging out at a trailer park across the street from Sunny Liquor, which places the group on Mission initially. Ruiz also explained they were on their way to a party.
Ruiz testified that as they walked in the vicinity of Sunny Liquor, Ruiz saw a black "Tahoe" pulling into the store's parking lot and noticed "some guys" in the Tahoe looking at the group, in a "serious" way, not a friendly way. The SUV is not directly visible in the camera 9 video, which indicates that it turned onto La Mesa from Mission.2 Ruiz did not provide a clear timeline of the South Side group's passage down La Mesa Street, which runs perpendicular to Mission Boulevard.
The camera 9 video provides some of the details and timing of the South Side group's movement. The group was walking along in a smaller subgroup of four and a group of two that followed. The group of four pauses past a driveway to the Sunny Liquor parking lot, and the group of two follows, slowly crossing the driveway. The headlights of defendant's SUV are then on the backs of the two stragglers as defendant turns into the parking lot. The group of two then catches up with the waiting group offour, and at this point, the SUV is inside the parking lot. (On the camera 1 video, also shown to Ruiz, the SUV can be seen beginning to turn into a parking space inside the lot at this time.) Cervantes, wearing a white t-shirt, then steps farther out into the street and a few feet back toward Mission, where he pauses facing the liquor store parking lot. The front passenger side door of defendant's SUV opens and a man gets out; defendant's driver side door is also open. Cervantes then moves closer to the parking lot, and a second person (who defendant identifies in his opening brief as Mora) stands between Cervantes and the parking lot, putting an arm up as if to hold him back. Cervantes pauses briefly, and then moves toward the parking lot, stopping to set a can of beer down on the way, and Geary follows with him. At the same time, defendant, now fully out of the SUV (with his hands concealed in a front pocket of his sweatshirt), walks toward the South Side group, as does Barrios, who by this point has also exited the SUV.
Ruiz also testified about the sequence of events. She said that the driver (defendant) and front passenger got out of the SUV and walked toward Ruiz's group. One of them called Cervantes over. Both defendant and the front passenger asked Cervantes where he was from. Cervantes replied South Side Pomona. According to Ruiz, the passenger previously sitting in the backseat of the SUV (Barrios) asked Cervantes where he was from, and Cervantes again said "South Side." Barrios replied, "North Side." "[Cervantes] said fuck North Side and that's when [Geary] came and socked him [Barrios] in the face and the guy fell."
Mora provided a similar account of events. She testified a "black truck" caught her attention as her South Side groupwalked by Sunny Liquor.3 The truck parked in front of the store, the driver (defendant) and front passenger got out, and they asked her group if they "banged." Cervantes said, "South Side Pomona." Another man (Barrios) got out of the backseat of the truck and walked over, and the men then "started telling each other where they were from, banging." Mora heard, "North Side Pomona" and someone from her group said, "South Side Pomona." At that point, Mora started walking away because she "knew something was going to happen." She elaborated, explaining: "[I]f two . . . people from different gangs are going to be telling each other something, obviously something is going to happen." Something did in fact happen, namely, the fistfight and shooting we have already described. Mora testified she heard a gunshot, but did not immediately realize Ruiz had been hit.
After the shooting, Ruiz went to the hospital, accompanied by Mora. At the hospital, Ruiz initially falsely told police she was shot in a drive-by shooting. Mora, too, initially gave the police a false account. But both women testified they subsequently told the interviewing officer the truth about what happened once they overcame their fear or nervousness.
The prosecutor offered evidence that defendant had been involved in another assault with a deadly weapon at a liquor store in gang territory approximately four years earlier. That assault was also captured on surveillance video, which the prosecutor played for the court. The victim of that assault, James Thomas, also testified.
Thomas recalled that on June 1, 2009, at about 8:45 p.m., he walked to the J & W Liquor Store on Foothill Boulevard in Pomona. Two men got out of a black four-door sedan and walked into the store behind Thomas. Thomas noticed that the driver remained in the sedan. When Thomas completed his purchase at the counter and turned to leave, one of the men from the sedan with tattoos on his head (defendant, as later identified in a six-pack photospread by Thomas) asked him where he was from. Thomas replied that he was from Cincinnati, and pointed to his Cincinnati Reds baseball cap. Defendant then asked Thomas if he was a "blood." Thomas understood this to be a question about whether he was in a gang. Thomas said "no" and added that he had "friends that are bloods, crips, Black, White, Mexican, people all over." Defendant said, "That's cool."
When Thomas walked outside the store, the driver of the sedan was standing outside his car. He asked Thomas why he was "mad dogging" him, and Thomas replied that the man had been staring at him and Thomas...
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