Case Title: In re Rogers

Citation: 

Docket Number: S084292

State: california

Court: California Supreme Court

Date: 2019-07-15T00:00:00Z

Document:
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF 
CALIFORNIA 
 
In re DAVID KEITH ROGERS 
on Habeas Corpus. 
 
S084292 
 
Kern County Superior Court 
33477 
 
 
July 15, 2019 
 
Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye authored the opinion of the 
Court, in which Justices Chin, Corrigan, Liu, Cuéllar, Kruger 
and Groban concurred. 
 
 
1 
IN RE ROGERS 
S084292 
 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
 
 
Petitioner David Keith Rogers filed an original habeas 
corpus petition in this court contending he should be granted 
relief from his sentence of death.  We issued an order to show 
cause with respect to various claims relating to petitioner’s 
assertion that, at the penalty phase, prosecution witness 
Tambri Butler falsely identified petitioner as the man who 
sexually assaulted her.  After an evidentiary hearing, our 
referee found that Butler had testified falsely when she 
identified petitioner as her assailant.  As will appear, we 
generally accept the referee’s findings, and therefore grant 
petitioner relief on the basis of false evidence by overturning his 
sentence of death.  We therefore need not reach his claims of 
newly discovered evidence and ineffective assistance of counsel, 
the two other topics concerning which the referee made findings 
supportive of petitioner’s claims. 
I.  PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND 
In 1988, a jury convicted petitioner of the first degree 
murder of Tracie Clark and the second degree murder of Janine 
Benintende (Pen. Code, §§ 187, 189)1 and found true, among 
other things, the special circumstance allegation of multiple 
                                        
1  
All further statutory references are to the Penal Code 
unless otherwise indicated. 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
2 
murder (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(3)).  At the penalty phase of the trial, 
the jury returned a verdict of death for the Clark murder.  We 
unanimously affirmed petitioner’s guilt verdict and death 
sentence.  (People v. Rogers (2006) 39 Cal.4th 826 (Rogers).) 
Petitioner filed a habeas corpus petition in 1999.  In claims 
III through VI, he alleged that penalty phase witness Tambri 
Butler had misidentified him as the man who assaulted and 
raped her.  Petitioner claimed that newly discovered evidence 
showed that an individual named Michael Ratzlaff was the 
assailant.  Petitioner also included a declaration by Butler in 
which she expressed varying degrees of doubt about her 
identification of petitioner as her assailant, saying, in the first 
paragraph of the declaration, “I now believe my identification of 
Rogers was wrong” and, in the last paragraph, “I am now more 
concerned than ever that I wrongly identified David Rogers as 
the man who attacked me.”   
In 2007, we issued to the Secretary of the Department of 
Corrections and Rehabilitation an order to show cause why we 
should not grant petitioner relief on the grounds connected to 
the alleged misidentification by Tambri Butler, namely: 
(1) newly discovered evidence and use of false evidence, as 
alleged in claim III; 
(2) the prosecutor’s failure to disclose exculpatory 
evidence, as alleged in claim IV;  
(3) ineffective assistance of counsel, as alleged in 
subclaims (G), (K), (L), (M), (N), and (O) (to the extent petitioner 
alleged failure to request CALJIC No. 2.92) of claim V;  
(4) cumulative penalty phase prejudice arising from the 
facts alleged in the subclaims of claim V identified in paragraph 
(3) above, as alleged in subclaim (Q) of claim V; and 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
3 
(5) cumulative penalty phase prejudice arising from the 
facts alleged in the claims and subclaims identified in 
paragraphs (1) through (4) above, as alleged in claim VI. 
After considering the Attorney General’s return, filed in 
2008, and petitioner’s traverse, filed in 2009, we ordered a 
reference hearing.  The order directed our referee to address, as 
relevant here, the following questions: 
“1.  Did Tambri Butler testify falsely (either inadvertently 
or otherwise) at the penalty phase of petitioner’s trial regarding 
the identity of the person who assaulted her in January or 
February 1986? 
“2.  Did Tambri Butler testify falsely at the penalty phase 
of petitioner’s trial regarding any other matter, including: 
(1) whether she had seen petitioner on television before she 
identified him as her attacker; and (2) whether she had been 
promised leniency for her testimony and/or was aware that she 
would be released early after she testified?   
“3.  Is there newly discovered, credible evidence indicating 
that petitioner did not assault Tambri Butler in 1986, including 
evidence that another person committed the assault?  If so, what 
is that evidence?   
“4.  What information did law enforcement agencies 
involved in petitioner’s prosecution possess before, during and 
after petitioner’s trial regarding Michael Ratzlaff’s attacks on 
prostitutes other than Tambri Butler?  When did law 
enforcement come into possession of the information?  Were the 
individual law enforcement officers who possessed the 
information involved in petitioner’s prosecution?  Was the 
prosecution in petitioner’s case aware, or should it have been 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
4 
aware, of the information?  Did the prosecution disclose such 
information to petitioner’s defense counsel?   
“5.  What crime was Tambri Butler serving time for at the 
time she testified at petitioner’s trial?  Did the prosecution 
disclose information about Tambri Butler’s criminal history to 
the defense?  If so, what information did it disclose? 
“6.  Was Tambri Butler promised leniency in exchange for 
her testimony against petitioner?  Did Tambri Butler request 
early release in exchange for her testimony?  Was Tambri Butler 
aware at the time she testified that she would be released early 
in exchange for her testimony?  Was Tambri Butler threatened 
by law enforcement agents or given false information about the 
killing of Tracie Clark before she testified?  Was the prosecution 
aware, or should it have been aware, of any promises or threats 
made to Tambri Butler or Butler’s request or expectation of 
early release?  If so, did it disclose such information to the 
defense?”2     
                                        
2  
Our reference order included several additional questions 
on which the referee took evidence and made findings, but which 
we will not address in view of our disposition of questions 
1 through 6.  They are: 
“7.  What actions did petitioner’s trial counsel, Eugene 
Lorenz, take to investigate the 1986 assault on Tambri Butler, 
including: (1) the identity of Butler’s assailant; (2) whether 
Butler had seen petitioner on television before she identified 
him; (3) Butler’s criminal history; and (4) whether petitioner 
had been involved in any prior arrests of Butler before she 
identified him as her assailant?  What were the results of that 
investigation?  Was that investigation conducted in a manner to 
be expected of a reasonably competent attorney acting as a 
diligent advocate?  If not, in what respects was it inadequate?   
 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
5 
                                        
“8.  If trial counsel’s investigation was inadequate, what 
additional evidence would an adequate investigation have 
disclosed?  How credible was that evidence?  What investigative 
steps would have led to that additional evidence?   
“9.  After conducting an adequate investigation of the 
assault on Butler, would a reasonably competent attorney 
acting as a diligent advocate have introduced additional 
evidence regarding: (1) the identity of Butler’s assailant; 
(2) whether Butler had seen petitioner on television before she 
identified him; (3) Butler’s criminal history; and (4) whether 
petitioner had been involved in any prior arrests of Butler before 
she identified him as her assailant?  What, if any, rebuttal 
evidence would have been available to the prosecution?  
“10.  Did trial counsel have tactical or other reasons for 
failing to challenge the admissibility of Butler’s testimony?  If 
so, what were those reasons?  After conducting an adequate 
investigation into the 1986 assault, would reasonably competent 
counsel have moved to exclude Butler’s testimony?   
“11.  Did trial counsel have tactical or other reasons for 
failing to impeach or rebut Tambri Butler’s testimony?  If so, 
what was/were the reason(s)?  What impeaching or rebuttal 
evidence 
was 
available 
to 
counsel 
upon 
reasonable 
investigation?  Would a reasonably competent attorney acting 
as a diligent advocate have impeached or rebutted Butler’s 
testimony?  If so, in what manner? 
“12.  Did trial counsel have tactical or other reasons for 
failing 
to 
present 
expert 
testimony 
on 
eyewitness 
identifications?  If so, what was/were the reason(s)?  Would a 
reasonably competent attorney acting as a diligent advocate 
have presented expert testimony on eyewitness identifications?  
What would such an expert witness have said? 
“13.  Did trial counsel have tactical or other reasons for 
failing to request CALJIC No. 2.92?  If so, what was/were the 
reason(s)?  Would a reasonably competent attorney acting as a 
diligent advocate have requested CALJIC No. 2.92?   
 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
6 
In 2009, we appointed the Honorable Louis P. Etcheverry, 
Judge of the Superior Court of Kern County, as our referee.  In 
2011, Judge Etcheverry conducted an evidentiary hearing, in 
which 27 witnesses, including Butler, testified.  In 2015, the 
referee filed with us a 24-page report containing his findings.  In 
2016, petitioner and the Attorney General filed briefing and 
exceptions to the referee’s report.   
II.  TRIAL EVIDENCE 
A detailed summary of the facts is set forth in Rogers, 
supra, 39 Cal.4th at pages 836 to 846.  Briefly, the evidence at 
trial showed that petitioner, a Kern County sheriff’s deputy, 
murdered 20-year-old Janine Benintende in early 1986 and 15-
year-old Tracie Clark on February 8, 1987.  Both women had 
been sex workers on Union Avenue in Bakersfield.  Both bodies 
were found in the Arvin-Edison Canal.  Both had been shot 
multiple times with bullets from a .38-caliber weapon.  Bullets 
recovered from the women’s bodies, tire tracks and shoe prints 
at the scene of the Clark murder, and an eyewitness account 
connected petitioner to the murders.   
Benintende 
disappeared 
the 
day 
she 
arrived 
in 
Bakersfield in early 1986.  Her badly decomposed body was later 
found floating in the Arvin-Edison canal.  The body had been 
shot once near the sternum and twice in the back. Two bullets 
                                        
