People v. Wiley
| Decision Date | 04 October 1976 |
| Docket Number | Cr. 19247 |
| Citation | 133 Cal.Rptr. 135,554 P.2d 881,18 Cal.3d 162 |
| Court | California Supreme Court |
| Parties | , 554 P.2d 881 The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Theresa WILEY, Defendant and Appellant. In Bank |
Donavon R. Marble, Oakland, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for defendant and appellant.
Evelle J. Younger, Atty. Gen., Jack R. Winkler, Chief Asst. Atty. Gen., Edward P. O'Brien, Asst. Atty. Gen., Derald E. Granberg and Sanford Svetcov, Deputy Attys. Gen., for plaintiff and respondent.
Defendant Theresa Wiley appeals from a judgment entered upon a jury verdict of first degree murder. (Pen.Code, secs. 187, 189.) 1 She contends that the trial court erred in instructing the jury that she could be convicted of first degree murder on the basis of murder by torture; 2 that the standard instruction on circumstantial evidence was erroneously omitted; and that certain limiting instructions were also omitted. We have concluded that none of these contentions has merit, and accordingly affirm the judgment.
The relevant events occurred on the afternoon and evening of December 10, 1973, and the day of December 11, 1973. In the early afternoon of December 10th, in response to a 'domestic disturbance' call, Officer Hendrix of the Oakland Police Department went to the home which appellant shared with her husband, William Wiley. Appellant, her brother Andrew Henry, and her husband were present. Appellant, whom Officer Hendrix described as physi cally agitated, accused her husband of having stolen $31 from her. When Officer Hendrix refused her request that he arrest William, appellant declared, 'If you don't get my $31 back, I am going to kill him.' Officer Hendrix understood this threat to be directed to William. He took William outside and suggested that he take a walk until appellant calmed down. William then walked away as the officer departed.
Officer Hendrix returned to the Wiley home 24 hours later. Andrew Henry met him at the door and told him that William was sick and would not wake up. The officer found William sitting, slumped over, in a chair in the bedroom. William was dead.
Expert testimony established that the cause of death was shock and hemorrhage due to trauma caused by a blunt instrument. Thirty fresh wounds, many of which were head injuries, were found on the body. Ten of the wounds were of sufficient severity as to have been the cause, or to have contributed to the cause, of death. Some were consistent with the type of injury inflicted by a blunt instrument similar to a baseball bat. Others could have been made by the claws of a hammer while some could have been made by the rounded head of a hammer. William had a blood alcohol level of .36 percent at the time of his death.
Prior to the arrival of Officer Hendrix on December 11th, Myrtle Mills, a friend of appellant, had found a baseball bat and a hammer under the bed in the room in which William's body was seated. She saw another person bring a second bat from the rear of the house to the bedroom. Both bats and the hammer had been taken from the house and disposed of by other persons.
Appellant testified that when her husband returned to the house on December 11th, Andrew Henry had asked her if she wanted Henry to get her money back. She replied 'yes,' after which Henry commenced hitting William on the head with his fists. Then, in response to requests from Henry, she handed him first a baseball bat, and next a hammer, which Henry used in turn to strike William on all parts of his body. Appellant knew that Henry was 'beating him bad,' but not that 'he was beating him that bad, that hard.' Appellant denied hitting William with the hammer herself, but admitted that she had asked Henry for the bat, stating that she was going to hit William 'on the hand, because that is the hand which spent my money, which is his right hand.' She testified that she had hit him on the right hand and on the knee with the bat. She also testified that she had not asked Henry to hit William, but gave him the bat 'because he asked for it' and she did not 'really think he was hurting him that bad.' She claimed that when she hit William she did not intend to hurt him.
Henry, who was also charged with murder, and who was subsequently tried and convicted, exercised his right to remain silent. A prior, out of court statement by Henry was admitted, however, in which Henry asserted that appellant rather than he had used the bat first; that he had not used the hammer; and that William had looked worse the next day than he had when Henry left on the night of December 10th.
The People proceeded on the basis that appellant was guilty as an aider and abettor of first degree murder on either of two theories--(1) that the killing of William was wilful, deliberate, and premeditated; and/or (2) that the killing was perpetrated by torture in that the death was caused by acts involving a high degree of probability of death undertaken with the intent to inflict cruel pain and suffering for the purpose of revenge or extortion.
