People v. Seaton

• Decision Date: 09 August 2001
• Docket Number: No. S011425.,S011425.
• Citation: 110 Cal.Rptr.2d 441,26 Cal.4th 598,28 P.3d 175
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Ronald Harold SEATON, Defendant and Appellant.

110 Cal.Rptr.2d 441

26 Cal.4th 598

28 P.3d 175

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Ronald Harold SEATON, Defendant and Appellant.

No. S011425.

Supreme Court of California.

August 9, 2001.

As Modified September 26, 2001.

James T. Fousekis, Roger R. Myers, Dorothy A. Streutker, Tamara Mason-Williams, Matthew S. Covington and Joshua K. Koltun, San Francisco, under appointments by the Supreme Court, for Defendant and Appellant.

Daniel E. Lungren and Bill Lockyer, Attorneys General, George Williamson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Gary W. Schons, Assistant Attorney General, William M. Wood, Adrianne Denault, M. Eugenia Lopez and Matthew C. Mulford, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

KENNARD, J.

A jury convicted defendant Ronald Harold Seaton of one count of murder (Pen. Code, § 187),¹ and it found true special circumstance allegations of robbery murder and burglary murder (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(17)(A) & (G)). The jury also found that defendant had personally used a dangerous or deadly weapon in the commission of the offenses. (§ 12022, subd. (b).) The trial court found that defendant had a prior conviction for a serious felony. (§ 667.) At the penalty phase, the jury returned a verdict of death. Defendant's appeal to this court is automatic. (§ 1239, subd. (b).) We affirm the convictions and the judgment of death.

I. FACTS

A. Guilt Phase—Prosecution's Case

Willis Jones was a retired auto mechanic living in Riverside, California. He walked with crutches, and at home he moved around in a wheeled chair, but he was otherwise in good physical condition.

Jones's grandson, Mitchell Hayes, lived next door to Jones. On the night of April 25, 1986, Hayes worked at his mother's restaurant until about 10:35 p.m. After leaving work, Hayes saw defendant arguing with his girlfriend, Thelma Garrett, on a street near Hayes's home. Hayes recognized them because he was a friend of Garrett's son and had been to the house where defendant and Garrett lived.

After visiting a friend, Hayes headed home around 12:30 a.m. As he passed Jones's house, he heard loud scuffling noises inside. Through the open door, he entered the living room and saw someone run to the bathroom. Hayes went to the kitchen to get a knife to use as a weapon. Finding none, he entered the bedroom and saw Jones's body. Unsure whether Jones was alive, Hayes telephoned the police by calling 911, the emergency number. The 911 operator asked Hayes for Jones's address. Hayes could not remember it, so he went outside to look at the number. As he reentered the house, defendant came out of a bedroom, his face masked by a scarf or bandana. Defendant said, "It's not me, man," and hit Hayes across the face. A fight began, during which defendant's mask fell off. Hayes broke free from defendant and ran into the street. Defendant then ran off in the direction of his own house.

Hayes went home and told his brother-in-law, Robert Pead, what had happened. Pead went to Jones's house next door and found him lying on his bedroom floor with a hammer on his chest. He was not breathing.

When police officers arrived, Hayes told them defendant had attacked him and directed them to defendant's house. The officers rang the doorbell. After five to 10 minutes 12-year-old Latisha Garrett, the daughter of defendant's girlfriend, came to the door, followed shortly thereafter by defendant, who was then arrested. The police searched the house. They found a pair of bloodstained pants in the attic and a bloody pillowcase in defendant's bedroom. There were bloodstains on a bathroom towel and a spot of blood on the bathroom sink. A pair of wet men's undershorts, stained with blood, was hanging on a balcony railing, and a pair of wet men's tennis shoes was inside a bedroom cupboard.

Jones's bedroom had been ransacked. Bloody shoe prints were on the bedroom floor, on a drawer that had been pulled out of the dresser, and on items of clothing strewn on the floor. A suitcase on Jones's bed contained a bloody hammer. Edith Hayes, Jones's daughter, did not recognize the hammer as belonging to her father.

Also on the bed were a radio, a bloody pillow, a cardboard box, a tire iron, Jones's wallet, and papers that appeared to have been removed from the wallet. Some of Jones's property (a small television set, a fan, an electric drill, a package of ribs from the freezer, and two butcher knives) was stacked next to the front door, along with a pocket-knife that did not belong to Jones.

