People v. Williams

• Citation: 16 Cal.4th 635,66 Cal.Rptr.2d 573,941 P.2d 752
• Decision Date: 21 August 1997
• Docket Number: No. S004777,S004777
• Court: United States State Supreme Court (California)
• Parties: , 941 P.2d 752, 97 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 6690, 97 Daily Journal D.A.R. 10,869 The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Darren Charles WILLIAMS, Defendant and Appellant.

Page 573

66 Cal.Rptr.2d 573

16 Cal.4th 635, 941 P.2d 752, 97 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 6690,

97 Daily Journal D.A.R. 10,869

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Darren Charles WILLIAMS, Defendant and Appellant.

No. S004777.

Supreme Court of California.

Aug. 21, 1997.

Rehearing Denied Oct. 15, 1997.

Nicholas C. Arguimbau and Maureen M. Bodo, San Francisco, for Appellant.

Daniel E. Lungen, Attorney General, George Williamson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Carol Wendelin Pollack, Assistant Attorney General, John R. Gorey, Susan L. Frierson and Sanjay T. Kumar, Deputy Attorneys General, Los Angeles, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

KENNARD, Justice.

This is an automatic appeal from a judgment of death. (Pen.Code, § 1239, subd. (b); all further statutory references are to the Penal Code unless otherwise indicated.)

A jury convicted defendant Darren Charles Williams of four counts of first degree murder. (§ 187.) But the jury failed to reach a verdict on the special circumstance allegation of multiple murder. (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(3).) The special circumstance allegation was then tried before a second jury, which found it to be true and returned a verdict of death. The trial court denied defendant's automatic motion to modify penalty (§ 190.4, subd. (e)), and sentenced him to death.

We affirm the convictions of four counts of first degree murder, but prejudicial error in the retrial of the special circumstance allegation requires that we set aside the jury's finding on the special circumstance and reverse the judgment of death. ¹

I. FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS

Early in the morning of August 31, 1984, 58-year-old Ebora Alexander died in her South Central Los Angeles home from multiple gunshot wounds to the head. Three other household members--the victim's twenty-four-year-old daughter, Dietria Alexander, and two visiting grandsons, thirteen-year-old Damani Garner and eight-year-old Damon Bonner--were shot and killed in their beds.

A. PROSECUTION'S GUILT PHASE CASE

Sometime between 5:00 and 6:00 a.m. on August 31, 1984, DeLisa Brown ² and Ida Moore were at Moore's home on Third Avenue in Los Angeles when defendant, a casual acquaintance of Moore's, arrived with Horace Burns. Defendant made a telephone call. Burns left, but returned 20 to 30 minutes later with another man, Tiequon Cox. Defendant asked Moore to drive him and the other two men to "some lady's house" to "pick up some money."

The group left in Moore's van, with Moore driving, Brown in the front passenger seat, and the three men in the back. Moore needed gasoline for the van and asked the men for money. They said they had none, so Moore used her own money to pay for $2 worth of gasoline. Defendant told Moore to drive to 59th Street. On the way, Brown heard one of the men say something about "killing everybody" in the house. On 59th Street, defendant kept checking a piece of paper with an address written on it.

Near the corner of 59th and Main Streets, defendant directed Moore to pull over but to keep the motor running. He told Burns to stay in the van with the two women. Defendant and Cox got out and walked toward a house on 59th Street. Cox was carrying a jacket with something wrapped up inside. When Moore asked Burns what Cox and defendant were going to do, Burns replied that they were going to "shoot it up" to "scare people to make sure" they would hand over their money. Moments later, gunshots rang out.

Around 7:30 a.m. on August 31, 1984, 17-year-old LaShawn Driver was returning to her 59th Street home when she saw two men walking toward the Alexander house. Driver entered her own house. A couple minutes later, she heard gunshots and ran outside. Within a minute or so, Driver saw defendant walking down the Alexanders' driveway. After a second volley of shots, Cox ran out of the Alexander house carrying a rifle.

Moore and Brown estimated that defendant was gone from the van for just a few minutes. When he returned, he was carrying a handgun. Defendant held the gun up, spun it around, blew on its barrel, and said he had only one bullet left. About three minutes later, Cox came back with a rifle. As he jumped in the van, he exclaimed, "I just blew a bitch's head off."

Defendant directed Moore to the corner of Gage and Vermont Avenues. Defendant told the two women not to say anything about what had just happened. Then, accompanied by his two male companions, defendant went into an establishment known as the Vermont Club. Moore and Brown returned to Moore's house.

