People v. Sully

• Decision Date: 11 July 1991
• Docket Number: No. S004721,S004721
• Citation: 53 Cal.3d 1195,812 P.2d 163,283 Cal.Rptr. 144
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: , 812 P.2d 163 The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Anthony John SULLY, Defendant and Appellant. Crim. 25590.

Page 144

283 Cal.Rptr. 144

53 Cal.3d 1195, 812 P.2d 163

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Anthony John SULLY, Defendant and Appellant.

No. S004721.

Crim. 25590.

Supreme Court of California In Bank.

July 11, 1991.

Rehearing Denied Sept. 25, 1991.

J. Courtney Shevelson, Carmel, under appointment by the Supreme Court, and Renee L. Berenson, San Mateo, for defendant and appellant.

John K. Van de Kamp and Daniel E. Lungren, Attys. Gen., Richard B. Iglehart, Chief Asst. Atty. Gen., John H. Sugiyama, Asst. Atty. Gen., Morris Beatus and Herbert F. Wilkinson, Deputy Attys. Gen., for plaintiff and respondent.

LUCAS, Chief Justice.

Defendant appeals from his capital sentence following conviction of six counts of first degree murder (Pen.Code, § 187; all statutory references are to this code unless otherwise stated) with a special circumstance of multiple murder (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(3)). Finding no reversible error, we affirm the conviction and sentence.

FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS

Summary

Defendant killed five women and one man in bizarre episodes involving prostitution and cocaine use. Although he denied committing any of the murders, extensive circumstantial and physical evidence, as well as accomplice testimony, supported his conviction on each count. At the penalty phase, the prosecution presented evidence of defendant's threats to kill his estranged wife and her daughter. Rejecting defendant's testimony (which denied all charges), the jury convicted him on all counts, made the requested multiple-murder special-circumstance finding, and fixed the penalty at death.

The Guilt Phase

Defendant served for nearly eight years as a police officer for the City of Millbrae, where he was trained in fingerprint detection and other law enforcement techniques. On leaving police service, he established a successful electrical contracting business, eventually located in a warehouse in Burlingame. He converted the front of the warehouse to his personal residence. Before the crimes at issue here, defendant invested several thousand dollars as a coventurer in an "escort service" and regularly used prostitutes' services. He freebased cocaine and had sex with prostitutes at the warehouse, subjecting the prostitutes to rape, beatings, and other forms of violence.

1. Gloria Fravel

Defendant met Tina Livingston in 1982 when she was a partner in an escort service. Gloria Fravel worked as a prostitute for Tina Livingston. She also owed Livingston $500, having incurred charges in that amount on Livingston's credit card. Fravel was picked up by Livingston and Angel Burns, another prostitute, in San Francisco on a Friday afternoon and transported to defendant's warehouse, ostensibly to obtain some camping equipment from defendant. When the three arrived at the warehouse, defendant asked Fravel for a date. When she declined, he slapped her across the face and directed her to go to the back of the warehouse.

Defendant kept Fravel in the back of the warehouse during the weekend, while Burns and Livingston remained out front. He gagged and handcuffed her and suspended her from the ceiling. He assured Livingston that Fravel would repay the amount she owed. After having sex with Fravel, defendant allowed her to dress, telling her she would be permitted to go home. He later revoked the permission and gagged and bound Fravel, placing her on the bed.

Defendant sat on a chair next to the bed and fashioned a hangman's noose from a piece of rope. He freebased cocaine, then brutally sodomized Fravel. At some point, Fravel's gag fell off and she began screaming. Livingston and Burns attempted unsuccessfully to replace the gag and to silence Fravel by tightening the hangman's noose around her neck. Defendant intervened. While Burns held a pillow over Fravel's head, defendant put his foot against the back of her neck, and jerked hard on the hangman's noose. After several tugs, Fravel's body went limp and her bodily fluids spilled out.

With the assistance of Burns and Livingston, defendant encased Fravel's body in plastic and moved it into a car. Burns and defendant drove away to dispose of the body; Livingston cleaned up the warehouse. When Burns and defendant returned several hours later, Burns was covered with blood. Burns reported to Livingston that she had continued to choke Fravel, who was not yet dead when her body was removed from the warehouse. Defendant added that he had pulled the van to the side of the road and hit Fravel with a hatchet. He said that she "bled all over everything." According to defendant, he and Burns then dumped Fravel's body on Skyline Drive, where it was later discovered.

