The People v. Tate

• Decision Date: 01 September 2010
• Docket Number: No. S031641.,S031641.
• Citation: 234 P.3d 428,112 Cal.Rptr.3d 156,49 Cal.4th 635
• Parties: The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent,v.Gregory O. TATE, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: California Supreme Court

49 Cal.4th 635

234 P.3d 428

112 Cal.Rptr.3d 156

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent,v.Gregory O. TATE, Defendant and Appellant.

No. S031641.

Supreme Court of California

July 8, 2010.

Rehearing Denied Sept. 1, 2010.

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Michael J. Hersek, State Public Defender, under appointment by the Supreme Court, and Harry Gruber, Deputy State Public Defender, for Defendant and Appellant.

Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Gerald A. Engler, Assistant Attorney General, Bruce Ortega and Sara Turner, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

BAXTER, J.

A jury found defendant Gregory O. Tate guilty of the first degree murder of Sarah LaChapelle. (Pen.Code, §§ 187, 189.) ¹ The jury also found that defendant personally used a dangerous and deadly weapon, a knife (§ 12022), and that robbery-murder and burglary-murder special circumstances were true ( § 190.2, subd. (a)(17)). Defendant was sentenced to death. This appeal is automatic. We will affirm the judgment in its entirety.

I. FACTS

A. Guilt trial.

1. Prosecution case.

Around 8:00 p.m. on Monday, April 18, 1988, Tanya DeLaHoussaye paid a brief visit to Sarah LaChapelle in Sarah's home on Hesket Road in Oakland. ² Sarah's burgundy Oldsmobile Cutlass was parked in her driveway. Sarah was wearing a nightgown and said she planned to lie down because she had a cold.

At 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, April 19, 1988, Anthony LaChapelle, Sarah's son, went to her home and noticed her Cutlass was not in the driveway. The front door was open, though the outer screen door was closed. Anthony went in and found his mother dead on the living room floor, dressed in a nightgown. Her body had been impaled with a butcher knife and a barbecue fork. Her ring finger had been cut off and was lying near her body. A chair had been turned over, items had been tossed about, and the room was in disarray. There was a hole in the back door. Anthony called 911.

An autopsy confirmed that a knife was embedded in the victim's back, and a barbecue fork was stuck in the side of her neck. She had multiple stab wounds on her back, buttocks, and neck, some inflicted by a knife different from the one lodged in her back. There also were incised, or slicing, wounds on her left shoulder, right index finger, and right thumb. Her back and face exhibited numerous puncture wounds, caused by something small and sharp entering the body, including one such wound that had penetrated her eye. In all, her body had 24 stab wounds and 28 puncture wounds. These wounds had caused damage to her ribs, voice box, pericardial sac, heart, torso, neck, back, right jugular vein, right chest cavity, right lung, vertebral column, left kidney, abdominal cavity, and left buttock, and well as the tendons and muscles of her right hand. As noted, her ring finger had been detached from her hand, and she had damage to the adjacent third and fifth fingers. She had also suffered multiple blunt force injuries, including defensive wounds, to her head, face, arms, and torso. Her upper jaw was fractured, and teeth had been knocked out. The examining pathologist opined that the victim was alive, though not necessarily conscious, at the time these injuries were inflicted.

The victim had a telephone cord wrapped around her wrists and torso. There was a 10-inch tear on the front of her nightgown, which had been lifted above her waist. The evidence indicated that the assailant had made a forced entry through the back door, that a bloody struggle had occurred in the living room, that the assailant thereafter left bloody traces, including bloody footprints, throughout the house while looking for items to steal, and that the murder weapons were knives and tools found in the victim's home.

Defendant's grandmother lived across the street and three houses down from the victim's residence. Also living in the grandmother's house were defendant's mother, his brother, his aunt, and several other relatives. According to defendant's aunt, he sometimes lived with the family at his grandmother's house, but he was not living there on the day of Sarah's murder.

Around 6:00 p.m. on April 19, 1988, Oakland patrol officers Sullivan and Boyovich were parked on Kingsland Avenue. They spotted a burgundy Oldsmobile Cutlass that was on the stolen vehicle list. They stopped the vehicle, which was the victim's car. Defendant was driving. He was arrested. The interior of the Cutlass contained a small carving knife and a pair of red pants, as well as a radio-television and a videocassette recorder (VCR) that had been taken from the victim's home.

