People v. Stone
| Decision Date | 02 March 2020 |
| Docket Number | B293532 |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
| Parties | THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. CHRISTOPHER LEE STONE et al., Defendants and Appellants. |
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS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 This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.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. TA142441)
APPEALS from judgments of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Ricardo R. Ocampo, Judge. Affirmed and remanded with directions.
Mark D. Lenenberg for Defendant and Appellant Christopher Lee Stone.
Kathy R. Moreno for Defendant and Appellant Dan Michael Young.
Xavier Becerra, Attorney General, Lance E. Winters, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Paul M. Roadarmel, Jr., Supervising Deputy Attorney General, and Stephanie A. Miyoshi, Deputy Attorney General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
Christopher Lee Stone and Dan Michael Young appeal from the judgments entered after a jury convicted Stone on one count of murder and one count of attempted murder, Young on multiple counts of murder and attempted murder, and both on one count of possession of a firearm by a felon. Stone and Young challenge their convictions and sentences on numerous grounds. We agree with them the trial court erred in imposing certain monetary assessments without determining their ability to pay and in not awarding Stone sufficient presentence custody credits. We therefore remand with directions to give Stone and Young an opportunity to request a hearing on their ability to pay the assessments and to correct Stone's presentence custody credits. Otherwise, we affirm.
On October 18, 2014 Christal Smith hosted a birthday party for her child at a restaurant in Carson. The child's father, Richard Lawrence, was incarcerated and did not attend. Stone and Young, however, did attend. During the party a fight broke out, and Los Angeles Sheriff's Department deputies responded to a report of shots fired inside the restaurant. Young was badly beaten during the fight and, as he left the restaurant, needed help walking.
Later that night Smith had two recorded telephone conversations with Lawrence. She told him their son's party had been a "disaster" because people from "Front Hood" were at the restaurant and "jumped everybody." She said some "project girls" were also involved, stomping and hitting people with "bats and stuff." Lawrence asked her, "What projects?" She answered, "The Imperial ones."
At 8:30 p.m. on October 26, 2014 Leticia Salazar sat in her car, socializing with friends, in a parking lot at the Imperial Courts housing project. Salazar and Tyrone Jones sat in the front seat of the car, Martha Cruz and Ruby Juarez in the back. Jennifer Edwards and Tyrone Biddle stood outside the car. Salazar and Jones eventually got out of the car and walked a short distance away to talk. Edwards got into the driver's seat, and Biddle stood at her window.
At that point a man walked up "out of nowhere," approaching the car from the front, and started shooting at Biddle and Edwards. At least one shot—the second—hit the car's windshield. Cruz and Juarez ducked down in the back seat, but Edwards got out of the car and ran away with Biddle.
After the shooter fired toward the car "maybe . . . two, three times," he saw Salazar and Jones. They were standing between some other parked cars nearby, peeking out at him. The shooter, who was now standing near the hood of Salazar's car, turned to Salazar and Jones, pointed his gun at them, and asked, "Where you from?" Apparently without receiving an answer, he shot multiple times at Salazar and Jones, hitting Salazar in her hand and ankle and Jones in his face and hand. The shooter ran away. Investigators later recovered five 9-millimeter casings from the scene.
Salazar and Jones survived their injuries. When later presented with photographic lineups, Edwards, Salazar, and Cruz identified Young as the shooter.
Another shooting occurred at the Imperial Courts housing project that same night, at 9:20 p.m. A quarter of a mile from the location of the first shooting, Ashley Bowman, Samieke Griggley, Ebony Gammage, and Sharonna Green sat in a car parked on the street in front of Ashley's residence at Imperial Courts. They were waiting for Ashley's brother, Deandre Bowman, to arrive. As they waited, Ashley and Gammage noticed a silver Audi "Q7" SUV drive by them, and then drive back by them. The driver—who Ashley later said "looked like" Young, though she "wasn't sure"—looked at Ashley and smirked.