The trial court instructed the jury in the language of CALJIC No. 8.24 that:
Appellant argues both that the evidence was insufficient to warrant an instruction on murder by torture because there was no evidence that she intended that William suffer, and that the instruction quoted misstates the law in reciting that it is unnecessary that the victim of torture-murder actually have felt pain. She correctly notes that murder by torture cannot be inferred solely from the condition of the victim's body (People v. Beyea (1974) 38 Cal.App.3d 176, 201, 113 Cal.Rptr. 254), or from the mode of assault or injury suffered (People v. Tubby (1949) 34 Cal.2d 72, 77, 207 P.2d 51), but other evidence of intent to cause suffering is also required. (People v. Anderson (1965) 63 Cal.2d 351, 359--360, 46 Cal.Rptr. 763, 406 P.2d 43; People v. Caldwell (1955) 43 Cal.2d 864, 868--869, 279 P.2d 539.) Here the evidence was clearly sufficient to permit the trier of fact to find such intent. Both her own statement that she wanted to hit William on the hand that stole her money, and her response to Henry's question whether she wanted him to get her money back from William, when considered with the manner in which the beating to William was administered, permit an inference that the purpose of the beating was to cause pain.
Appellant's argument that actual awareness of pain by the victim is a necessary element of torture-murder finds no support in the reported cases that have interpreted and applied the torture-murder provision since it was added to the predecessor statute to section 189 in 1856. The history of section 189 and our construction of its language establish that this type of murder was categorized as first degree murder because the Legislature intended that the Means by which the killing was accomplished be equated to the premeditation and deliberation which render other murders sufficiently reprehensible to constitute first degree murder. A murder by torture was and is considered among the most reprehensible types of murder because of the calculated nature of the acts causing death, not simply because greater culpability could be attached to murder in which great pain and suffering are caused to the victim. (People v. Steger (1976) 16 Cal.3d 539, 544--546, 128 Cal.Rptr. 161, 546 P.2d 665.)
When enacted in 1850, section 19 of the Act Concerning Crimes and Punishment (Stats.1850, ch. 99, p. 231), the predecessor to section 189, did not divide murder into degrees, but defined murder as 'the unlawful killing of a human being, with malice aforethought, either express or implied.' Section 21 of the act defined malice and provided the sole penalty for murder, death. Possibly because juries were reluctant to convict defendants of murder when the penalty was so severe and the relative culpability of defendants quite disparate, the offense was divided into degrees by an 1856 amendment to the act. As amended, section 21 provided: (Stats.1856, ch. 149, sec. 1, p. 219.)
We first had occasion to construe the amended definition of murder in People v. Bealoba (1861) 17 Cal. 389, 393--394...
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...either direct or, if circumstantial, is not equally consistent with a reasonable conclusion of innocence (People v. Wiley (1976) 18 Cal.3d 162, 174-176, 133 Cal.Rptr. 135, 554 P.2d 881). The instruction should not be given simply because the incriminating evidence is indirect, e.g., defenda......
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...and deliberation]; People v. McNeal (1958) 160 Cal.App.2d 446, 450-451, 325 P.2d 166 and cases cited; cf. People v. Wiley (1976) 18 Cal.3d 162, 168-169, 133 Cal.Rptr. 135, 554 P.2d 881 [torture murder deemed "equated to ... premeditation and deliberation"].) In view of the foregoing uniform......
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...on the defendant's intent to cause pain to the victim, not on whether the victim actually suffered pain. (People v. Wiley (1976) 18 Cal.3d 162, 172–173, 133 Cal.Rptr. 135, 554 P.2d 881.) From this proposition we have observed that a defendant who, intending to inflict pain and suffering, re......
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...is entitled to great weight in construing the statute and in determining the intent of the Legislature." (People v. Wiley (1976) 18 Cal.3d 162, 171, 133 Cal.Rptr. 135, 554 P.2d 881; accord, Keeler v. Superior Court (1970) supra, 2 Cal.3d 619, 630, 87 Cal.Rptr. 481, 470 P.2d 617, and cases c......
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Table of cases
...21 Cal. 4th 973, 90 Cal. Rptr. 2d 260, §18:40 Wilder, People v. (1957) 151 Cal. App. 2d 698, 312 P.2d 425, §7:120 Wiley, People v. (1976) 18 Cal. 3d 162, 133 Cal. Rptr. 135, §22:10 Wiley v. Southern Pacific Transportation Co. (1990) 220 Cal. App. 3d 177, 269 Cal. Rptr. 240, §§3:70, 3:80 Wil......