“14.  Did trial counsel have tactical or other reasons for 
failing to address Butler’s testimony in closing argument at the 
penalty phase?  If so, what was/were the reason(s)?  Would a 
reasonably competent attorney acting as a diligent advocate 
have addressed Butler’s testimony in closing argument at the 
penalty phase?  If so, in what manner?” 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
7 
were recovered from the body.  Benintende’s murder remained 
unsolved until after petitioner was arrested.   
Clark was seen entering petitioner’s pickup truck on 
Union Avenue during the early morning hours of February 8, 
1987, by another sex worker who was familiar with petitioner.  
After Clark’s body was found in the Arvin-Edison canal later 
that day, the witness identified petitioner’s truck and selected 
his photo from a lineup.  Bullets removed from Clark’s body 
matched those recovered from Benintende’s body and were the 
same type as sheriff’s department-issued ammunition that was 
available to all deputies.   
Petitioner was arrested a few days after the Clark murder.  
After waiving his rights to an attorney and to silence, he 
confessed to the Clark murder, but not the Benintende murder.  
Regarding the Clark murder, petitioner stated that while 
driving his pickup truck on Union Avenue early one morning he 
picked up Clark, agreed to pay her $30 for sex, and drove her 
out to the “country.”  Clark began performing fellatio on him, 
but then stopped and demanded more money because the liaison 
was taking so much of her time.  When petitioner refused, an 
argument ensued; Clark hit, kicked, and yelled at him.  He 
pointed a gun at her, hoping it would stop her from yelling and 
screaming, but it did not.  The gun went off accidentally, 
wounding Clark.  Petitioner began driving back to town but 
stopped when Clark continued to scream.  He pushed her out of 
the truck.  Clark ran around in front of the headlights yelling 
and screaming.  Petitioner got out of the truck and tried to calm 
her, but when she continued yelling and threatened to report 
him he shot her a second time.  Petitioner realized that if Clark 
reported him he would be arrested and go to jail.  As Clark was 
leaning against an embankment, petitioner shot her four more 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
8 
times, then dragged her body to the canal and pushed it into the 
water.  When asked about the Benintende murder, petitioner at 
first denied shooting anyone other than Clark, but then said he 
could not remember.   
A search of petitioner’s home disclosed ammunition of the 
same type used in the killings and a .38-caliber handgun that 
was test-fired and determined to have fired the bullets that 
killed both victims.  Petitioner’s truck tires and shoes matched 
photos of tire tracks and shoe prints found at the murder scene.   
A pathologist testified Clark died from multiple gunshot 
wounds.  She had one gunshot entry wound on the right side of 
the ribcage, the bullet passing through her body and lodging on 
the left side of her torso; one entry wound to her back; and four 
wounds to the front of her torso. 
Petitioner testified in his own defense and admitted 
killing Clark but claimed he did not form the intent required for 
the charged crimes due to a mental disturbance stemming from 
the sexual and physical abuse he had suffered as a child.   
Three mental health professionals testified petitioner 
suffered from a dissociative disorder involving memory loss and 
a possible multiple personality disorder stemming from severe 
childhood sexual and physical abuse.  A psychiatrist 
administered sodium amytal to petitioner and videotaped the 
resulting interview.  When under the influence of the sodium 
amytal, petitioner remembered periods of his childhood that he 
had previously been unable to recall, as well as parts of the 
events leading to the Clark murder that he had blacked out.   
Petitioner testified concerning the Clark killing, stating he 
could independently recall only what occurred up until the time 
he pushed Clark out of the truck.  After that, his recollection 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
9 
was based on his viewing of the videotape of the sodium amytal 
interview.  The first part of his story was consistent with the 
account he gave police:  he testified he picked Clark up on Union 
Avenue, agreed to pay her $30 for sex, and drove out to the 
country, where he parked, and Clark began performing oral sex.  
From that point, the two accounts diverged.  Petitioner testified 
that during the encounter he had trouble having an erection, 
which caused Clark to taunt him about his sexuality and call 
him “queer” and “faggot,” and he pushed her out of the truck.  
He recalled feeling threatened when she walked toward him 
pointing her finger, so he pointed his gun at her and shot her 
once.  A few seconds later, he shot her five more times, to protect 
himself.  He then dragged her body to the canal and pushed it 
into the water.   
Based in part on his account of the killing in the sodium 
amytal interview, the three mental health professionals 
testified petitioner killed Clark while in an impulsive, highly 
emotional state and that he was incapable of premeditating or 
deliberating.   
In rebuttal, the prosecution presented evidence that in 
1983 petitioner had been terminated from his position as a 
deputy sheriff following a complaint by a sex worker, although 
he was ultimately reinstated.   
The trial court granted petitioner’s motion for partial 
acquittal on the Benintende count, reduced the charge to second 
degree murder, and instructed the jury it could reach no greater 
verdict than second degree murder on that count.  As noted, the 
jury returned verdicts convicting petitioner of the first degree 
murder of Clark and the second degree murder of Benintende, 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
10 
and found true a multiple-murder special-circumstance 
allegation. 
At the penalty phase, Ellen M. (also known as Angel or 
Angela), the sex worker whose complaint had led to petitioner’s 
brief termination in 1983, testified that after interrupting her 
liaison with a customer, petitioner detained her, told her to 
undress, and took photographs of her breasts and vaginal area.   
Tambri Butler testified that petitioner assaulted her in 
February 1986, when she was a heroin addict engaging in sex 
work in Bakersfield.  According to Butler, petitioner made 
contact with her on Union Avenue in a white pickup truck.  He 
declined her request to go to her motel room, instead driving out 
to a field in the countryside.  She agreed to perform “half and 
half,” i.e., oral and vaginal intercourse, for $40.  She took off her 
clothes and engaged him in conversation, “nothing important, 
just talking to the man finding out he wasn’t a cop, a police 
officer,” by asking “where he is from, if he has got a family,” so 
that she would “feel comfortable for [her]self.”  After she 
performed oral sex they began to engage in vaginal sex.  Because 
he had not ejaculated, and the encounter was taking a long time, 
she told him “he was either going to have to do something or he 
was going to have to give me some more money.”  He told her 
“no, that is not what was going to happen,” “we were going to do 
some more things.”  When she “started getting sort of 
disagreeable,” he took what she called a “stinger” gun off the 
dashboard and used it to shock her on the neck, which burned 
her and left scars.  After further vaginal sex he demanded anal 
intercourse and, when she refused, he took an automatic weapon 
out of the glove compartment and fired it across the bridge of 
her nose.  Thereafter she acceded to anal sex and again 
performed oral sex.  Subsequently, he demanded she empty her 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
11 
pockets, took her heroin and cash, and made her ask for them 
back.  He then pushed her out of the truck and tried to run her 
over.   
In mitigation, the videotape of petitioner’s sodium amytal 
interview was played for the jury.  One of petitioner’s mental 
health experts reiterated his opinion that petitioner was under 
“extreme emotional distress” when he shot Clark, that the 
lifetime of abuse he had suffered made it difficult for him to 
conform his conduct to the law, and that he was an emotionally 
impaired person.  Relatives and colleagues of petitioner testified 
regarding his positive qualities. 
III.  THE REFEREE’S REPORT AND  
THE EVIDENTIARY HEARING 
Question 1.  Did Tambri Butler testify falsely 
(either inadvertently or otherwise) at the penalty 
phase of petitioner’s trial regarding the identity of 
the person who assaulted her in January or 
February 1986? 
The referee answered yes, concluding that Butler testified 
falsely when she identified petitioner as her assailant in the 
trial.  The referee identified two main bases for his conclusion.  
The first was that in sworn declarations submitted with the 
habeas corpus petition Butler had “recanted” her identification 
of petitioner as the man who assaulted her.  The second was the 
fact that, in his view, none of the descriptors given by Butler of 
her assailant fit petitioner. 
In a declaration dated November 14, 1999, and attached 
as an exhibit to the habeas corpus petition, Butler expressed 
doubt about her identification of petitioner.  She explained that 
at the time she testified in petitioner’s case, she was engaging 
in sex work to support her heroin addiction.  She stated that the 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
12 
attack in the winter of 1986 occurred exactly as she testified.  
The attacker had a “thick bushy moustache that grew long over 
his upper lip.”  The man showed her photos of his children — a 
boy and a girl.  He drove a ’60s or ’70s model white truck that 
did not have a camper shell.  The interior of the truck was 
cluttered with trash.  There was a tool box in the cab.  The man’s 
set of many keys was in the ignition.3   
Butler further stated that not long after the attack, she 
was arrested and thought she saw a deputy who looked like her 
attacker at the Lerdo jail.  She knew she had seen him 
somewhere before.  He said he had arrested her in Arvin, but 
she had never been arrested there.   
Butler described her meeting with Deputy Jeanine 
Lockhart in late 1986 when she looked through a book of photos 
of deputies and told Lockhart she had recognized the man’s 
photo.  Butler stated that when she was back on the streets in 
                                        
