People v. Westerfield
| Decision Date | 04 February 2019 |
| Docket Number | S112691 |
| Court | California Supreme Court |
| Parties | The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. David Alan WESTERFIELD, Defendant and Appellant. |
Mark David Greenberg, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for Defendant and Appellant.
Kamala D. Harris and Xavier Becerra, Attorneys General, Dane R. Gillette and Gerald A. Engler, Chief Assistant Attorneys General, Julie L. Garland, Assistant Attorney General, Holly D. Wilkens and Robin Urbanski, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
A jury convicted defendant David Alan Westerfield of the 2002 first degree murder of seven-year-old Danielle Van Dam. ( Pen. Code, § 187, subd. (a).1 ) It found true the special circumstance that the murder was committed during a kidnapping. (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(17).) The jury also found defendant guilty of the kidnapping of Danielle, a child under the age of 14 (§§ 207, 208, subd. (b) ), and misdemeanor possession of child pornography. (former § 311.11, subd. (a).) Following the penalty phase of trial, the jury returned a verdict of death. The trial court denied defendant’s motion for modification of the penalty to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole (§ 190.4, subd. (e) ) and sentenced him to death on the murder count. The trial court sentenced defendant to a prison term of 11 years for his conviction of kidnapping, which it stayed pursuant to section 654. Defendant was sentenced to time served for his child pornography conviction.
This appeal is automatic. (§ 1239, subd. (b).) We affirm the judgment in its entirety.
On the night of Friday, February 1, 2002, Damon Van Dam put his two sons and his seven-year-old daughter, Danielle, to bed. His wife, Brenda, went out with her girlfriends to a bar where they saw defendant, David Westerfield, who lived two doors down from the Van Dams. When Brenda, her girlfriends, and two male friends came home, they noticed an alarm monitor was flashing, and the side garage door was open. They closed the door and had something to eat. Damon got up and joined them. After the friends left, Brenda and Damon went to bed. Sometime later during the night, Damon awoke and noticed an alarm monitor flashing. He went downstairs and noticed the door to the backyard was open. He closed it and made sure the other doors were closed. He went back to sleep without checking on the children. The next morning, Danielle was missing. A neighborhood search failed to find her, and defendant was not at home.
Defendant spent the weekend after Danielle’s disappearance driving around in his motorhome away from his house in the Sabre Springs neighborhood of San Diego to various state parks outside the San Diego area. He had awkward encounters with rangers and volunteers who worked at the Silver Strand state park near the city of Coronado.
On Monday morning, defendant arrived in his motorhome at his neighborhood dry cleaner’s shortly after the business opened to have bedding and a jacket cleaned. Although it was a cold morning, he was wearing a thin T-shirt, thin shorts, no shoes, and no socks.
An examination of the forensic evidence revealed that the jacket that defendant left at the dry cleaner’s contained Danielle’s blood. Danielle’s blood was also found on the carpet of defendant’s motorhome between the bathroom and the closet; her handprint, including several associated fingerprints, was on a cabinet above the motorhome’s bed. Hairs consistent with Danielle’s DNA profile were found in the bathroom of defendant’s motorhome and at his residence in his washing machine, dryer, and on the bedding from his master bedroom. Fibers matching others later found with Danielle’s body were discovered in defendant’s motorhome, SUV, laundry, and bedding. Fibers similar to those from the carpeting in Danielle’s bedroom were found by the bed, in the bathroom, and in the hall of defendant’s motorhome. Hairs from the Van Dams’ family dog were discovered on one of the comforters defendant dropped off at the dry cleaner’s, on the hallway carpet and bathroom rug in defendant’s motorhome, and in defendant’s laundry.
Danielle’s badly decomposed body was discovered off the side of a road in a remote part of San Diego County on February 27, 2002. Her mummified remains had been ravaged by animals, such that no sexual assault testing could be performed and no definite cause of death determined. The coroner could not rule out suffocation.
In defendant’s home, officers discovered computer files containing child pornography.
Defendant principally relied on an alibi defense based on entomological evidence from Danielle’s body that suggested her death occurred sometime subsequent to February 5, after defendant was under constant police surveillance.
A week before Danielle’s disappearance, on January 25, 2002, her mother Brenda went out to a local bar called "Dad’s" with her two girlfriends — Denise Kemal and Barbara Easton. They met defendant there, whom Brenda recognized as her neighbor from two doors down the street. Defendant introduced himself, and bought the women drinks. Brenda and defendant briefly spoke, but otherwise Brenda spent the time with her girlfriends.
The following Tuesday, Brenda accompanied her daughter Danielle while she sold Girl Scout cookies in the neighborhood along with her five-year-old brother Dylan. They stopped at defendant’s house, and he invited them inside so he could fill out an order form to purchase cookies. While Brenda and defendant were in the dining room, Danielle and Dylan went into defendant’s backyard to see his pool. When the children were outside, defendant discussed the previous Friday night and his interest in Easton and that he wanted to be introduced to her. Brenda told defendant that she and Easton might be going to Dad’s again the upcoming Friday, depending on whether she could find a babysitter because her husband was planning on being away that weekend. After the children came inside, they stayed with Brenda in the dining room, and went nowhere else in defendant’s house.
