People v. Thompson

Decision Date09 June 1980
Docket NumberCr. 20707
Citation27 Cal.3d 303,165 Cal.Rptr. 289,611 P.2d 883
CourtCalifornia Supreme Court
Parties, 611 P.2d 883 The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Maurice Seton THOMPSON, Defendant and Appellant.

Quin Denvir, State Public Defender, under appointment by the Supreme Court, Charles M. Sevilla, Chief Asst. State Public Defender, Joseph Levine and Richard A. Curtis, Deputy State Public Defenders, for defendant and appellant.

George Deukmejian, Atty. Gen., Robert H. Philibosian, Chief Asst. Atty. Gen., Daniel J. Kremer, Asst. Atty. Gen., Alan S. Meth and Steven H. Zeigen, Deputy Attys. Gen., for plaintiff and respondent.

BIRD, Chief Justice.

This is an automatic appeal from a judgment imposing a penalty of death. (See Pen.Code, § 1239, subd. (b).) 1

I

Maurice Seton Thompson was convicted by a jury of the first degree murder of Michael Whalen (§§ 187, 189), the attempted first degree murder of June Filice (§§ 664, 187, 189), the robberies of June Filice and Michael Whalen (§ 211), and first degree burglary (§§ 459, 460). Two special circumstances were found to be true, i. e., that appellant personally committed a willful, deliberate, and premeditated murder during the commission and attempted commission of both a robbery and a burglary. (Former § 190.2, subds. (c)(3)(i) and (c)(3)(v).) The jury also concluded that appellant had personally used a firearm during the commission of each of the substantive offenses. (§ 12022.5.) The punishment for the murder was determined to be death.

On November 14, 1977, appellant entered a bar owned by June Filice in La Mirada. June had seen appellant in the bar before but spoke to him for the first time and learned he was called Tom.

Later that evening June was at home taking a bath when she heard a knock on the bathroom door. She opened the door and saw a man holding a gun on Michael Whalen, her fiance. The intruder told the two that he wanted their money. Whalen displayed an empty wallet but reached into his pocket and retrieved a wad of crumpled bills, which the man "just looked at" but did not take.

With the intruder's permission, June went into her bedroom and put on a robe. She pointed out her purse, which she said contained $5, credit cards, and a checkbook. The intruder said nothing and made no attempt to inspect the purse. June then offered the jewelry on her dressing table and indicated that one ring was worth $6,000. The intruder did not take the jewelry, but he motioned June and Whalen downstairs where he directed them to sit. The intruder asked Whalen for his car keys, and Whalen stated that it would be a mistake to take the car since the car was well known due to its personalized license plates. At the behest of the intruder, Whalen removed the car keys from his key ring.

At this point, June asked the intruder why he picked their particular house. When he answered that someone had told him it would be "a good hit," June told him he had been given a bad "steer." She explained that due to a recent fire, little remained in the house. Again, the intruder inquired about any money, whereupon June reminded him of the five dollars in her purse, her jewelry and the cash in Whalen's pocket. However, the intruder said he did not want them.

After staring at Whalen and June for a few seconds, the intruder picked up a pillow from the floor and held it in front of his gun. Looking at June, he told her, "You know why I'm here and you know who sent me." Then he fired three shots into Whalen and three into June.

Whalen was fatally wounded. June was shot twice in the left leg and once in the stomach. She watched the man run out of the room and throw away the key ring from which the car keys had been removed. It was later determined that the car was never moved and the car keys were dropped in a park near the house.

After the intruder left, June dialed the operator for the police. When they arrived, she told them her estranged husband, Frank, had shot her. June believed Frank had arranged the shooting. She based this belief on the intruder's remark, "You know who sent me," and on the fact that Frank had previously threatened "to put a .38 slug between Mike's eyes" and to throw acid in her face. She explained that "if you belong to Frank, you're not going to belong to anybody else."

June's 21-year-old son, Frank, Jr., had also heard his father threaten his mother and Whalen. In addition, the son had heard his father ask for a picture of Whalen a week before the shootings. When told of his mother's description of the assailant, Frank, Jr., believed him to be a Larry V., a criminal friend of his father. However, at the hospital June identified her attacker as "Tom" and picked appellant's picture out of two photographic lineups. She positively identified appellant at trial and was certain that she had not confused him with Larry V.