3  
These details were largely consistent with a statement 
Butler gave to police in 1987, well prior to the habeas corpus 
investigation.  Specifically, in that statement, Butler described 
her attacker as a white male, between the ages of 45 and 48, 
“maybe close to 50,” five feet, six inches to five feet, eight inches 
tall, weighing 160 to 175 pounds, strong, with big hands, a chest 
more filled out than his stomach, brown hair, and a thick, bushy 
mustache that was not too curly nor straight.  She related that 
the hair on his chest was not very thick because she could see 
the chest through it.  He had more hair on the sides and back of 
his head than on top and had moles across his back above the 
waist.  She described her attacker’s truck as a “nicer” white 
Chevrolet, late 1970s model, with a gearshift in the steering 
column, a grey fabric interior, and a bench seat.  The truck bed 
had sideboards that were grey and worn.  The cab had a large 
back window.  She described much trash on the floor of the 
truck, a toolbox and thermos on the passenger side, and a big 
set of keys in the ignition. 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
13 
1986 and 1987, there was talk among the sex workers about 
attacks by a man in a white pickup truck.   
Butler stated that she was friends with Tracie Clark, one 
of the sex workers murdered by Rogers.  After Clark was killed 
and petitioner was arrested, Butler again was in Lerdo jail, and 
she saw his photo on TV in connection with the killing.  Right 
away, she knew that he might have been the man who attacked 
her.  Someone came to see her in jail the next day and showed 
her a group of six photos.  She selected Rogers, whom she had 
just seen on TV, as the man who attacked her.  She was not 
certain that her mind had not been influenced by having seen 
Rogers on TV and having heard about the charges against him.   
Butler declared that after her release in April 1987 she did 
not want to testify against petitioner.  She was arrested again 
and pleaded guilty to possession of heroin for sale in January 
1988.  Although she was reluctant to testify, some men who she 
believed were from the district attorney’s office came to see her 
in jail.  One of the men told her that petitioner had killed nine 
women and that Clark had been pregnant and her body 
mutilated.  When she asked if the baby had been cut out, one 
man said, “Use your imagination.”  They convinced her she 
should testify and put petitioner on death row.  However, they 
did not promise anything in return for her testimony.   
Butler asserted in her declaration that she lied at trial 
when she testified she had not seen petitioner’s photo on 
television before she identified him in the lineup.  She also 
related that she lied when she said she had not heard other 
women discussing petitioner’s case in jail.  She stated, “No one 
ever asked me to lie, but the men who interviewed me indicated 
a lot of things it would not be good to say on the stand.”  On the 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
14 
day of her release, three months earlier than she expected, she 
was told petitioner had been convicted and the jailers had been 
told to “cut [her] loose.”  After her release, she was arrested 
again and then let out on bail.  Someone from the district 
attorney’s office made contact with her on Union Avenue, telling 
her that some police officers might think she had done a “bad 
thing” by testifying against petitioner, and that she should leave 
California, or she might wind up dead in a ditch.  He said if she 
left the state, “a file would just drop behind a file cabinet and 
my name would never be mentioned in California again.”  She 
moved to Oregon, married, and has been clean and sober since 
1989.  However, she often worried over the years that she might 
have testified against the wrong man.  She viewed photos of 
Ratzlaff and heard about his attack on another woman, Lavonda 
I.  She concluded by stating:  “I was particularly haunted by one 
of the photographs.  Ratzlaff resembles the man in the white 
truck and I cannot be sure he was not the man who attacked me 
in 1986.  I am now more concerned than ever that I wrongly 
identified David Rogers as the man who attacked me.”  In a 
second declaration, also dated November 14, 1999, Butler stated 
that she tried to notice and memorize everything about her 
attacker, so she could identify him.  She stated her attacker did 
not have a tattoo anywhere on his body.4   
At the evidentiary hearing, Butler recanted the doubts 
expressed in her sworn declaration attached to the habeas 
                                        
4  
Petitioner had at the time of the attack on Butler (and 
continues to have) an easily visible tattoo on the outside of his 
upper right arm.   
 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
15 
corpus petition.5  She testified that she was positive she had 
correctly identified petitioner as the man who sexually 
assaulted her and that it was only because petitioner’s 
investigator had shown up at her house with photographs of 
Ratzlaff that she had, for a brief period, doubted her 
identification and signed the declaration.  At the evidentiary 
hearing, Butler was extensively questioned about the 
discrepancies between her original description of her assailant, 
given to Kern County District Attorney Investigator Tam 
Hodgson and other police officers in her February 18, 1987, 
interview at Lerdo jail, and her testimony at petitioner’s trial.  
She was also extensively questioned about the descriptions of 
her assailant that she recounted in several conversations she 
had with Investigator Hodgson during the period between her 
signing the declaration and testifying at the evidentiary 
hearing.6  In these conversations, and in a recently handwritten 
eight-page overview of her memories of the event that she used 
to refresh her recollection at the evidentiary hearing, Butler 
introduced many new details, the most significant of which was 
that petitioner had also sexually molested her at least three 
times while she was incarcerated.   
The referee found that Butler was not a credible witness 
at the evidentiary hearing.  He found that Butler changed or 
“fudged” her testimony in order to minimize or explain away the 
                                        
5  
Butler testified under her current married name.  To avoid 
confusion, we will continue to refer to her as Butler, the name 
she used when she testified at petitioner’s trial. 
6  
Six conversations — dated October 27, 1998; April 12, 
2001; August 4, 2008; October 17, 2008; and October 11, 2011 
(two parts) — were recorded and admitted as evidence at the 
reference hearing.   
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
16 
significant differences between her description of her assailant 
in her Lerdo jail interview, the details of which she largely 
reaffirmed 
in 
her 
hearing 
testimony, 
and 
petitioner’s 
appearance in 1987.  The referee cited the example of the 
markings on her assailant’s lower back, which Butler had 
described in her Lerdo jail interview as large black splotches or 
moles, and which she reaffirmed in her evidentiary hearing 
testimony, adding that they had “grossed her out.”  On cross-
examination at the evidentiary hearing, when shown a 
photograph 
of 
petitioner’s 
back 
from 
that 
time, 
she 
acknowledged that no such dark splotches were evident.  Later, 
on redirect examination, when shown another photograph of 
petitioner’s back and asked whether she saw anything there 
that reminded her of what she saw on her assailant, she said 
she saw “disgusting pimples” and described not only seeing 
them but “feeling” them, a detail she had never previously 
mentioned.   
The referee also pointed to numerous other areas of 
Butler’s trial and evidentiary hearing testimony where she 
provided inconsistent or inaccurate accounts that undermined 
her credibility, such as whether or not she had seen petitioner 
on television before she identified him to the police as her 
assailant, the crime for which she was in custody at the time she 
identified petitioner, and her accounts of how petitioner had 
sexually assaulted her, at least three times, while she was 
incarcerated at Lerdo jail.7  The referee observed that the 
allegation that petitioner had sexually assaulted her when she 
was incarcerated was a highly significant new detail that would 
                                        