Ashley suggested she and her friends continue waiting for Deandre inside her residence. The group began to get out of the car, and Griggley was now standing beside it, when a man whom Ashley and Green later identified as Stone walked up to the car and shot Griggley in the back of the head. Stone continued to shoot, hitting Bowman, who had just arrived, in the shoulder. As a crowd of people began arriving in response to the shooting, Stone disappeared. Bowman survived his wounds; Griggley did not.
Los Angeles Police Department officers recovered six 9-millimeter casings from the scene. They were fired from the same gun that fired the five casings recovered from the scene of the earlier shooting at Imperial Courts that night.
A year later, at 1:30 a.m. on September 26, 2015 Deshawn Childs went to a liquor store to buy cigarettes. A man later identified by a witness as Young met Childs outside the store, said something to him about two gangs, Poccet Hood and Mona Park, and went inside the store with Childs.1 Inside the store Young said he had "problems with the Monas and the Carvers" and "fuck the Monas." He also said his name was "Lil Dice from Poccet Hood." As Young and Childs walked out of the store, Young said he was a member of "Corner Poccet," another name for Poccet Hood, and asked Childs which gang he belonged to. Childs said,
Childs walked away, toward a street corner, with Young following and talking to him. When they reached the corner, Childs turned to face Young, and Young shot him in the forehead. After shooting Childs in the head three more times, Young ran away.
In connection with the first shooting on October 26, 2014, the People charged Young with the attempted willful, deliberate, and premeditated murders of Jones (count three), Salazar (count four), Edwards (count five), and Biddle (count six). In connection with the second shooting on October 26, 2014, the People charged Young and Stone with the murder of Griggley (count one) and the attempted willful, deliberate, and premeditated murder of Bowman (count two). In connection with the shooting of Childs on September 26, 2015, the People charged Young with murder (count seven). The People also charged Young (count eight) and Stone (count nine) with possession of a firearm by a felon.
The People alleged Young and Stone committed all these offenses for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in association with a criminal street gang with the specific intent to promote, further, or assist in criminal conduct by gang members, within the meaning of Penal Code section 186.22, subdivision (b).2 On the murder counts, the People alleged the special circumstance that Young and Stone committed the murders while they were active participants in a criminal street gang and to further the gang's activities (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(22)) and alleged against Young the special circumstance that he committed more than one murder in the first or second degree (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(3)). On the murder and attempted murder counts, the People also alleged firearm enhancements. (§ 12022.53, subds. (b)-(d).)
At trial the People's gang expert testified he was familiar with the Corner Poccet Crips criminal street gang, also known as Poccet Hood. One of its rivals was the Front Hood gang. Corner Poccet regularly associated and committed crimes with two other gangs, Anzac and Santana Blocc, and all three claimed territory within the city of Compton. Another gang, the PJ Watts Crips (or Project Crips) claimed territory that included the Imperial Courts housing project. The expert testified that he was familiar with Stone, whose moniker was "Lil Shacc," and with Young, whose moniker was "Dice," and that in his opinion both were members of Corner Poccet. The expert testified he was also familiar with Richard Lawrence, who was a member of Anzac, used the moniker "Lil Dus," and regularly associated with members of Corner Poccet.
Presented with a hypothetical situation resembling the fight that occurred at the restaurant on October 18, 2014, the gang expert testified that gang members attacked and beaten by members of a rival gang would suffer "the ultimate in disrespect" and would "have to find a way to earn that respect back." The disrespect would be even greater if women administered the beating or even participated in the attack. Presented with additional hypothetical facts resembling the shootings at the Imperial Courts housing projects—in which, for example, a week after the restaurant attack, a gang member beaten in the attack and a fellow gang member present during the attack went into territory claimed by the rival gang whose members had attacked them to shoot at people they found there—the expert opined that the shooters would be acting to benefit their gang, in particular by retaliating for the earlier attack, and that without such retaliation "they'd lose all respect within the gang world." The expert testified it did not matter whether the...
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