People v. Zaragoza
| Decision Date | 11 July 2016 |
| Docket Number | No. S097886.,S097886. |
| Citation | 204 Cal.Rptr.3d 131,1 Cal.5th 21,374 P.3d 344 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Louis Rangel ZARAGOZA, Defendant and Appellant. |
| Court | California Supreme Court |
1 Cal.5th 21
374 P.3d 344
204 Cal.Rptr.3d 131
The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent
v.
Louis Rangel ZARAGOZA, Defendant and Appellant.
No. S097886.
Supreme Court of California
July 11, 2016.
Michael R. Snedeker, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for Defendant and Appellant.
Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette and Gerald A. Engler, Chief Assistant Attorneys General, Michael P. Farrell, Assistant Attorney General, Stephanie Mitchell, Sean M. McCoy and Peter H. Smith, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
CUÉLLAR, J.
In February 2001, a San Joaquin County jury found defendant Louis Rangel Zaragoza guilty of the 1999 first degree murder of David Gaines and the robbery of William Gaines. (Pen.Code, §§ 187, 189.)1 The jury found true the robbery-murder and lying-in-wait special circumstances—making defendant eligible for the death penalty (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(15), (17)(A))—and also concluded that defendant personally used a handgun and caused a death in the commission of the murder and robbery. (Former §§ 12022.5, subd. (a), 12022.53, subd. (d).) Following the penalty phase trial, the jury returned a verdict of death. This appeal is automatic. (§ 1239,
subd. (b).) We reverse the death judgment because of error in the death-qualification of the jury, but otherwise affirm.
I. Facts
The judgment of death under review rests on the jury's finding that defendant murdered David Gaines in the commission of a robbery and while lying in wait. The prosecution's theory was that defendant and his brother, David Zaragoza, together committed the robbery murder and that
defendant was the shooter. The brothers were originally charged in a single information. After David Zaragoza was found incompetent to stand trial, defendant was tried alone.
A. Guilt Phase
1. The Prosecution's Case
The murder victim was 36–year–old David Gaines. He worked with his father, William Gaines, 87, at Gaines Liquors in Stockton. On Friday, June 11, 1999, David Gaines arrived for work in the afternoon, as usual. William Gaines returned to the store around 7:00 p.m., bringing food his wife Mary had prepared. Mary usually packed a meal and salad for her son on Friday nights because there was no time for him to go out for a sandwich. The salad was in a fluted Pyrex glass bowl with a blue lid.
After closing the store at 11:00 p.m., David and William Gaines drove in separate cars back to their home, located at 1122 Cameron Way, in an unincorporated area of Stockton. David Gaines parked his car in the garage; William parked his in front of the house. When William Gaines got out of the car, he was holding a brown paper bag in one hand and his keys in the other. On rare occasions, William Gaines would bring home the day's receipts, but the paper bag on this day contained only the Pyrex bowl. As soon as William Gaines shut the car door, a man punched him in the chin and shoulder. With his other hand, the man grabbed the bag containing the Pyrex bowl. William Gaines briefly fell to one knee. When he got back up, he called out “David” to his son. The assailant, later identified by William Gaines as David Zaragoza, took off running in an eastbound direction.
David Gaines rushed outside with a canister of Mace and said, “Hey.” David Zaragoza was already 10 to 30 feet down the street, with his back to William Gaines. Suddenly, William Gaines heard gunshots, so he ducked behind his vehicle. He did not see any muzzle flash coming from the fleeing David Zaragoza before he lost sight of his assailant. Seconds later, when the gunfire had ceased, William found his son on the driveway in a pool of blood.
David Zaragoza and another man were running down the street. The men were 50 to 100 feet away, one trailing about 10 feet behind the other. William Gaines entered the house to tell his wife what had happened and to call 911. The 911 call came in at 11:16 p.m.
Carol Maurer, who lived across the street and a little to the east of the Gaines residence, testified that she looked outside her bedroom, the room closest to the Gaines residence, after hearing gunfire. She saw two young men, medium build and “not too tall,” heading east. The men were running fast and only a few feet apart. The one in back was wearing white. Maurer had told neighbor David French at the scene that she saw two young people running down the street after the shots were fired, and French in turn relayed that information to 911. Cindy Grafius, who lived east of the Gaines family home on Cameron Way, heard four loud “pops” and then saw a person run by
her driveway. She did not recall seeing anything in this person's hands. By the time she walked outside her home, she looked west and then east but did not see anyone.
David Gaines was not breathing and had no pulse when the paramedics arrived. He suffered four gunshot wounds : one each to his head and wrist, and two to his chest. The presence of soot indicated that these must have been contact wounds, except for the wound to the head, where the muzzle would have been no more than 18 inches away. The three bullets that could
be recovered were so damaged as to preclude the conclusion that they were fired by any particular gun, but the criminalist was able to determine that they all could have been fired by the same gun.
The prosecution theorized that the first shot, a defensive wound, hit David Gaines's wrist and caused his watch to shatter and spread pieces over a large area. The remaining shots, which were fatal, spun David Gaines around. Based on the trajectory of the bullets, the northwesterly direction of the blood spatter, and the recovery of a spent bullet in the next-door neighbor's yard to the east, the prosecution argued that David Gaines must have been facing south, away from the fleeing David Zaragoza but toward his killer, at the time he was shot. According to the prosecution, this was the only explanation for the downward trajectory of the bullets that entered David Gaines, who was taller than defendant or his brother and was on a driveway that sloped up from the street toward the house.
Later that night, William Gaines scooped up some papers from the ground near his car door. He assumed they must have fallen out of his shirt pocket when he was accosted. The next morning, after looking at the papers, he realized they were not his and called the San Joaquin County Sheriff's
Department. The papers included a number of items that bore David Zaragoza's name or fingerprints, including a Medi–Cal identification card, a transit card, and a San Joaquin County Medical Facility interoffice memo.
Meanwhile, at the crime scene, the sheriff's department had already recovered a torn book-and-release form and another piece of paper with the words “Mr. Zar” on it. Further research revealed that the form belonged to David Zaragoza. The next morning, June 12, 1999, Detective Jerry Alejandre went to the board and care home where David Zaragoza resided; David was not home. Alejandre interviewed the caretakers and was shown photographs of David Zaragoza and his family, including a single photo of defendant. When Detective Alejandre returned to the board and care home in the afternoon, the photo of defendant was missing from the display.
In his statement to police on June 12, 1999, David Zaragoza denied being with defendant on the previous evening. A clinical psychologist who examined David in January 2000 diagnosed him as suffering from chronic paranoid schizophrenia, polysubstance abuse (in remission because of his incarceration), and severe personality disorder with paranoid, antisocial, and schizotypal features. David had borderline intellectual functioning, a verbal IQ of 61, a second grade reading level, and a global assessment of functioning score indicating severe impairment and psychosis.
On June 13, 1999, Detective Bruce Wuest went to 429 South Airport Way, where defendant lived with his sister, Nina Koker, and her disabled husband, John Koker, to search for evidence. In the garbage bin outside the Koker residence, Wuest found a fluted Pyrex glass bowl, which had been wrapped in a plastic bag from Grocery Outlet and placed in a white kitchen-size garbage bag. There was oil inside the bowl, which was consistent with its having contained a salad. Mary Gaines identified the bowl as the one she had used to pack dinner for her son on the day he died. Wuest also found a small white bag containing a receipt from a Jack in the Box on Pacific Avenue, which was less than a mile from the Gaines residence, and an...
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