After initial resistance, defendant was handcuffed and placed in the police car. Once seated in the police vehicle, he volunteered that he had gotten the Cutlass from “a guy named Fred Bush.”

Defendant was taken to the homicide division of the Oakland Police Department to be interviewed. Defendant's sweater had a bloodstain on its sleeve, and, when one of the interviewing officers arrived, the bloody shoes defendant had been wearing were sitting outside the interview room. The interview began around 9:25 p.m. on April 19 and lasted through much of the night, with periodic breaks.³ Only a single portion was recorded. During the unrecorded initial segment, interrogating officers advised defendant they were investigating the theft of the Oldsmobile, and that a lady had been “hurt” in the incident. The officers read him his Miranda rights. He agreed to waive his right to silence, both orally and by initialing the written advisement form.

During the initial unrecorded segment, the officers asked defendant about the bloodstain on the sleeve of his sweater. Defendant said it was from a nosebleed. Defendant further stated the following: He lived with his grandmother, but was staying at the home of his girlfriend, Lisa Henry. ⁴ He was at his grandmother's between 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. on April 18, 1988, but arrived at Lisa's residence around 8:00 p.m. The next morning, April 19, he got up at 10:00 a.m. and went to 55th Avenue and Foothill Boulevard. There he met Fred Bush, who had the burgundy Oldsmobile Cutlass. Bush was trying to sell a small television and a VCR. He owed defendant $500 because, when defendant was arrested and jailed following an earlier fight between the two men, Bush or Bush's mother had taken defendant's jacket, which contained cocaine worth that sum. As a “fair trade” for the debt, defendant gave Bush two rocks of cocaine, worth $20 each; in return, Bush gave defendant the television and the VCR, and lent him the Cutlass until 11:00 that evening so he could take Lisa to a drive-in movie.

The recorded portion of the interview began at 10:07 p.m. At this time, defendant was re- Mirandized, and he agreed to continue speaking. During the recorded segment, defendant provided a more detailed version of the account he had previously given. Meanwhile, the officers learned that Fred Bush had been taken into custody on April 7, 1988. (He would thereafter remain in the county jail until July 18, 1988.) Without telling defendant that Bush was in jail, the officers asked defendant to identify a picture of Bush. Defendant positively identified, and initialed, the picture.

The recorded session ended at 10:33 p.m.,⁵ and the interview resumed at 11:29 p.m. Before this latter segment commenced, the officers advised defendant that the victim in the case they were investigating was dead.

In the renewed session, defendant conceded that his grandmother lived near the victim, Sarah LaChapelle, and that he knew Sarah's son, but he denied ever being inside the victim's house. An officer asked defendant whether anything had happened at his grandmother's residence on April 18, 1988. Defendant said he had gone there once that day to get money from his mother for a bus ticket, but she would not give him money. He had also gone to obtain his gun, and he went into his grandmother's room for that purpose. Told that two 911 calls had been made from his grandmother's address on that day (at 7:04 p.m. and 9:25 p.m.), defendant responded, “What if I did go back? But I didn't.” Defendant insisted his family blamed him for everything and did not like him. When accused of lying, defendant muttered to himself, “Going to jail for the rest of your life, man.”

At length, the officers confronted defendant with the facts that Fred Bush was in jail, defendant had been driving the victim's car and was in possession of property taken from her home, and he had bloodstains on his clothing and shoes. Urged to tell the truth in the face of this evidence, defendant responded, “Well, what's in it for me?” The officers indicated there would be no deals. In the early morning hours of April 20, 1988, defendant was arrested for Sarah LaChapelle's murder.

Later on the morning of April 20, and pursuant to a warrant, officers searched the residence where Lisa Henry lived with her father and her 15-year-old brother, Germaine. Among other things, the officers seized a watch and chain necklace, and a Visa credit card in the victim's name. Lisa gave the watch and chain to police after an officer advised her they were looking for evidence that might have been taken in the homicide.

When the search was complete, the police transported Lisa to the station to obtain a statement. Among other things, the officers asked whether defendant had given her some rings. Lisa said he had done so, but had subsequently taken them back.⁶

At the conclusion of an initial interview, Lisa was allowed to speak with defendant, who was in another interview room. There were several versions of how this visit came about, and of what defendant told Lisa....