7  
These first two items are discussed in detail below in the 
following sections. 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
17 
cast in a new light all her previous statements identifying 
petitioner as her assailant.  But this allegation had not surfaced 
at trial, and was instead raised for the first time by Butler in a 
conversation with Investigator Hodgson on October 11, 2011, 
about a week before the start of the evidentiary hearing.   
Butler was questioned about the alleged in-jail sexual 
assaults at the evidentiary hearing.  She initially described 
three incidents (and later said there might have been a fourth) 
in which she was brought to an interrogation room by jail staff 
and left alone there with petitioner, who, during the various 
sessions, told her to strip naked, sexually penetrated her with 
an object, and verbally humiliated her.  The referee did not 
believe that Butler would have the ability to recall details of the 
molestations that she claimed to remember despite the passage 
of more than 20 years. 
The referee also found that Butler’s claims that she was 
sexually molested in the jail were thoroughly impeached by two 
witnesses who worked as sheriff’s deputies at the jail during 
that time.   
Overall, the referee described Butler’s evidentiary hearing 
testimony as being sincere in many respects, and he noted that 
she attempted to respond to the questions posed to her, but he 
found that her ability to respond to those questions had been 
affected by the passage of time since the incidents.  The referee 
noted that Butler admitted being confused, and he felt her 
credibility at the evidentiary hearing suffered for it.   
The referee also based his conclusion that Butler testified 
falsely at the penalty phase of petitioner’s trial on the 
circumstance that, in his view, none of the descriptions given by 
Butler of her assailant fit petitioner.  Butler described her 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
18 
assailant during an interview at Lerdo jail on February 18, 
1987, as having a thick bushy mustache, big hands, a big hairy 
chest that was larger than his stomach, and dark moles across 
his back above his buttocks characterized by Butler as dark 
splotches.8  She said that her assailant had no other markings.   
The referee noted that, in contrast to Butler’s description 
of her assailant in the Lerdo jail interview, petitioner had a 
small chest, small hands, and no moles on his back. Petitioner 
did not have hair on his chest or across the front or down his 
belly, but he did have a visible tattoo on his right arm.  
Petitioner never wore a mustache.  The referee found 
unpersuasive the Attorney General’s argument that petitioner 
could have used a theatrical mustache, noting that extensive 
searches of petitioner and his property uncovered many items of 
incriminating evidence, such as a gun and tire tracks, but 
nothing to indicate a mustache or a stun gun, a weapon that 
Butler described as being used during the assault.   
The referee pointed to Butler’s original description of the 
vehicle driven by her assailant as being a white pickup truck 
with grey weathered sideboards and a cluttered interior.  This 
was important because, as the referee noted, petitioner was 
driving a light-colored9 pickup when he murdered Tracie Clark 
in February 1987, but he did not own that truck or any white 
                                        
8  
As noted, the referee observed that Butler later changed 
this description in her reference hearing testimony to “ugly 
pimples.” 
9  
At trial, witnesses Toby Coffee (who sold the truck to 
petitioner) and Connie Zambrano (who saw Clark get into 
petitioner’s truck the night before her body was found) both 
described the truck as beige in color. 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
19 
pickup until nearly a year after the February 1986 attack on 
Butler.  
Based on these discrepancies between Butler’s statements 
and testimony and the other evidence, the referee concluded 
that Butler’s evidentiary hearing testimony reaffirming her 
trial testimony lacked credibility.  This conclusion, in the 
referee’s view, found additional support in Butler’s sworn 
declarations expressing doubt regarding her trial testimony 
identifying petitioner as her assailant, declarations the referee 
implicitly found to be credible.   
Question 2.  Did Tambri Butler testify falsely at the 
penalty phase of petitioner’s trial regarding any 
other matter, including: (1) Whether she had seen 
petitioner on television before she identified him 
as her attacker; [and] (2) Whether she had been 
promised leniency for her testimony and/or was 
aware that she would be released early after she 
testified? 
The referee answered yes, finding that Butler saw 
petitioner on television before she identified him and testified 
falsely when she denied having done so.  The referee noted that 
in Butler’s October 27, 1998, conversation with Investigator 
Hodgson, she described how, while incarcerated at Lerdo jail, 
she first found out that petitioner had committed the murders:  
“It was like ten o’clock at night and the news came on and they 
flashed his face . . . .  I saw his face that night, for the first time 
I realized he wasn’t a bad cop that raped me, he was a bad cop 
that raped and murdered several people . . . then the next 
morning you guys [the detectives] were there.”   
The referee pointed to Butler’s testimony at the 
evidentiary hearing in which she described what she saw on 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
20 
television while she was in Lerdo jail.  Butler testified she had 
been reading a book when her friend and cellmate Kathleen 
Davis said, “Oh my God there he is,” and alerted Butler to the 
news on television.  Butler saw a Kern County Sheriff’s badge 
being flashed on the screen.  On redirect examination, Butler 
said “just as I glanced up, it went from a face to a badge.”10   
The referee also found that Butler had testified falsely at 
trial when she denied talking to the other inmates at the jail 
about having been assaulted.  Butler’s description of how her 
cellmate alerted her to a news broadcast about petitioner (by 
saying “Oh my God there he is!”) indicated that Butler had 
previously discussed the assault with her.  And Butler’s 
testimony — that the only reason she agreed to be interviewed 
by the police about her assault was because she had received 
150 or 175 letters (“kites”) from the men in jail urging her to do 
so — also indicated that Butler had discussed her assault with 
other inmates.   
The referee found that no express promise of leniency had 
been made by the authorities, but that Butler was aware that, 
if she testified at petitioner’s penalty trial, she could be released 
early.  In particular, the referee pointed to Butler’s statement, 
during her October 11, 2011, phone conversation with 
Investigator Hodgson, that “No, they [the authorities] made it 
clear that I wasn’t going to get out just because I testified, but 
you know, I’m not stupid.  I knew if I testified I’d get to go home.  
I knew that.”   
                                        
10  
The Attorney General’s posthearing brief argued that 
instead of seeing petitioner on television, Butler had seen a still 
photograph of petitioner.  The referee found that this argument 
was not supported by the evidence.  
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
21 
Finally, the referee found that Butler also testified falsely 
when, upon being asked, “What are you in custody for?” she 
answered, “For possession of heroin.”  The referee noted that it 
was undisputed that, in fact, Butler was in jail not for simple 
possession of heroin but for the far more serious charge of felony 
possession of narcotics for sale, in violation of Health and Safety 
Code section 11351, a crime of moral turpitude.  (See People v. 
Castro (1985) 38 Cal.3d 301, 317.) 
The 
referee 
acknowledged 
the 
Attorney 
General’s 
contention on this point that Butler was not trying to mislead 
anyone, observing that she had testified truthfully about some 
of her other arrests and that it was clear she was a recidivist sex 
worker and drug offender.  Nonetheless, the referee found her 
false testimony, whether inadvertent or otherwise, about the 
reason for her arrest was material to her credibility as a witness.   
Question 3.  Is there newly discovered, credible 
evidence indicating that petitioner did not assault 
Tambri Butler in 1986, including evidence that 
another person committed the assault?  If so, what 
is that evidence? 
The referee answered yes, referring to his answer to 
Question 1 above concerning false evidence, which was based on 
Butler’s recantations of her trial testimony and which indicated 
the differences between her descriptions of her assailant and 
petitioner’s appearance.11  Overall, the referee concluded that 
                                        
