The People v. Taylor
| Decision Date | 18 August 2010 |
| Docket Number | B195651,No. NA 01804C,NA 01804C |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
| Parties | THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. LEIF TAYLOR, Defendant and Appellant. |
Gregory L. Rickard, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Pamela C. Hamanaka, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Victoria B. Wilson and Noah P. Hill, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court for the County of Los Angeles. Joan Comparet-Cassani, Judge. Affirmed.
Leif Taylor, then 16 years old, was arrested (together with a younger companion) and convicted for the 1993 murder of William Shadden. Defendant's conviction hinged on a full confession he gave to police detectives. Ten years later, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found the detectives' "coercive and constitutionally unacceptable misconduct overbore Taylor's free will, rendering his confession involuntary." (Taylor v. Maddox (9th Cir. 2004) 366 F.3d 992, 1016 (Taylor)) Defendant was re-tried in January 2006, but the jury eventually announced itself "hopelessly deadlocked" and the court declared a mistrial. Defendant was tried again in June and July 2006. The jury, after six days of deliberations, convicted defendant of first degree murder and second degree robbery, and found the special circumstance allegation (that he was engaged in a robbery) and a firearm enhancement to be true.
Defendant contends insufficient evidence supported his identification as the murderer, principally because eyewitnesses initially described both perpetrators as Hispanic, while defendant is Caucasian. He contends his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights to due process and a fair trial, as well as his Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses, were violated (and claims ineffective assistance of counsel) when the trial court ruled a prosecution witness had no Fifth Amendment privilege against selfincrimination, and allowed the prosecutor to ask questions about disposal of the purported murder weapon knowing the witness would refuse to answer them. And finally, defendant contests the trial court's refusal to declare a mistrial after a hostile prosecution witness deliberately stated, "He [defendant] confessed, so why don't you leave me alone?" in violation of a direct order from the trial court.
We affirm the judgment.
Viewed in the light most favorable to the judgment, the facts surrounding the murder were these. Defendant was a member of a graffiti tagging crew called Mob to Kill or M2K and used the name "Seum." On the evening of the murder, defendant and a number of other people were gathered at the residence of Jeff Perich, a place frequented by members of M2K, because one of their number had recently been murdered. At about 9:00 p.m., Ruben Lucero and his girlfriend, Ana Bonilla, drove to the Perich residence in a van owned by Lucero's mother. They picked up defendant, Victor Rodriguez, Allen Meister, Eddie Gonzalez, and another person referred to only as "Abel."
Lucero drove the group to a Jack-in-the-Box restaurant on Second Street in the Belmont Shore area of Long Beach. After 30 or 40 minutes, Lucero drove the group to the beach. Sometime during the drive, defendant showed Bonilla a small handgun. Lucero got angry and told defendant to put it away, and defendant then said the gun was a fake. Lucero parked the van at the beach. He and Bonilla remained inside the van arguing, and the others got out and sat on a low wall separating the sidewalk from the sand.
According to Lucero, defendant and Rodriguez wanted to steal bicycles to use during the upcoming summer. There were bolt cutters in the van, and while the van was parked at the beach, Rodriguez and Gonzalez stole a bicycle and Gonzalez put it in the back of the van. Everyone eventually got back in the van except defendant and Rodriguez. Defendant had a midnight curfew and wanted to go home, but Lucero did not want to leave the area. Defendant and Rodriguez walked across Ocean Boulevard toward the adjacent residential neighborhood, while Lucero drove the van first east then west on Ocean Boulevard.
Meanwhile, William Shadden was riding his bicycle west on Ocean Boulevard. As defendant and Rodriguez walked east on Ocean Boulevard, they saw Shadden. As Shadden approached, defendant and Rodriguez grabbed the handlebars of his bicycle and knocked him to the ground, near the intersection of Ocean Boulevard and Laverne Avenue. Shadden got up and began to chase defendant. Defendant shot Shadden twice with a.22-caliber automatic handgun. After the first shot, Shadden continued to chasedefendant, but after the second, Shadden turned and began to run in the opposite direction.
