People v. White

• Decision Date: 27 November 1968
• Docket Number: Cr. 10818
• Citation: 446 P.2d 993,69 Cal.2d 751,72 Cal.Rptr. 873
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: , 446 P.2d 993 The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Ronald Wayne WHITE, Defendant and Appellant.

Page 873

72 Cal.Rptr. 873

69 Cal.2d 751, 446 P.2d 993

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Ronald Wayne WHITE, Defendant and Appellant.

Cr. 10818.

Supreme Court of California,

In Bank.

Nov. 27, 1968.

Charles M. Berg, Beverly Hills, under appointment by the Supreme Court, and Luther Barrow, Little Rock, Ark., for defendant and appellant.

Thomas C. Lynch, Atty. Gen., William E. James, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Thomas Kerrigan, Deputy Atty. Gen., for plaintiff and respondent.

TRAYNOR, Chief Justice.

A jury found defendant guilty of the first degree murder of Anne Ransom and fixed the penalty at death. The court denied motions for a new trial and for reduction of the penalty to life imprisonment. This appeal is automatic. (Pen.Code, § 1239, subd. (b).)

The prosecution presented the case to the jury on the theory that the killing was murder of the first degree committed in the perpetration of burglary, robbery, and rape. Mrs. Ransom was a waitress at the Big Time Bar in La Puente. About 11 p.m. on April 20, 1966, the bar manager, Mrs. McAndrew, left Mrs. Ransom in charge with the responsibility of closing the bar at 2 a.m. When Mrs. McAndrew returned to the bar at 7:45 the next morning she found Mrs. Ransom, with a bloody wound in her head, lying naked on her back on a pool table. The victim did not move or speak. Mrs. McAndrew summoned sheriff's officers. Mrs. Ransom was taken to a hospital, where she died on April 22. The cause of death was a .22 caliber bullet that entered the middle of the forehead and lodged at the back of the brain. On the right side of her head was a very recent skull fracture that could have resulted from a fall. Her genital area was not injured. A test for sperm was inconclusive because she was menstruating.

On the morning of April 21, articles of Mrs. Ransom's clothing lay on the barroom floor, a chair, and a table. A man's coat was on a chair. In the coat were a label with the name of a shop in Lafayette, Louisiana, and a tag with the name 'White.' A .22 caliber shell casing was on the floor. Only 15 or 20 pennies were in the bar till. Mrs. Ransom's cash rocord showed that when she closed the bar she had $50 in currency and $15.50 in coins.

At 10 a.m. on April 21, Detective Sergeant Nichols and two other officers of the sheriff's department went to the Royal Palms Apartments, three blocks from the Big Time Bar, and talked with Dennis Seiler, a regular customer of the bar. Seiler told the officers that he and defendant had been the last customers to leave the bar the night before and that when Mrs. Ransom closed the door behind them at 2 a.m., defendant went toward the parking lot and Seiler walked home. Seiler agreed to come to the sheriff's station and give a statement and the officers left his apartment.

Defendant also lived at the Royal Palms. After interviewing Seiler, Sergeant Nichols and Sergeant Rowley went to defendant's apartment. At that time these officers did not know that Mrs. Ransom's wound was caused by a bullet or that a .22 caliber shell casing had been found in the bar or that the man's coat found there contained labels with defendant's last name and the name Lafayette, Louisiana, a town that defendant had left four or five weeks before. The only information Nichols had about defendant was that given by Seiler.

Sergeant Nichols knocked on the door of defendant's apartment and it swung open. Nichols called, 'Sheriff's Office, is anyone home?' Defendant answered, 'Just a minute,' and came to the door in his bare feet and without a shirt. Nichols displayed his badge and said, 'We're Sheriff's officers,' and defendant said, 'Come on in.' As Nichols walked through the living room he saw a .22 caliber Beretta pistol in a holster. He picked up the pistol and asked defendant if it was his. Defendant replied that it was. ¹ He was asked if he objected to the officers' looking around the apartment and said 'No, go ahead.'

Nichols asked defendant what he had done the night before. Defendant said he was 'partying.' Nichols asked if he had been at the Big Time Bar, and defendant said he had not. When asked what clothes he wore the night before, defendant pointed out a suit and shirt on hangers, still clean, freshly pressed, and apparently not worn. Nichols asked defendant where he had been drinking, and defendant said that on second thought he believed he had stopped at the Big Time Bar before going home. Nichols said the police 'were trying to determine what had happened the night before, we were taking statements from everybody concerned,' and asked defendant if he would come to the sheriff's station and give a statement. Defendant agreed and began dressing. Nichols asked defendant where he slept, and defendant pointed to one of twin beds. Nichols lifted the mattress and found a sock with coins tied in it. Defendant said that the sock was his, ² that he saved change, and that it contained about $15. As defendant picked up his wallet Nichols saw that it contained a number of bills and asked how much money was in it. Defendant said approximately $40.

