People v. Sprague

• Court: California Court of Appeals
• Writing for the Court: HULL, Acting P. J.
• Decision Date: 25 October 2019
• Docket Number: C085778
• Citation: People v. Sprague, C085778 (Cal. App. Oct 25, 2019)
• Parties: THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. CHRISTOPHER HARRISON SPRAGUE, Defendant and Appellant.

THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. CHRISTOPHER HARRISON SPRAGUE, Defendant and Appellant.

C085778

COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA THIRD APPELLATE DISTRICT (Siskiyou)

October 25, 2019

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED

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 This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.

(Super. Ct. No. MCYKCRBF201515742)

THE APPEAL

Defendant Christopher Harrison Sprague brutally assaulted his wife, J.S., in the presence of their three-year-old son.

A jury convicted defendant of corporal injury to a spouse resulting in a traumatic condition with a finding that he inflicted great bodily injury on J.S; false imprisonment by violence or menace; assault by means of force likely to cause great bodily injury that is, by strangulation; and misdemeanor child endangerment. The jury found the defendant not guilty of attempted murder and not guilty of making criminal threats. Defendant was also charged with assault on J.S. by means of force likely to cause great bodily injury, that is, by kicking on a different occasion but the jury convicted defendant of a lesser included offense, misdemeanor assault.

On appeal, defendant contends: (1) Insufficient evidence supports the jury's finding of great bodily injury attendant to the charge of corporal injury to a spouse. (2) The trial court erred by failing to instruct the jury sua sponte that an injury resulting from strangulation does not necessarily constitute great bodily injury. (3) Defendant is entitled to 15 percent custody credit not only as to his presentence custody but also as to his future prison sentence.

We affirm the judgment.

THE EVIDENCE

Prosecution case

In the early morning hours of November 23, 2015, J.S. woke up at home and found defendant standing naked on a painting tarp. She saw an axe on the counter and asked defendant what he was doing with it. He answered: "I'm going to chop you into little fucking pieces with it." J.S. ran back to the bedroom, where their son and her cell phone were. Before she could call 911, defendant tackled her and began to beat her. He punched her repeatedly in the face, the back of the head, the ribs, the spine, and the vagina. He kicked her in the vagina and stomach and threw her across the room, where she landed against a bedroom window and broke it. Feeling as though he was trying to punch her nose through the back of her head, she screamed for help "as many times as [she] could between blows."

Defendant threw J.S. on the bed face down and began to strangle her, but she partly blocked him by getting a finger between her neck and his hands. He turned her over, pinned her arms on the bed with his legs, and began to strangle her again, saying,"I'm going to kill you. You are going to die. I'm going to watch." Her throat started to make gurgling and crackling sounds; she could not speak. She "blacked out." When she woke up, defendant was picking her up and punching her again.

As J.S. lay face down, defendant sat on top of her, put his fingers in her mouth on either side like a fishhook, and pulled outward, saying, "You are going to die." She felt her mouth split open and tear. She bit his fingers as hard as she could.

J.S.'s son woke up, tried to wipe the blood from J.S.'s face, and begged defendant not to kill her. Defendant said: "[E]verything is going to be fine now because your whore mother will be gone and everything will be fine, and I won't see you for a very long time." Taking advantage of the distraction, J.S. tried to escape the room, but defendant tackled her again and bit her face twice, drawing blood.

Toward the end of the beating, J.S. was "just trying to stay conscious." She remembered being on the ground as defendant was holding their son, and "losing consciousness." Just then, she saw a police officer stick his gun through a hole in the door and order defendant to stop.

Police responded to three separate 911 calls reporting the incident. One caller said, "The guy's in there killing her" and heard defendant saying, "Let 'em come, I'll fucking kill you."

Yreka Police Officer Nick Friden could hear J.S. screaming for help as soon as he got out of his patrol car, 100 feet from the house; as he approached, he heard defendant calling J.S. a "fucking whore." Officers Friden, Kash Hasemeyer, and Sergeant Mark Gilman went into the house, which had been converted into apartments. They failed to break in through a nailed-shut door in the hallway, but through the hole they made in the door they saw defendant sitting naked on the bed and holding the parties' son. Officer Friden ordered defendant at gunpoint to raise his hands and let the child go. After J.S. got out of the room, the officers arrested defendant. Defendant continued to call J.S. a "cheating whore" and to say she "deserved it."