Post mortem examination revealed ligature marks on Fravel's ankles and neck. Her mouth was open, but her teeth were tightly clenched. She also suffered numerous irregularly shaped and sized penetrating injuries, including one below the right ear which transsected the jugular vein. Fravel died of severe head and neck injuries due to combined cuts and blunt trauma.

Defendant later read to Livingston a newspaper clipping about the discovery of Fravel's body. The story related that a butcher had found the body, a fact defendant found humorously appropriate.

2. The Golden Gate Park Barrel Murders: Brenda Oakden, Michael Thomas, and Phyllis Melendrez

Shortly after the murder of Gloria Fravel, defendant told Livingston he wanted to take a completely new girl (i.e., one that had not previously had professional sex) and kill her before anyone else "had" her. Livingston later called defendant and told him about Brenda Oakden, age 19, a roommate of a receptionist at Livingston's escort service. Oakden had worked for the service on one occasion. At defendant's request, Burns escorted a nervous Oakden to the warehouse. Defendant later told Livingston that he had killed Oakden and directed Livingston to tell Oakden's roommate that Oakden had left to "catch a bus." He later told her "[t]hat the only difference between killing someone now and killing someone as a policeman" was that the police had permission to do it.

Defendant confided to Michael Shing, another escort service owner, that he had murdered a pimp and his prostitute and stuffed their bodies into barrels. He told Shing that if anyone ripped him off, he killed them. He described how he had forced his victims to kneel before he shot them and how profusely they bled. He sought Shing's advice as to how to dispose of the bodies. Shing suggested Searsville Lake. Defendant later told Livingston that he had to dispose of the barrels because they were stinking up his warehouse.

The bodies of Brenda Oakden, Michael Thomas and Phyllis Melendrez were found in barrels in Golden Gate Park. All three died of gunshot wounds to the back of the head. Melendrez had been struck in the lip before she was killed and had a defensive wound on her hand.

In addition to his admissions, defendant was linked to the three murders by a variety of physical and other evidence. The barrels in which the bodies were found had been stolen from a storage yard located three structures away from defendant's warehouse. Defendant's fingerprints were found in two places on the barrels. In one place, the prints were left in wet concrete apparently mixed and poured to seal the barrel. Angel Burns's palm print was also found on one barrel. Defendant gave inconsistent statements about the barrels, stating when arrested that he had never touched the barrels, but later testifying that he had seen them on his property and had touched the wet concrete out of curiosity.

Plastic bags resembling those around Michael Thomas's corpse were recovered from defendant's van; the recovered bags displayed a design defect identical to the defect in the bag around the corpse. Napkins similar in color and red wire were also found in the warehouse and vicinity as well as on the corpse. Various handguns and ballistics textbooks were also found at the warehouse. Defendant's removal of the barrel of one of the guns, a Smith & Wesson revolver, made it impossible to identify it as a murder weapon. Defendant's explanation for removing the barrel--that he wanted to install a longer one for target shooting--was contradicted by one of his employees, who testified that defendant had declined an invitation to go target shooting because, according to defendant, it did not interest him.

3. Barbara Searcy

Barbara Searcy went to defendant's warehouse with Raleigh Hill, her landlord, to collect money defendant owed her. Searcy later told a friend that she was waiting to hear back from a man she had seen several times and was planning to see in Burlingame. At about the same time, defendant left a message on Searcy's answering machine stating he had "fifty" for her and wanted a "date." Defendant testified that he had sex with Searcy on several occasions and used cocaine with her. Although he did not consider these to be "dates" in the "professional" sense, he admitted giving her money when she needed it.

Defendant later gave Livingston a satchel containing Searcy's clothing and personal items and told her that he badly wanted to recover a recording on Searcy's answering machine. He later indicated that Livingston would be able to go to her apartment, recover the recording, and steal the rest of her property. Livingston attempted the theft in the company of another man but was frightened away. She returned to the warehouse empty-handed.

When Livingston returned to the warehouse, defendant showed her Searcy's body, wrapped in opaque plastic sheeting, in a green hamper outside the warehouse. He explained that he had killed Searcy for "personal reasons." They loaded her body into defendant's pick-up truck. Defendant said he was going to drag the body so it would be beyond recognition. While at tempting to drag the body behind the truck, defendant and Livingston unexpectedly encountered a witness and sped away, leaving the body.

Searcy's body was discovered the...