11  
In this section of the findings, the referee listed the 
following physical characteristics of Butler’s assailant that 
differed from those of petitioner and could be attributed to a 
third party: (1) a long thick mustache curling over the lip, (2) a 
layer of hair covering, but not obscuring, his chest and abdomen, 
 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
22 
the similar patterns of the newly discovered evidence concerning 
the Michael Ratzlaff assaults, described briefly below and in 
more detail post, pages 32–35, combined with the differences 
from Butler’s description of her assailant, supported the 
inference that someone other than petitioner committed the 
attack on Butler.   
The referee described the following “striking” parallels 
between the Butler assault and documented attacks by Ratzlaff 
on Lavonda I. and other women, including Jeannie S., 
Deborah C., and Dealia W.:  Deals were made on Union Avenue.  
The assailant insisted on going out to a remote area in the 
country.  The sex started with fellatio.  The assailant could not 
perform.  More money was agreed on for the woman to continue.  
The woman said it was taking too long to consummate the 
sexual act and she wanted to go back to Union Avenue.  The 
assailant flew into a violent rage, fired warning shots, and used 
a stun gun.  The victim received anal abuse and was then robbed 
and left on a country road.  The assailant had a bushy mustache 
and drove a light-colored pickup with sideboards and a cluttered 
interior.  The referee concluded that this pattern supported the 
inference that an assailant other than petitioner committed the 
assault on Butler.   
IV.  ATTORNEY GENERAL’S EXCEPTIONS  
TO THE REFEREE’S FINDINGS 
With respect to Question 1, whether Butler testified falsely 
in identifying petitioner as her assailant, the Attorney General 
                                        
(3) extremely big hands, (4) thick hair, (5) a big chest, (6) a  big, 
crowded keychain, (7) a  white pickup with weathered 
sideboards, (8) a tool chest and large silver thermos, (9) a litter-
strewn truck cab interior, and (10) a stun gun.   
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
23 
takes exception to the referee’s findings concerning Butler’s 
credibility as a witness, including the weight to be accorded her 
expressed doubts, the finding that Butler changed her 
recollections numerous times, and the believability of Butler’s 
recent accusations that petitioner sexually molested her while 
she was incarcerated.  The Attorney General also contends that 
the referee’s findings do not establish that Butler’s identification 
was “actually” and “objectively” false.  (See In re Richards (2016) 
63 Cal.4th 291, 293.)  Specifically, the Attorney General 
disputes the referee’s findings concerning the differences in 
appearance between petitioner and Butler’s description of her 
attacker and contends that the style of the attack on Butler was 
different from Ratzlaff’s attacks on the other sex workers.  
Additionally, the Attorney General takes exception to the 
referee’s findings that Butler testified falsely as to other 
matters, such as her expectations for an early release from jail 
as a result of testifying, whether she saw petitioner on television 
while she was incarcerated at the county jail, and her testimony 
concerning the crime for which she was serving time when she 
testified at petitioner’s trial.  Finally, the Attorney General 
contends that, even if the referee’s findings are accepted, relief 
is unwarranted because there was no reasonable probability 
that a different result would have been reached in the absence 
of the claimed errors. 
V.  DISCUSSION 
“ ‘A writ of habeas corpus may be prosecuted’ where ‘[f]alse 
evidence that is substantially material or probative on the issue 
of guilt or punishment was introduced against a person at a 
hearing or trial relating to his or her incarceration.’  (§ 1473, 
subd. (b)(1).)”  (In re Figueroa (2018) 4 Cal.5th 576, 588.)  A 
petitioner bears the burden of proving, “ ‘ “by a preponderance 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
24 
of the evidence, facts that establish a basis for relief on habeas 
corpus.” ’ ”  (In re Cox (2003) 30 Cal.4th 974, 998.)   
“[O]ur review of the referee’s report follows well-settled 
principles.  The referee’s factual findings are not binding on us, 
and we can depart from them upon independent examination of 
the record even when the evidence is conflicting.  [Citations.]  
However, such findings are entitled to great weight where 
supported by substantial evidence.”  (In re Hamilton (1999) 
20 Cal.4th 273, 296.)  “Deference to the referee is called for on 
factual questions, especially those requiring resolution of 
testimonial conflicts and assessment of witnesses’ credibility, 
because the referee has the opportunity to observe the 
witnesses’ demeanor and manner of testifying.”  (In re Malone 
(1996) 12 Cal.4th 935, 946.)  “ ‘[A]ny conclusions of law or 
resolution of mixed questions of fact and law that the referee 
provides are subject to our independent review.’ ”  (In re Cox, 
supra, 30 Cal.4th at p. 998; see In re Scott (2003) 29 Cal.4th 783, 
818 [“We ask our referees only to make findings on disputed 
factual questions; we then resolve the legal issues ourselves”].)  
In general, however, “ ‘the offer of a witness, after trial, to 
retract his sworn testimony is to be viewed with suspicion.’ ”  (In 
re Roberts (2003) 29 Cal.4th 726, 742.) 
Preliminarily, we observe that although the questions 
posed to the referee encompass a variety of matters embraced 
within the order to show cause, the central issue before this court 
is whether Butler falsely identified petitioner as her assailant.  
Petitioner bears the burden of proof on this question by a 
preponderance of the evidence.  Given the nature of the false 
evidence claim here and the relevant facts, petitioner can meet 
this burden by proving it is more likely than not that someone 
else, not petitioner, in fact assaulted Butler.  Throughout his 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
25 
briefing, the Attorney General argues that petitioner has failed 
to prove that Butler intentionally gave false testimony at trial 
and at the hearing, but section 1473 does not require a petitioner 
establish that a witness knowingly or intentionally testified 
falsely, provided the false testimony was material to his or her 
conviction or sentence.  Subsidiary questions concerning 
whether Butler gave false testimony in other respects going to 
her general credibility are significant only to the extent the 
answers to those questions illuminate the central issue of the 
truth or falsity of her identification of petitioner.   
A subsidiary question may relate directly to the truth of 
the identification.  For example, the question whether Butler 
testified falsely at trial when she claimed not to have seen 
petitioner’s postarrest image on television while in jail and 
before her interview with investigators bears not only on her 
general credibility, but also on the question whether her 
identification of petitioner was tainted, and thus made less 
reliable, by virtue of her having seen his image in that context.  
Other questions, including whether statements Butler made in 
her 
declarations 
reflect 
“uncertainty 
about 
the 
prior 
identification, rather than a positive belief the identification 
was wrong” are not determinative of the truth of her trial 
testimony, and need not be extensively addressed here.  We will 
accordingly focus primarily on the record and findings that 
relate directly to the reliability of Butler’s identification 
testimony. 
For the reasons discussed below, we conclude that 
petitioner is entitled to relief because material false evidence 
was presented at his trial, namely that Butler testified falsely 
both in her identification of petitioner and concerning the 
circumstances surrounding it. 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
26 
A. Truth or Falsity of Butler’s Identification 
1.  Butler’s recantation 
“[T]he offer of a witness, after trial, to retract his sworn 
testimony is to be viewed with suspicion.”  (In re Weber (1974) 
11 Cal.3d 703, 722.)  The Attorney General contends that the 
circumstances under which Butler’s declarations expressing 
doubts regarding the accuracy of her trial identification of 
petitioner were obtained and prepared render them highly 
suspicious and tend to show that Butler signed them out of 
expediency and to avoid possible retaliation from petitioner’s 
friends.12  In the Attorney General’s view, Butler could 
reasonably have construed Defense Investigator Ermachild’s 
visit as pressure to tell a particular story by an agent of a 
multiple murderer who still had friends and strong supporters 
in the Kern County law enforcement community.  The Attorney 
General contends that, as far as Butler knew, Investigator 
Ermachild could have called the police and had Butler arrested 
on the warrant for violating felony probation that Butler had 
generated when she left the state.   
However, although the Attorney General speculates that 
Butler might have felt threatened or pressured in these ways to 
give Ermachild a declaration useful to petitioner, he points to no 
                                        