Dr. Jerrold Ofgang was driving along Ocean Boulevard between 11:30 p.m. and midnight, and saw the two boys as they knocked Shadden from the bicycle. He made a U-turn with the intention of stopping what he thought was a robbery in progress. When he arrived at the intersection of Ocean and Laverne, he saw Rodriguez emerge from a row of parked cars. Rodriguez tried to pick up Shadden's bicycle, but Dr. Ofgang drove up to the bicycle and Rodriguez dropped it and ran away. Debra Gray, who lived in the area, heard the young man who was trying to pick up the bicycle yell, "You shot the mother-fucker," or "[W]e got [the] mother-fucker"; the person she saw was not holding a firearm.
Dr. Ofgang emerged from his truck, picked up Shadden's bicycle and walked up Laverne Avenue to look for Shadden. Ofgang found Shadden lying, unresponsive, in a patch of ice plant about eight to 10 yards from the corner. He tried to resuscitate Shadden, but his efforts were unsuccessful. The fatal bullet, which entered the left side of Shadden's chest from the front and punctured his heart and liver, was a.22-caliber bullet.
Meanwhile, Lucero was driving in the area, and someone in the van heard the gunshots. Lucero drove into the neighborhood bordering the beach and saw defendant and Rodriguez one block north of the intersection where Shadden was accosted. Defendant and Rodriguez got into the van. Bonilla later told the police that defendant said, "I just killed the fool," and Rodriguez told police that defendant said, "Let's go, 'cause I just shot somebody." While Lucero drove the group back to the Perich residence, one of the boys in the van urinated on defendant's hands (or on a tissue he gave to defendant) in order to destroy any gunshot residue, and Bonilla told police that defendant said, "I'm not going to get caught for anything." When Lucero dropped off defendant (either at the Perich residence, defendant's home or Lucero's home), Lucero heard defendant tell Allen Meister that he had shot someone.
Dr. Ofgang and several individuals who lived in the neighborhood testified to what they saw and heard on the evening of the murder. All of them initially told police that the persons they saw were slim, Hispanic males, one taller than the other.
Ofgang, who had seen the two boys knock Shadden from his bicycle, saw only Rodriguez when he returned to the intersection. He had not heard the gunshots. He identified Rodriguez, the shorter of the two assailants, from a photographic array as the person trying to pick up the bicycle. On the night of the crime, Ofgang described both assailants as Hispanic, and in 1994 he testified that both were of similar complexion, "meaning without, you know, dramatic contrast." At both trials in 2006, Ofgang testified that the two assailants were "dramatically different" in complexion and the taller was "fair skinned." At this trial, Ofgang described the second assailant as "Anglo to light skin Hispanic," while Rodriguez was "Chicano or dark skinned Hispanic." (Ofgang had never described the second assailant as "Anglo" until the day of his June 2006 testimony.) Ofgang could not positively identify defendant, whom he had seen only in profile, but testified that defendant "appears to be" the second person he saw accosting the victim. Ofgang testified that the person with Rodriguez was no taller than 5 feet, 10 inches and weighed no more than 155 pounds. (Defendant was 5 feet, 6 inches and weighed 125 pounds on September 1, 1993.)
Ann Hoffman lived on Laverne Avenue near its intersection with Ocean Boulevard. She testified in 2006 that she was standing on her balcony and saw Shadden riding his bicycle with two young Hispanic men chasing him. One of the men made a movement with his hand as he stood behind Shadden; she heard two gunshots, and Shadden fell. The man who made the hand movement walked past her balcony and looked up at her as he walked north on Laverne; the man was a dark-skinned Hispanic and she was certain it was not defendant.
Hoffman's statements in 1993 were somewhat different. She told police she had been inside her apartment when she heard gunshots, and saw a male Hispanic running very fast in a northerly direction on Laverne; the second, shorter male Hispanic, was crouched behind a van parked on Laverne and began running a few seconds later. Both were wearing white T-shirts and dark pants; she described one of them as about 5 feet 11 inches and 160 pounds, and the other as about 5 feet 9 inches and 130 pounds, both with very short or shaved dark hair. Before the trial in 2006, Hoffman identified a photograph of defendant, taken in 1994, as depicting the person who looked up at her after the shooting, and told a defense investigator that "someone would have a hard time convincing [me] that that was not the person [I] saw." Hoffman believed defendant appeared Hispanic in the photograph. But, seeing defendant in person in the courtroom, Hoffman said she "would definitely...
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