People v. Slaughter

• Decision Date: 22 March 1984
• Docket Number: Cr. 22896
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: , 677 P.2d 854 The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. Terry L. SLAUGHTER, Defendant and Respondent.

Page 448

200 Cal.Rptr. 448

35 Cal.3d 629, 677 P.2d 854

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. Terry L. SLAUGHTER, Defendant and Respondent.

Cr. 22896.

Supreme Court of California.

March 22, 1984.

Linda Ludlow, Deputy Atty. Gen., San Francisco, for plaintiff and appellant.

Peter R. Silten, Deputy State Public Defender, San Francisco, for defendant and respondent.

BROUSSARD, Justice.

The People appeal from an order of the superior court denying their motion under Penal Code section 871.5 ¹ to reinstate a charge accusing defendant of the murder of Russell Bradstreet. This appeal requires us to determine the standard of review of a magistrate's ruling when that ruling is challenged by a motion for reinstatement under section 871.5, a question of first impression in this court.

The Legislature enacted section 871.5 in 1980 to provide an alternative method for review of a magistrate's decision dismissing a criminal charge. Under section 739, the prosecutor could file an information including dismissed charges when the defendant had been held to answer on a transactionally related charge; ² the defendant could then challenge the information by motion under section 995. (We refer to this form of judicial review as section 739 review.) Section 871.5 provided a new avenue of review--a motion in superior court to reinstate the dismissed charge--applicable whenever there was no transactionally related charge.

Under section 739 review, when the magistrate makes express findings of fact, the reviewing court is bound by such findings if supported by substantial evidence. If however, the magistrate renders no findings, the reviewing court may find the dismissal erroneous as a matter of law whenever the evidence provides a rational basis for believing that the defendant is guilty of the offense. As we shall explain, we believe the Legislature adopted the same standard for section 871.5 review when it provided in section 871.5 for motions to reinstate charges erroneously dismissed "as a matter of law" (§ 871.5, subd. (b)). Applying this standard to the present case, we conclude that the superior court erred in denying the People's motion to reinstate the murder charge.

I.

By complaint filed in August of 1980, defendant Terry L. Slaughter was accused of murder (§ 187) and possession of a concealable firearm by an ex-felon (§ 12021). ³ At his preliminary hearing, the following evidence was presented:

Russell Bradstreet worked as a uniformed security guard and carried a .38 caliber pistol. In the early morning hours of July 22, 1980 Bradstreet was on duty in a marked security car, parked so as to be available to respond to calls for security service. At some time prior to 5 a.m., Bradstreet was killed by a .22 caliber bullet that entered the back of his neck.

Sergeant Michael Sitterud of the Oakland Police Department's homicide detail arrived at the scene at 5:15 a.m. Bradstreet's security car was parked at a vacant gas station on the corner of 73d Avenue and East 14th Street in Oakland. The driver's door was open, and the window rolled down. Bradstreet's body lay half in and half out of the car. His pistol and wallet were missing. The car's radio was on, and a hand microphone that connected to the radio was lying on the pavement by the body. The window of the passenger door had a bullet hole through it, and glass fragments were scattered on the ground nearby. Sergeant Sitterud concluded that the hole had resulted from a shot fired from the direction of a five-foot high cinder block wall which separated the gas station from a residence. There was no indication that either the home or the station had been burglarized.

Twelve days later, on August 3, defendant was arrested near Santa Barbara. He was driving southbound on Highway 101 in a stolen car. Bradstreet's pistol was discovered under the right front seat of this car.

Sergeant Sitterud interrogated defendant about the Bradstreet homicide the following day. Defendant talked freely, and the questioning was repeated on tape. The tape recording was admitted into evidence at the preliminary hearing.

In his recorded statement, defendant said that he came from Venice, California, to the Oakland home of his cousin about two weeks before the homicide. He met Edward Forward and they began doing "four or five a night burglaries." Forward would generally drive his car to the Oakland hills, select the homes to be burglarized, and then carry out the entries himself, leaving defendant in the car as lookout. Defendant said that he feared Forward and felt he had little choice but to cooperate in the burglaries.