A short while later, defendant telephoned Moore's house and asked that Brown drive defendant's car to the Vermont Club. On the way, Brown picked up Cox at a gas station and drove him to the back of the Vermont Club. Someone handed Cox the same rifle that Brown had seen him with on 59th Street, and Cox put it in the car trunk. Brown then drove Cox to 10th Avenue. Taking the rifle with him, Cox went into an apartment building; he returned five minutes later without the rifle.

Sometime between 10:00 and 10:30 a.m. on August 31, 1984, Brown and Moore met with defendant at the house of a mutual acquaintance. Defendant removed new clothes from a shopping bag, handed Moore $50 and asked her to buy him some toiletries. He also gave Moore $5 for the gasoline she had paid for earlier, and he gave Brown $20.

Later that same day, Cox bought a 1975 Cadillac for $3,000, paying for it in $100 and $20 bills. The next day, defendant made a $1,500 cash down payment on a used car for his wife.

When police entered the 59th Street home of Ebora Alexander, they found four people dead from gunshot wounds. Ebora Alexander died from multiple gunshot wounds to the head; apparently she was shot while sitting at the kitchen table having breakfast. The other three murder victims were shot in their beds, execution style: Dietria Alexander had three gunshot wounds to the head and neck, while the two young boys, Damani Garner and Damon Bonner, each died from a single gunshot wound to the head. Two persons who were present in the Alexander household during the shooting survived. One of them was Neal Alexander, a son of Ebora Alexander and a brother of Dietria Alexander. Awakened by screaming, Neal ran from his bedroom to Dietria's bedroom and saw an intruder holding a rifle. Neal then ran out of the house. The other survivor was 14-year-old Ivan Scott, a grandson of murder victim Ebora Alexander; he was asleep in his Uncle Neal's room when he was awakened by gunshots and screams. He immediately hid in a closet, and came out only after the gunfire had stopped.

Police ballistics experts identified bullet fragments and casings recovered from the Alexander home as having been fired by an M-1 carbine rifle. On September 27, 1984, police recovered an M-1 carbine from James Kennedy, who lived in an apartment on 10th Avenue. Kennedy said that Tiequon Cox had left the weapon at Kennedy's apartment early one morning. Although Kennedy could not recall the exact date, he did remember seeing a young woman sitting in a car in front of his building, waiting for Cox. Ballistics tests of the M-1 carbine retrieved from Kennedy and the bullet fragments and casings recovered at the murder scene established that some of the fragments and casings had come from the M-1 carbine. Others could have been fired from the M-1 carbine, but were so damaged that ballistics experts could not say with certainty that they had come from that rifle, although nothing linked the fragments to any other weapon.

On February 28, 1985, two detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department arrested defendant in Richmond in Northern California for the murders of the four members of the Alexander family. Defendant waived his rights under Miranda v. Arizona (1966) 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694, and agreed to talk to the officers. In this tape-recorded interview, which was played at trial, defendant gave several contradictory statements. He first said that he had heard about the murders and understood that the gunmen had gone to the wrong house. He denied any involvement. Later, defendant admitted he was present at the Alexander house, but insisted that he had run away as soon as Cox started shooting. Defendant said that he had heard that a man named "Jack" from the Vermont Club had hired Cox and Burns to kill a young woman who was

[941 P.2d 761] suing the club for injuries sustained in a shooting. ³

B. DEFENSE GUILT PHASE CASE

Defendant presented an alibi defense.

Mary Alford, defendant's cousin, testified that around 3:30 a.m. on August 31, 1984, defendant came to her house, and she allowed him to sleep on the couch. Between 6:30 and 8:30 a.m., Alford and two other people saw defendant asleep on the couch. Defendant was still at Alford's between 10:00 and 10:30 a.m. when another cousin, Willie Morris, talked to him.

At 6:00 p.m. that evening, defendant's wife, Cheryl Williams, picked him up at Alford's home. Defendant and his wife were separated but were trying to reconcile. They spent the next two nights in a motel in El Monte in Southern California. The next day, defendant made a cash down payment on a used car for Cheryl. Defendant had recently made $2,000 from a furniture sale, and still had most of $2,523 he had won a month earlier at the Hollywood Park race track.

Detective David Crews investigated the Vermont Club in connection with this case and heard that there had been a "contract" to kill a young woman named Valarie Taylor, who was injured in a shooting incident at the Vermont Club. Taylor had filed suit against several people she alleged were involved in the shooting and had also named as defendants the club and its owner, Ossie Jackson.

Private investigator Anthony Pellicano testified that he had examined the tape recording of the police interview with defendant and found pauses on the tape suggesting that the recorder might have been turned off during the interview.

II. PRETRIAL PROCEEDINGS

A. DISQUALIFICATION OF...