12  
There 
are 
three 
declarations: 
(1) a 
handwritten 
declaration prepared the day that Defense Investigator Melody 
Ermachild visited Butler in Butler’s home on November 14, 
1999; (2) a typed declaration, also dated November 14, 1999, 
that Ermachild prepared later, which was based on the 
handwritten declaration plus additional comments Butler had 
made during her interview with Ermachild that day; and (3) a 
supplemental typed declaration, also dated November 14, 1999, 
containing the additional point that Butler did not see a tattoo 
anywhere on the body of her assailant.   
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
27 
statement by Butler indicating that she ever actually felt 
pressured or intimidated.  In Butler’s evidentiary hearing 
testimony and in her recorded telephone conversations with 
Investigator Hodgson, Butler did in places repudiate some of the 
statements in her declarations, but did not do so on the basis 
that she had been threatened or compelled to make them.  For 
example, in a conversation with Investigator Hodgson, Butler 
described her statements in the declarations as resulting from 
distress and confusion arising from the visit of Ermachild, who 
created doubts in her mind by showing her the photographs of 
Ratzlaff, whom Butler immediately found chillingly similar to 
her memory of her assailant.  This does not, however, indicate 
that Butler was intimidated into signing the declarations.  What 
is reflected in Butler’s testimony at the evidentiary hearing and 
her statements in her recorded conversations with Investigator 
Hodgson is that the doubts she had upon seeing the photographs 
of Ratzlaff were genuine, even though she subsequently 
asserted that she had nonetheless correctly identified petitioner 
as her assailant.  The Attorney General also points out that 
Ermachild did not tell Butler of Ratzlaff’s height, which did not 
align with Butler’s previous descriptions of her assailant.  
Notably, however, Butler signed her declarations following 
Ermachild’s second, noticed visit, after consulting telephonically 
with Hodgson and availing herself of the opportunity to make 
interlineations and deletions in a draft version of the 
declaration, all of which suggests that she was aware of their 
contents when she did so.  We are unpersuaded that we should 
entirely 
discount 
Butler’s 
declarations 
based 
on 
the 
circumstances under which they were prepared.   
Next, the Attorney General contends that Butler’s 
declarations, even if not coerced, are insufficient to repudiate or 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
28 
undermine Butler’s trial testimony.  He compares the 
declarations 
and 
contends 
that 
Ermachild 
added 
an 
introductory sentence to the typed declaration — “I now believe 
my identification of Rogers was wrong” — that did not 
accurately reflect Butler’s sentiments expressed during her 
interview with Ermachild.13  The Attorney General points to 
Butler’s statement in a later paragraph stating “I have often 
worried over the years that I might have testified against the 
wrong man.  I’ve always questioned how accurate my 
identification of Rogers was, though when I saw him in the 
courtroom I felt sure he was the man who attacked me.  For 
years, I’ve told my husband that I am now uncertain and it 
weighs on my mind.”  The Attorney General contends that this 
later statement “expresses uncertainty about the prior 
identification, 
rather 
than 
a 
positive 
belief 
that 
the 
identification was wrong,” and, as such, is insufficient to 
repudiate or undermine Butler’s trial testimony.  As noted, 
however, Butler’s testimony and statements she made to 
Investigator Hodgson reflect genuine doubt regarding her 
identification of petitioner.  In any event, it is whether petitioner 
assaulted Butler, not the precise degree of her certainty or 
uncertainty in her identification of him as her assailant, that is 
the ultimate question before us, and her declaration is not the 
sole piece of evidence that petitioner has brought forward to 
support his false evidence claim.  Rather, it is evidence that, 
along with the other evidence presented at the evidentiary 
hearing, including that of Michael Ratzlaff’s commission of other 
                                        
13  
The Attorney General acknowledges that neither 
petitioner nor the referee relies on the paragraph of the 
declaration that contains this sentence.  
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
29 
similar, roughly contemporaneous assaults on Bakersfield sex 
workers, supports petitioner’s false evidence claim.  And even 
taking into consideration any tentativeness in the declarations 
regarding Butler’s misidentification of petitioner at trial, in 
other important respects (specifically regarding having seen 
petitioner’s image on TV the night before identifying him to 
investigators, and investigators’ allegedly falsely telling Butler 
about other murders petitioner was suspected of committing) 
they reflect inconsistency with her trial testimony. 
2.  Differences in appearance between petitioner and 
Butler’s description of assailant 
The Attorney General contends that three of the most 
significant differences — the mustache, the stun gun, and the 
white truck — were all details that could have been altered or 
hidden by the assailant.  But as the referee noted, extensive 
searches of petitioner and his property uncovered many items of 
incriminating evidence, such as a gun and tire tracks, but 
nothing to indicate a mustache or a stun gun, a weapon that 
Butler described as being used during the assault.  The Attorney 
General also points to the height of the assailant, a detail of 
Butler’s description which is more similar to petitioner than to 
Ratzlaff.  In the 1987 jailhouse interview Butler described her 
assailant as shorter than her height of five feet eight and a half 
inches and estimated his height as between five feet six and five 
feet eight inches.  Petitioner is five feet, eight or nine inches tall.  
Ratzlaff was six feet, three inches tall.  The Attorney General 
argues that the height difference between petitioner and 
Ratzlaff should be considered a more significant detail than the 
mustache, the stun gun, or the truck because it was unalterable 
by the assailant.   
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
30 
However, considerable doubt exists regarding Butler’s 
estimate of the height of her assailant.  In her 1987 jailhouse 
interview she stated that she never stood next to her assailant, 
which would have been the most accurate way to have estimated 
his height.  The Attorney General argues that Butler was 
nonetheless able to estimate his height by sitting next to him in 
the cab of the truck and that she stated in her 1987 interview 
that at one point she saw him standing outside next to the truck.  
Her handwritten recollections of the assault, prepared shortly 
before her testimony at the hearing, similarly mentioned her 
assailant walking around the front of the truck as she was 
putting on her clothing, as well as a later instance when he was 
standing outside the car of another of her clients while she was 
inside.  However, these opportunities for estimating her 
assailant’s height were subject to a greater range of 
misestimation than an estimate done while standing next to her 
assailant.14 
Consistent with her pattern of belatedly raising new 
details, Butler stated in her August 4, 2008, conversation with 
Investigator Hodgson that she could tell that her assailant was 
                                        