Almost two weeks later, in the early morning hours of November 27, 1977, appellant held up Scott Domnie, the supervisor of the Breakers Restaurant in San Luis Obispo. 2 Wearing a ski mask and pointing a gun, appellant accosted Domnie as he was leaving the restaurant and approaching his car in the parking lot. Appellant suggested they "go back into the restaurant and get the money." Domnie said he did not have the keys but would help appellant break in. Domnie then heard the click of the pistol's hammer being pulled back, and he quickly offered to give appellant what money he had. Appellant instructed Domnie to put his wallet on the floor of the car and to put the keys in the car's ignition. Appellant then drove the car out of the lot and down the hill. The police discovered the car the following day.

That same afternoon, appellant returned to the Los Angeles area and contacted Mark Amos, a man he had met a month earlier through Frank Filice. Frank had told appellant that Amos was a person who bought stolen cars. In fact, Amos was an undercover agent working for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's office. Appellant and his girlfriend, Cheryl Patton, met with Amos and discussed the sale of a 1977 Ford LTD (not Domnie's car) for $700. After arranging to meet the two at 11 p. m. in a Santa Monica bar, Amos called Los Angeles Deputy Sheriff Robert Roane and learned that appellant was wanted.

Roane joined in the 11 p. m. meeting, pretending to be a potential buyer of the car. He also coordinated appellant's arrest with the Santa Monica and La Habra Police Departments. The officers arrested appellant and his girlfriend, Patton, as they emerged from the bar after the meeting was concluded.

At the Santa Monica police station, Roane obtained permission to search appellant's motel room for two shotguns which appellant had offered to sell in the bar. Two searches of the room turned up the shotguns as well as a .357 magnum pistol, ammunition, disguise kits, ski masks, and the wallet and keys of Domnie. It was subsequently determined that the bullets recovered from June's loveseat and from Whalen's body came from the pistol seized in appellant's room. 3

, 2] In response to this evidence, defense counsel argued that appellant was not the person who had committed the charged offenses. Further, he contended that the evidence failed to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the perpetrator, even if it were appellant, had the specific intent to steal. 4

3] A specific intent to steal was a necessary element of the substantive crimes of robbery and burglary 5 as well as the special-circumstances allegations. 6 Since the prosecution sought to prove that appellant was guilty of first degree murder under a felony-murder theory premised on the underlying felonies of robbery and burglary, 7 a specific intent to steal was important in any resolution of the murder charge. If the jury accepted the appellant's contention that he lacked a specific intent to steal, he would have established a defense at least to the special-circumstances allegations and to the robbery and burglary counts. 8

The jury found appellant guilty of all the offenses and found the special circumstances and firearm-use allegations to be true. Prior to the commencement of the penalty phase of the trial, appellant moved to have a new jury impanelled to determine if he should receive a sentence of death. Counsel believed that since he had portrayed the killer as a cold-blooded executioner at the guilt phase, it was impossible to argue to the same jury at the penalty phase that appellant's life should be spared. The trial court recognized that at the guilt phase counsel's argument to the jury "almost had to be made." Nevertheless, the motion was denied and a verdict of death was returned by the jury. This automatic appeal follows.

II

4] This court must determine whether the trial court erred when it permitted the prosecution to introduce evidence of the robbery that appellant committed outside the Breakers Restaurant in San Luis Obispo. This evidence was offered to prove that he had an intent to steal at the time the offenses were committed at June's house.

The admission of any evidence that involves crimes other than those for which a defendant is being tried has a "highly inflammatory and prejudicial effect" 9 on the trier of the fact. This court has repeatedly warned that the admissibility of this type of evidence must be "scrutinized with great care." 10 "(A) closely reasoned analysis" 11 of the pertinent factors must be undertaken before a determination can be made of its admissibility.

5] Evidence of an uncharged offense is usually sought to be admitted as "evidence that, if found to be true, proves a fact from which an inference 12 of another fact may be drawn." (See CALJIC No. 2.00 (1979 Revision) (4th ed. 1979).) As with other types of circumstantial evidence, its admissibility depends upon three principal factors: (1) the materiality of the fact sought to be proved or disproved; (2) the tendency of the uncharged crime to prove or...

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