At the station Sergeant Nichols left defendant in the squad room while he talked with other officers for three or four minutes. Nichols learned from his fellow officers that about $50 in bills and $15.50 in coins had been taken from the bar and that the coat found there had the name 'White' and a Lafayette label in it. By this time Nichols knew that defendant was from Lafayette. He took the coat into the squad room and asked defendant to try it on. Defendant did so, and it appeared to fit him.

Subsequently developed evidence showed a significant correspondence between the amount of money defendant had and the amount taken from the bar. The sock contained.$16.67 in coins (including only two pennies) and defendant had $87 in currency (including about 25 one dollar bills) in his wallet when he was booked. On the afternoon of April 20 he had cashed his pay check of $44.10. From 5 p.m. until about 1 a.m. he and Grant Dickson were in various bars drinking beer and 'looking for girls.' About 1 a.m. defendant drove Dickson home and then went to the Big Time Bar.

About 2 a.m. on April 21 a deputy sheriff on routine patrol saw defendant outside the bar. Defendant said he was waiting for a girl to close the bar.

Defendant's roommate visited defendant in jail about three weeks after the killing. Defendant then said, 'I did it, but I don't know why * * *. (I) didn't need the money or anything.'

Defendant did not testify to the jury. Outside their presence he testified that he had not consented to the officers' entry and search of his apartment on the morning of April 21. The trial judge properly found on the basis of Sergeant Nichols' contrary testimony that defendant freely consented to the entry and search. (See People v. McLean, 56 Cal.2d 660, 664, 16 Cal.Rptr. 347, 365 P.2d 403; People v. Burke, 47 Cal.2d 45, 49, 301 P.2d 241.)

Sergeant Nichols' testimony that at the sheriff's station defendant consented to try on the coat found in the bar and that the coat appeared to fit him was properly admitted. The privilege against self-incrimination, with its attendant requirement of the warnings prescribed by Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 479, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694, does not apply to the furnishing of that kind of physical evidence. (See United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 222, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149; People v. Sudduth, 65 Cal.2d 543, 546, 55 Cal.Rptr. 393, 421 P.2d 401; People v. Ellis, 65 Cal.2d 529, 534--535, 55 Cal.Rptr. 385, 421 P.2d 393; People v. Graves, 64 Cal.2d 208, 210, 49 Cal.Rptr. 386, 411 P.2d 114.) The trying on of the coat was not a 'critical stage' of the proceeding when absence of counsel could derogate from the fairness of the ensuing trial. (Gilbert v. California, 388 U.S. 263, 267, 87 S.Ct. 1951, 18 L.Ed.2d 1178; cf. United States v. Wade, supra, 388 U.S. 218, 227, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149.)

Defendant contends that the evidence shows neither burglary, robbery, nor rape or attempted rape and therefore is insufficient to establish first degree murder. He emphasizes the lack of testimony as to how he effected entrance to the bar after Mrs. Ransom had closed it, as to whether he accomplished sexual penetration of the victim, and as to whether any specific monies found in his possession were coins or bills from the bar. His argument in this regard virtually ignores the evidence summarized above. That evidence is sufficient to support the jury's determination.

It is asserted that the admission in evidence of a photograph of deceased was prejudicial error. The photograph is a black-and-white depiction of the victim as Mrs. McAndrew found her on the morning of April 21. The trial court did not abuse its discretion by receiving it in evidence. (People v. Mathis, 63 Cal.2d 416, 423, 46 Cal.Rptr. 785, 406 P.2d 65; People v. Harrison, 59 Cal.2d 622, 627 30 Cal.Rtpr. 841, 381 P.2d 665; People v. Darling, 58 Cal.2d 15, 21, 22 Cal.Rptr. 484, 372 P.2d 316.)

Defendant contends that he was denied a fair trial because two attorneys represented the People in the courtroom while defendant was represented by only one deputy public defender. Defendant cites no authority for this contention. He states that in courts martial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice established practice requires that counsel for the accused be equal to counsel for the prosecution in number and rank. He asks this court to enunciate a similar rule of practice for criminal trials. The initial decision on the number of attorneys assigned to defendant's defense was properly that of the public defender. Had the deputy who represented defendant felt inadequate to try the case because he was facing two attorneys or for any other reason, he could have requested additional assistance from the office of the public defender or could have explained his difficulties to the trial judge and asked for the appointment of an...