14  
The Attorney General also observes that, although Butler 
did not in her February 18, 1987, interview with investigators 
mention seeing a tattoo on her assailant, she also told them he 
was wearing a plaid shirt and did not take off his clothes, 
suggesting the tattoo may not have been visible.  Yet Butler was 
inconsistent regarding whether her assailant removed his shirt, 
stating, in her November 14, 1999, declaration, that “[w]hen I 
was raped and assaulted in 1986, I tried my best to notice and 
memorize everything I could about the man and his truck, so 
that I could identify him later.  Because of this, I know that I 
would have noticed if the man had an identifying mark like a 
tattoo.  As I recall, the man took off his shirt, so I saw most of 
his upper body.  I did not see a tattoo anywhere on his body.” 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
31 
approximately her height because, while he was standing 
behind her sodomizing her, he clamped his chin over her 
shoulder to keep her in place.  Butler stated that her assailant 
was pressed flat against her back and that this confirmed that 
he could not have been significantly taller than she was because 
a taller man would have had to squat or curve his body and 
consequently could not have been pressing against her.  
Petitioner responds that Butler’s account is physically 
impossible.  This dispute need not be definitively resolved.  
Suffice it to say that Butler’s basis for estimating her assailant’s 
height is problematic for a number of reasons, and is insufficient 
to convincingly show that her assailant was around her height 
or shorter. 
3.  Style of the attacks 
As summarized above, the referee’s findings concerning 
Question 3 set forth the many parallels between the assault on 
Butler and newly discovered evidence of Ratzlaff’s documented 
assaults on other sex workers.  These included:  (1) the assailant 
picked up his victims on Union Avenue and then insisted on 
driving to a remote area in the country; (2) although apparently 
under the influence of alcohol, the assailant was initially 
pleasant, but later became violent; (3) the sex started with 
fellatio, but the assailant could not complete the act; (4) the 
victims complained the act was taking too long and asked for 
more money to continue; (5) the assailant went into a violent 
rage, fired warning shots and used a stun gun (see People v. 
Sánchez (2016) 63 Cal.4th 411, 452-453 [observing that owning 
a stun gun was unusual in 1990 and 1992]); (6) the victims were 
anally raped, robbed, and left on the country road.  The Attorney 
General, however, contends that Butler’s assailant showed the 
“controlled sadism” that he asserts characterized petitioner’s 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
32 
attacks on sex workers, rather than the “explosive rage” that he 
asserts characterized Ratzlaff’s attacks.  The point is best 
exemplified by Ratzlaff’s attack on one of the other sex workers, 
Jeannie S., briefly mentioned ante, page 22, in which the victim 
was beaten so badly she had to be hospitalized.  Such an attack 
indeed suggests explosive rage.  However, because Jeannie S. 
had no memory of the attack, we do not know any of the details 
of what happened before or during that attack. 
Ratzlaff’s attack on Lavonda I., however, on the whole 
displays brutal force exercised in a controlled manner, although 
it does contain at least one act that could be characterized as 
explosive violence.  A somewhat detailed account of the attack, 
taken from Lavonda I.’s testimony at the successful prosecution 
of Ratzlaff for the assault, is necessary to highlight the 
similarities to Butler’s attack and respond to the Attorney 
General’s argument. 
On May 21, 1988, Lavonda I. was a sex worker on Union 
Avenue when a man in a white Ford pickup truck (later 
identified as Ratzlaff) drove up and negotiated a “blow job” for 
$20.  Lavonda I. wanted to perform the act in her motel room, 
where she felt safe, but Ratzlaff refused to do that.  He offered 
her an extra $20 if she would go with him, to which she agreed.  
They drove for 15 to 30 minutes on a road out into the country.  
On the way, she engaged in what she described as “normal 
conversation” with Ratzlaff (asking whether he was married and 
what he did for a living) and he “acted like a normal person.”  
She noticed a strong smell of alcohol on his breath, although he 
did not have any difficulty speaking.   
After he stopped the truck out in the country, she began to 
fellate him.  After 15 to 20 minutes she stopped because he was 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
33 
unable to achieve an erection.  She wanted to leave, but he 
offered to pay an extra $20 if she would stay a little longer, to 
which she agreed.  After continuing for another 15 to 20 minutes 
unsuccessfully, she again stopped and asked to be taken back to 
town.  Once again, he asked her to keep going for a little longer, 
but she refused.   
He then pointed a pistol at her temple.  Thinking it was a 
fake, she asked him if it was real, and he responded by shooting 
a cup of Pepsi that was on the floor of the truck.  He then told 
her to stick her hands out in front of her and bound her with 
plastic handcuffs.  He told her to lie back, and inserted his 
fingers and eventually his entire hand into her vagina.  When 
she cried out in pain, he threatened to shoot her in the stomach.  
He also inserted his hand into her rectum.   
Next, he told Lavonda I. to get out of the truck and urinate 
in front of him.  After she tried to do so unsuccessfully for a 
minute or two, he told her he had something that would help her 
go, and pulled a stun gun from the top of the dashboard of the 
truck.  He stunned her repeatedly on her stomach and the 
outside of her vagina while she screamed in pain.   
Somehow, Lavonda I. managed to break the plastic 
handcuffs and tried to kick him in the groin but was 
unsuccessful.  He struck her with great force several times in 
the face and head and threw her down on the ground where she 
hit her head on something hard, perhaps cement.  She gave up 
and said, “If you are going to kill me, get it over with and do it 
now.”  He told her he wasn’t going to kill her but was just going 
to do a few other things and then let her go.  He took out a 
Polaroid camera and took four or five pictures of her in intimate 
poses.  Then he had her stand up and handed her her clothes 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
34 
and told her to run.  She ran away holding her clothing.  She 
heard several shots while she was running and heard him get 
into his truck and drive off.   
Ratzlaff had beaten her so violently in the face that she 
lost her front teeth.  The Attorney General cites this as an 
example of Ratzlaff’s pattern of losing control in explosions of 
rage involving a high degree of physical violence.  However, as 
the above account illustrates, in this assault Ratzlaff generally 
showed the same kind of controlled and manipulative brutality 
that was characteristic of Butler’s attacker.  He inflicted the 
most physical violence when Lavonda I. fought back and 
attempted to attack him.  Once he regained control, he stopped 
beating her, and returned to manipulating and degrading her 
with the photographs, and ultimately let her go.  The Attorney 
General contends that Ratzlaff fired wildly after Lavonda I. as 
she ran, for no good reason other than rage.  Her testimony, 
however, does not indicate that he shot after her.  Rather it 
appears that he was shooting in the air or in the distance to 
further terrorize her.  In those respects, his assault on 
Lavonda I. can be said to resemble that made on Butler.  
Although, unlike Lavonda I., Butler did not claim that her 
assailant beat her — instead stating he slapped her, stung her 
with a stun gun, and fired a gun near the bridge of her nose — 
she did describe a similar pattern of violent threats aimed at 
securing her compliance with his demands.  We are therefore 
unpersuaded by the Attorney General’s argument that the 
beatings Ratzlaff inflicted on his other known victims so 
markedly distinguish those attacks from the assault on Butler 
as to preclude a finding that he was responsible for the latter. 
Additionally, the Attorney General seeks to characterize 
petitioner’s attacks on his two murder victims, Benintende and 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
35 
Clark, as exhibiting controlled sadistic violence to further 
support the contention that those attacks were more similar to 
the attack on Butler than Ratzlaff’s attacks.  The problem, 
however, is that there is little evidence concerning the details of 
petitioner’s attacks on his victims.  Regarding Benintende’s 
murder, petitioner denied committing it, and the evidence 
linking petitioner to this murder was entirely physical 
circumstantial evidence — the same gun and type of police-
issued ammunition that shot Clark, also shot Benintende.  
(Rogers, supra, 39 Cal.4th at p. 840.)  With regard to Clark’s 
murder, the only details about the immediate events leading up 
to it come from petitioner’s confessions.  In his confession to the 
police, he described pulling out his gun when he got into an 
argument with his victim, accidentally shooting and wounding 
her, and then panicking and shooting her intentionally when 
she threatened to report him.  (Rogers, supra, 39 Cal.4th at 
pp. 838-839.)  In his sodium amytal confession, he described how 
he lost control after his victim taunted him by calling him a 
homosexual and he irrationally felt threatened by her.  (Id. at 
pp. 843-844.)  Neither account suggests controlled sadistic 
violence.  Although the Attorney General may regard 
petitioner’s accounts of the Clark murder as self-serving, he 
points to no evidence showing that petitioner’s murders were 
accomplished in a style that reflects controlled sadism. 
B.  Referee’s Findings that Butler Had Testified 
Falsely Concerning Other Matters 
1.  Early release from jail 
The Attorney General takes exception to the referee’s 
finding that Butler had been aware that she would be released 
early after she testified.  The Attorney General contends that 
the only statement by Butler cited by the referee supporting this 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
36 
finding15 had been made in a telephone call to an investigator 
expressing anger and frustration regarding her living 
circumstances and having to testify at the evidentiary hearing, 
which, she thought, could subject her to arrest and 
incarceration.  The Attorney General contends that subsequent 
statements by Butler show that it was only jail folklore that led 
Butler to believe she would somehow be released early if she 
testified.  He contends that neither the findings nor the new 
evidence disproves Butler’s trial testimony that, at the time she 
testified, she did not “expect any help,” and in fact she did not 
hope for an early release but wanted to do her time because she 
was not “totally cleaned up.”   
The Attorney General further contends there is no 
evidence that any decision to direct Butler’s release was made 
before the judgment of death was imposed, which was more than 
a month after she testified.  Therefore, he contends that because 
there was neither an explicit nor an implicit arrangement, or 
even evidence of an arrangement, she could not have been 
“aware” that she would be released early.  In other words, his 
argument is that Butler could not have been aware of an 
agreement to have her released early because no such 
agreement was ever formed, and therefore she could not have 
been aware of something that did not exist.   
The issue, however, is not whether some legally cognizable 
agreement was ever formed between Butler and the authorities.  
What is important is her psychological belief — what the referee 
                                        