J.S. was bleeding from her face, with face and lips "really swollen." Her neck, which had dried blood on it, was very red.

Taken to the emergency room, J.S. proved to have suffered soft tissue injuries that included severe bruising on her face, neck, and torso, a bite on her cheek, and profuse bleeding. She also had injuries to her mouth and teeth that required later care by a dentist. Photographs presented in evidence documented her injuries. J.S. remained at the hospital for six to eight hours.

We will set out the medical testimony as to J.S.'s injuries in more detail in part I of the Discussion, post.

Defense case

Defendant testified that on the evening of November 22, 2015, while J.S. was out of the house, he found and read her diary, which disclosed multiple extramarital affairs and shattered his belief that their marriage was solid; he wrote a response in her diary and also in a separate letter. Excerpts from the diary and defendant's responses were placed in evidence.

The next day, after J.S. returned in the early evening, defendant said he was going out to get cigarettes, but instead spent hours drinking in bars. He knew he was an alcoholic and excessive drinking could affect his behavior.

Defendant intended to get a hotel room to avoid a confrontation over the diary, but decided instead to go home and sleep on the couch, then leave the next morning after J.S. took their son with her to work. He remembered walking home and falling asleep on the couch. The next thing he remembered was pain shooting through his left hand from someone biting his finger. Impulsively, he grabbed J.S. (not realizing who it was) and bit her in the face until she let go, then took her by the hair and threw her into a corner, where she fell against something and collapsed. Only then did he realize that it was his wife. He saw their son standing in front of him and said something to him, but did notremember what. The next thing he remembered was the police shining a light in his face and ordering him to put his hands up. He remembered nothing else about his assault on J.S., but admitted he had inflicted the injuries shown in the photographs of her. He had not intended to kill her.

LEGAL PROCEEDINGS

Defendant was charged as follows:

Count 1: Attempted murder in violation of Penal Code sections 187, subdivision (a) and 664; (statutory section references that follows are to the Penal Code unless otherwise set forth);

Count 2: Corporal injury to a spouse resulting in a traumatic condition in violation of section 273.5, subdivision (a) resulting in great bodily injury under section 12022.7, subdivision (a);

Count 3: False imprisonment by violence or menace in violation of section 236;

Count 4: Assault by means of force likely to cause great bodily injury, that is, strangulation in violation of section 245, subdivision (a)(4);

Count 5: Assault by means of force likely to cause great bodily injury, that is, kicking, on a separate occasion in violation of section 245, subdivision (a)(4);

Count 6: Making criminal threats in violation of section 422; and

Count 7 Misdemeanor child endangerment in violation of section 273a, subdivision (b).

The jury found defendant guilty as alleged in counts 2, 3, 4 and 7. The jury found defendant not guilty of attempted murder as alleged in count 1 and making criminal threats as alleged in count 6. The jury found defendant not guilty of assault as alleged in count 5, but guilty of the lesser included offense of misdemeanor assault in violation of section 240.

The trial court sentenced defendant to seven years in state prison (the three-year midterm on count 2 plus a consecutive four-year midterm on the great bodily injury enhancement, stayed sentence on the remaining felony counts under section 654 and 60 days in jail on the misdemeanors to be served concurrent with the remaining sentence. The court awarded 744 days of presentence custody credit, consisting of 647 actual days and 97 conduct days.

DISCUSSION

ISufficiency of the Evidence of Great Bodily Injury

Defendant argues the evidence was insufficient to support the jury's finding that he inflicted great bodily injury on J.S when he beat her.

Dr. Sandra Saunders, the emergency room (ER) physician who saw J.S. on the night of the incident, testified as follows:

J.S. had "a lot of trauma to her face. It . . . is kind of hard to forget." This included "a large amount of swelling around her mouth, mainly. Her lower lip was very markedly swollen, had a lot of bruising. [¶] She had swelling on her left cheek with a puncture wound there" from a bite.

J.S. said her lips became swollen when "she was held face down and had the sides of her mouth pulled apart, tried to rip her mouth open." This account was consistent with the laceration on the right corner of her mouth.

J.S. had "a lot of bruising around her neck . . . clear across the front part of her neck and around the side[,]" consistent with her claim that she had been strangled. To cause such bruising requires "a...