Dr. DeWitt Hunter performed an autopsy on Jones's body. Jones had 44 crush-type lacerations to his face and head. Most of the wounds were consistent with having been made by a blunt object such as a hammer, but several cuts behind his ear and on his hands appeared to have been caused by a knife.

Based on Dr. Hunter's examination of blood patterns depicted in photographs of the scene, he concluded that Jones had suffered two separate attacks: one at the head of the bed, where he probably lay bleeding for between five and fifteen minutes, and the other at the foot of the bed where his body was found. Dr. Hunter also concluded that Jones was alive during the second attack. This conclusion was based in large part on his observation of what appeared to be clotted blood at the foot of the bed, and his belief that blood that flows from a wound while the victim is alive tends to clot, while postmortem blood does not. Faye Springer, a criminalist with the California Department of Justice, agreed with Dr. Hunter that Jones had been attacked twice, based on her examination of photographs of the scene that depicted the blood splatter patterns on the walls, ceiling, and furniture in the room. She expressed no view on whether Jones was alive during the second attack.

Based on photographs of Jones's body, criminalist Springer concluded that two incisions on Jones's left forehead were consistent with having been made with the claw end of the hammer found at the scene, and that another mark on his head appeared to be a stab wound. She also conducted tests on the bloodstained pants found in defendant's attic. She testified that the blood in the stains was not defendant's, that it contained characteristics present in only .03 percent (3 in 10,000) of the Black population, and that Jones's blood had those characteristics. Springer also testified that the bloody shoe prints on Jones's floor were of the same size and tread design as the wet tennis shoes found in defendant's bedroom cupboard.

B. Guilt Phase—Defense Case

Defendant admitted killing Jones, but he claimed he did so in a sudden quarrel or heat of passion, not in the commission of a burglary or robbery. He testified that on the evening of the killing he went with his girlfriend Thelma Garrett to buy groceries and gin. On their way home, Garrett stopped at Jones's house and said she was going to borrow money from Jones. She asked defendant to take the groceries home and feed her children, then to return to Jones's house to escort her home. Defendant did so. Back at Jones's house, he saw Garrett, naked, standing between Jones's legs. Defendant was angry and wanted to hurt Garrett and Jones. After he and Garrett left Jones's house they argued, and defendant "body-slammed" Garrett, throwing her to the ground. At Garrett's suggestion, she and defendant then used the $24 Jones had loaned her to buy cocaine. They went home, smoked the cocaine, and shared a pint of gin. Defendant drank most of the gin, and he also drank a quart of beer.

Defendant continued to argue with Garrett. Finally, he told her he was going to play chess. Instead, he went to Jones's house to ask what had happened between Jones and Garrett. There, he drank some of Jones's homemade wine. As they talked, Jones called Garrett a "bitch," and defendant, angry, hit Jones with his fist. Jones fell on the bed, then sat up with a hammer in his hand. Defendant grabbed the hammer and hit Jones with it until Jones stopped moving.

When he realized Jones was dead, defendant panicked, and decided to make it appear as if Jones had been robbed. He ransacked the house and stacked items belonging to Jones next to the door. He threw Jones's body on the floor, took his wallet, and dumped the contents on the bed. When he was about to leave, he saw Mitchell Hayes in front of the house. When defendant went out the front door, Hayes attacked him. Defendant denied wearing a mask during the fight.

Defendant admitted prior felony convictions for robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.

Thelma Garrett testified on defendant's behalf. Her testimony mirrored defendant's in most respects. In explaining why she had taken her clothes off at Jones's house, she said she had occasionally worked as a prostitute, but maintained that defendant had not known she did, thus explaining his anger when he saw her with Jones. On rebuttal, Riverside Police Officer Ronald Mackey testified that Garrett had made a tape-recorded statement to him admitting that defendant had known she was a prostitute.

Dr. Irving Root, a pathologist who had performed more than 18,000 autopsies, challenged the testimony of Dr. DeWitt Hunter, the pathologist who had testified for the prosecution. Dr. Root disagreed that certain cuts on Jones's head were knife wounds, concluding that they most likely were inflicted by the claw end of a hammer. He also disagreed with Dr. Hunter's testimony that Jones was attacked at two separate locations in the bedroom and was probably alive at the time of the second attack. In Dr. Root's view, the lack of bleeding under the skull was evidence that many of the head wounds occurred when Jones was dying or dead. He explained that Dr. Hunter was wrong in stating that blood flowing from the body after death does not clot. In Dr. Root's opinion, Jones became unconscious within a minute after defendant began hitting him and he died within five minutes, before he was moved to the second location. The large pool of blood at...