Kemal and Easton arrived at the Van Dam house around 8:00 p.m. on Friday, February 1, 2002. Brenda and her two girlfriends went into the garage and smoked marijuana. Someone opened the garage side door to let the smoke out. Brenda was uncertain whether anyone closed it. Kemal recalled closing the side door, but not locking it. The Van Dams had reversed the lock on the interior garage door leading into the house so that they could, if they chose, prevent their children from entering the garage. A person inside the garage could unlock the door without a key and enter the house.
After Brenda and her two girlfriends left for Dad’s, Damon stayed home with the children, Danielle, Dylan, and Derek. Around 10:00 p.m., Damon put the children to bed for the night, each in his or her own room, and left each door ajar. Damon watched television downstairs for 20 to 30 minutes. He then went up to the master bedroom, taking Layla, the family puppy, with him. He closed the door to keep the puppy in the room and continued watching television until he fell asleep. He briefly woke up at around 1:45 a.m. to allow the puppy to relief herself in the backyard, after which he closed the door and went back upstairs.
Brenda, Kemal, and Easton were at Dad’s during this time. When they arrived at the bar, defendant was already there with two of his friends. Brenda pointed defendant out to Easton, who went over to him and introduced herself. Defendant came over and bought them drinks, but they did not include him in their conversation. Sometime after 9:00 p.m., the Van Dams’ friends, Rich Brady and Keith Stone, arrived. Brady and Stone joined Brenda and her friends. At one point, defendant’s friends joined Brenda’s group playing pool. Defendant was not part of the group but watched for at least part of the time. Later that night, around 10:30 or 11:00 p.m., the group went to Brenda’s car where they smoked marijuana. When they went back inside the bar, the group started dancing. Defendant was still inside. The group left Dad’s shortly before closing at 2:00 a.m. Brenda was unsure whether defendant was at the bar when they left, although one of defendant’s friends, Garry Harvey, said that defendant was gone when Harvey returned to the bar around 12:30 a.m. Brenda, her girlfriends, Brady, and Stone went to the Van Dams’ home.
When Brenda entered her home, she noticed a red blinking light on the alarm monitor, indicating that there was a window or door open. Brenda and Kemal started looking for the open window or door. Upstairs, Brenda also went to tell Damon that Brady and Stone were visiting. Brenda and Kemal found that the garage side door was open. Brenda closed it and went back upstairs, where she found Easton with Damon.2 Brenda told them to come downstairs. Brenda did not check on the children, but closed their doors due to the potential noise. Downstairs, everyone ate leftover pizza. About 20 minutes later, the guests left. Damon and Brenda locked up the house and went to bed. Damon placed Layla in Derek’s room. It was around 2:30 a.m.
Sometime after 3:00 or 3:30 a.m. Damon woke again. When he got up, he noticed a red light flashing on the alarm monitor in their bedroom. He went downstairs and noticed a cold draft of air in the hallway. He found the sliding glass door to the backyard was open. He closed the door, made sure all of the other doors were closed, including the side garage door, and checked the alarm panel. Damon went back to bed without checking on the children.
The next morning, Brenda woke and went downstairs to make breakfast and await the arrival of two neighborhood children whom she was to watch that day. Damon and the two boys were already downstairs. The...
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Table of cases
...§§10:70, 10:80 Westbrooks v. Gordon H. Ball, Inc. (1967) 248 Cal. App. 2d 209, 56 Cal. Rptr. 422, §1:120 Westerfield, People v. (2019) 6 Cal. 5th 632, 243 Cal. Rptr. 3d 18, §§2:160, 7:70, 7:150, 9:110 Westerholm v. 20th Century Ins. Co. (1976) 58 Cal. App. 3d 628, 130 Cal. Rptr. 164, §4:150......
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Witness examination
...424, 132 Cal. Rptr. 356. Both friendship and hostility toward a party are proper subjects for examination. People v. Westerfield (2019) 6 Cal. 5th 632, 699, 243 Cal. Rptr. 3d 18. The relationship between a witness and a party may show possible bias. People v. Sanchez (2019) 7 Cal. 5th 14, 5......
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Hearsay
...tipster fail to satisfy the requirement that the declarant believed himself to be at some significant risk. People v. Westerfield (2019) 6 Cal. 5th 632, 704-705, 243 Cal. Rptr. 3d 18. The significant passage of time before the making of the statement is a relevant circumstance to consider w......
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Jury selection
...do not know if they can follow the court’s penalty instructions or if they can vote for a death sentence. People v. Westerfield (2019) 6 Cal. 5th 632, 666, 243 Cal. Rptr. 3d 18. A defendant adequately preserved a denial of a challenge for cause of a prospective juror when he tied his reques......