In the early morning of July 22, Forward drove defendant to a home on 73d Avenue "that we were supposedly going to burglarize." Forward parked at the curb, "got out of the car, went to the trunk of the car, got something out of the trunk of his car, and went along the side of a house." Defendant was acting as lookout "like I normally do." He did not follow Forward's movements because "I know what he was going to do, what I thought he was going to do, I thought he was going to do a burglary.... And that's what I thought he was doing, going to the side of the house to check it out."

A short while later, defendant heard "a couple of shots--maybe three, I'm not sure--but I heard a couple of shots." He thought "somebody had shot at [Forward], you know, from him checking out the window or something." Then Forward "came running back from the side of the house to the back of the car, threw something in the trunk, slammed it down, got in the car, and sped toward [the apartment he shared with defendant's cousin]." Forward seemed "panicky like" but never would talk about the shots. He did not show defendant any wallet or identification. Defendant learned about the shooting from news broadcasts later that day.

About a week after the homicide, Forward showed defendant a snub-nosed .38 pistol. He did not talk much about the gun, he "just told me that the gun was hot and that it came from a dead man." Defendant admitted that he and Forward "did some burglaries" after July 22, although defendant stated he did so out of fear.

On August 2d, Forward threatened defendant. Defendant then telephoned his mother in Venice in an attempt to obtain a ticket out of Oakland. When this failed, he stole Forward's car late at night and headed south. When the car broke down, defendant abandoned it and stole another. He transferred to the stolen car not only his own belongings but also some of Forward's property from the trunk, including fur coats and a .38 pistol. Defendant drove this second car until he was stopped and arrested south of Santa Barbara.

In the course of his statement to Sergeant Sitterud, defendant indicated he had seen a .22 caliber rifle, another pistol, and considerable stolen property in the apartment where Forward was living. Subsequently, Sitterud obtained a search warrant for the premises. The execution of the search warrant at Forward's apartment turned up a pistol and most of the stolen property that defendant had mentioned. In addition, the police found "parts of the .22 rifle [defendant] had talked about."

After hearing all the evidence, the magistrate held defendant to answer for the weapon offense (§ 12021) but refused to bind him over for murder. The magistrate stated, "I think any murder liability would be a vicarious liability as pointed out in [defense counsel's] memorandum, but even that is stretching too far. I do not see where there could be a holding order on the [murder] charge."

The information filed in superior court alleged only a violation of section 12021, but the prosecutor also filed a "Motion to Compel Reinstatement of Complaint" pursuant to section 871.5. This recently enacted statute permits the prosecution, under specified circumstances, ⁴ to "make a motion in the superior court ... to compel the magistrate to reinstate [a dismissed] complaint or a portion thereof ...." (§ 871.5, subd. (a).) The statute provides that the "superior court shall hear and determine the motion on the basis of the record of the proceedings before the magistrate" and that "[t]he only ground for the motion shall be that, as a matter of law, the magistrate erroneously dismissed the action or a portion thereof." (Id., subds. (c) and (b).)

In his motion to compel reinstatement of the murder charge against defendant, the prosecutor in the present case contended that section 871.5 should be interpreted similarly to section 739, so as to permit reinstatement whenever there exists a reasonable interpretation of the evidence which would support the charge. The prosecutor noted that defendant had confessed to conspiring with Forward to commit burglary; he argued that the evidence was reasonably susceptible of the view that Forward killed Bradstreet while attempting to perpetrate that burglary, in which case Forward would be guilty of murder under the felony-murder rule (§ 189), and defendant would be liable as an accomplice (see People v. Medina (1974) 41 Cal.App.3d 438, 452, 116 Cal.Rptr. 133, and cases there cited). The superior court nevertheless denied the motion to compel reinstatement, and the prosecution appealed.

II.

We begin by reviewing the settled principles defining the role of the committing magistrate and the scope of judicial review of a magistrate's dismissal order under section 739. Section 872 provides that if "it appears from the [preliminary] examination that a public offense has been committed, and there is sufficient cause to believe the defendant guilty thereof, the magistrate must make or indorse on the complaint an order" holding the defendant to answer for the offense. "The term 'sufficient cause' is generally equivalent to 'reasonable and probable cause,' that is, such a state of facts as would lead a man of ordinary caution or prudence to believe and conscientiously entertain a strong suspicion of the guilt of the accused." (People v....