15 
Specifically, Butler stated, “No, they [the authorities] 
made it clear that I wasn’t going to get out just because I 
testified, but you know, I’m not stupid.  I knew if I testified I’d 
get to go home.  I knew that.”   
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
37 
meant by “awareness” — that she would be creating the 
possibility that she might be released early by cooperating and 
testifying in a way that she thought the authorities wanted her 
to.  That her belief was based on something less than a legally 
binding contract, and thus on something less than certainty that 
she would gain the hoped-for benefit, does not undercut the 
referee’s finding. 
As a further argument that there was not even an implicit 
agreement for her early release, the Attorney General contends 
that the authorities’ only motivation to release her early after 
petitioner received his death sentence was their concern for her 
safety, something that was independent of any benefit that 
Butler had conferred on the authorities by testifying.  But, once 
again, the issue that the referee’s finding and Butler’s statement 
to Investigator Hodgson (“I’m not stupid” and “I knew if I 
testified I’d get to go home”) referred to was her motivation and 
belief in the period before her testimony at petitioner’s trial.  
The fact that the authorities had, in the period after she testified 
at petitioner’s trial, a theoretically independent reason for 
ordering her release from jail does not retroactively change 
Butler’s motivation and belief in the period before her 
testimony. 
2.  “Fudging” or changing her testimony 
The Attorney General takes exception to the referee’s 
finding that Butler was not credible in parts of her evidentiary 
hearing testimony because she “fudg[ed] or chang[ed] her 
testimony” and presented “inconsistent stories [that] changed 
numerous times.”  The Attorney General contends that the 
referee’s statement about Butler’s “fudging or changing her 
testimony” was not the equivalent of a finding that Butler 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
38 
“intentionally testified falsely at the reference hearing.”  
However, the referee did not have to determine that Butler 
engaged in perjury at the evidentiary hearing to find aspects of 
her testimony not credible. 
The two examples of Butler’s fudging or changing her 
testimony that the referee identified concern (1) the dark moles 
that she, in her 1987 jailhouse interview, recounted seeing on 
her assailant’s back and (2) her allegations, first disclosed to 
Investigator Hodgson in 2011 shortly before the evidentiary 
hearing, that petitioner sexually molested her at least three 
times while she was incarcerated in the county jail.  As to the 
first, the Attorney General acknowledges that a photograph of 
petitioner’s back at the time of trial showed small rounded 
reddish spots but no dark spots, and that the referee did not 
credit Butler’s new characterization, in her evidentiary hearing 
testimony, of the dark moles as pimples that she remembered 
feeling.  The Attorney General contends this testimony fits the 
referee’s description of Butler making a “sincere attempt to 
respond,” but because “so much time had passed,” her response 
was unconvincing.  He observes that the referee did not 
expressly find that Butler’s testimony in this regard was 
“willfully false.”  But, once again, the issue is not whether her 
testimony fits the formal definition of perjury.  The “pimples” 
testimony undercuts Butler’s credibility because, as the referee 
explained, it reflects a pattern in which she changed her 
previous story and raised significant, never-before-mentioned 
details that had the effect of shoring up her identification of 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
39 
petitioner as her assailant.16  Whether Butler did this 
intentionally or subconsciously or somewhere in between is not 
something the referee had to decide in order to find that it 
undercut Butler’s credibility. 
3.  The jailhouse sexual molestation accusations 
The most significant example of this pattern of adding new 
details was Butler’s allegation that petitioner had sexually 
molested her at least three times while she was incarcerated in 
Lerdo jail.  The Attorney General attempts to fit this explosive 
new allegation within the context of Butler’s previous 
statements, repeating her explanation that she had in fact 
alluded to these molestations when she mentioned in her 1987 
jailhouse interview that she had “had a lot of trouble” in county 
jail after she had recognized petitioner as working there.17  
                                        
16  
In a later section of his findings, the referee cited an 
instance of the same pattern of Butler’s bolstering her 
identification.  During her trial testimony, she suddenly said for 
the first time, regarding her assailant, “I think he told me his 
name was David.”     
17  
In the 1987 interview, the topic arose in the following way.  
Detective Mike Lage asked Butler why she did not identify 
petitioner when Deputy Lockhart supplied Butler with a copy of 
the “Behind the Badge” annual (which had photographs of all 
the Kern County deputy sheriffs):   
“[Detective] Lage:  Why didn’t you say anything? 
“Tambri [Butler]:  I was in jail.  You know.  The man 
wasn’t in jail.  I wanted to get out of jail. 
“ [Detective] Lage:  Did you think something might happen 
to you? 
“Tambri [Butler]:  Yeah, I did.  Because the last time when 
I was in and I recognized him I kept my mouth shut.  And you 
know, I had a lot of trouble when I was in jail then.  I didn’t want 
no more trouble.”  
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
40 
Butler testified at the evidentiary hearing that she had been 
referring to the jailhouse molestations by petitioner when she 
said she had “had a lot of trouble” in jail.  She first mentioned 
the in-jail molestations in her October 11, 2011, conversation 
with Investigator Hodgson.  She initially told Hodgson that she 
had previously mentioned these allegations to him, but Hodgson 
firmly denied that he had ever heard such allegations before.  
On cross-examination, when asked why she had never brought 
up the in-jail molestations previously, she stated that in the 
1987 jailhouse interview she “didn’t go into detail” because she 
“didn’t feel it necessary.”  Concerning why she had never 
mentioned them during her numerous conversations with 
Investigator Hodgson in 1998, 2001, and 2008, she stated that 
because petitioner by that point was already on death row, she 
did not want to humiliate or mortify herself further with “any 
more details that were just not necessary.”  Even setting aside 
the plausibility or implausibility of those responses, however, 
one would reasonably expect Butler to have mentioned the 
molestations in her trial testimony concerning her contacts with 
petitioner in the jail and how she was able to recognize him as 
the man who had assaulted her, and her failure to do so cuts 
heavily against her credibility.   
The Attorney General cryptically concludes that “the 
evidence presents no other explanation for her 1987 statement,” 
apparently meaning that the only way to understand her 
statement in her 1987 jail interview that she had “had a lot of 
trouble” while in jail is to conclude that it referred to her 2011 
accounts of in-jail sexual molestations by petitioner.  But in the 
very same conversation with Investigator Hodgson in which 
Butler described the in-jail molestations, she also described 
another incident in which she had gotten in trouble in jail after 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
41 
being accused of slandering a female officer by calling her a 
homosexual.  Indeed, Butler attempted to connect the slander 
incident to the in-jail molestations by saying that because of the 
slander accusation she was taken out of her cell and interviewed 
by a male officer in the interrogation room.  When the first 
officer left, Butler claimed petitioner walked in, closed the door, 
and raped her.  The more plausible explanation of her “had a lot 
of trouble” allusion in 1987 is that it referred to the trouble she 
got into when she was accused of slandering the female deputy.   
The Attorney General also takes exception to the referee’s 
finding that Butler’s account of the in-jail molestations was 
thoroughly impeached by the testimony of two deputy sheriffs 
who worked in the jail at the time, who described the proper 
procedures and working practices at the jail.  The Attorney 
General contends that their testimony did not preclude the 
possibility that a deputy could, if he chose, disregard proper 
procedures and take an inmate downstairs to an interview room.  
Petitioner, of course, cannot prove a negative — that the in-jail 
molestations never happened.  But given the implausibility and 
contradictions involved in Butler’s accounts of the molestations, 
we accept the referee’s finding that Butler’s account was 
thoroughly impeached. 
4.  Whether Butler saw petitioner on television and her 
recognition of petitioner at the county jail 
The Attorney General does not dispute the referee’s 
finding that, contrary to her trial testimony, Butler saw 
petitioner on television while she was incarcerated at the county 
jail and on the night before her interview with investigators.  
The finding is supported by Butler’s October 1998 conversation 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
42 
with Investigator Hodgson.18  In her equivocal hearing 
testimony on the point (in which, notably, she denied even 
having been asked, at trial, whether she had seen petitioner on 
television), Butler failed to give a satisfactory explanation of the 
discrepancy.  Nevertheless, the Attorney General contends, 
Butler had recognized petitioner before seeing him on television, 
and seeing him on television therefore did not affect her 
identification.  The Attorney General points out that the referee 
accepted that Butler had seen petitioner in the jail before his 
arrest and the referee did not specifically discount Butler’s 
evidentiary hearing testimony that she only glanced at the first 
news story she saw and then immediately became upset and 
afraid.  These circumstances, according to the Attorney General, 
establish that Butler’s false trial testimony that she did not see 
petitioner’s picture on television does not significantly 
undermine the credibility of her identification of petitioner as 
her attacker because she had already recognized him.  As 
explained below, however, petitioner was not required to prove 
a direct causal link between Butler’s seeing his picture and her 
misidentification.  The referee was entitled to rely on this 
collateral falsehood in evaluating the truth or falsity of Butler’s 
identification. 
Butler’s accounts of recognizing petitioner at the county 
jail are as follows.  In her February 1987 jailhouse interview, 
                                        
18  
As mentioned ante, in that conversation Butler described 
how, while incarcerated at Lerdo jail, she first learned that 
petitioner had committed the murders:  “It was like ten o’clock 
at night and the news came on and they flashed his face . . . .  
I saw his face that night, for the first time I realized he wasn’t a 
bad cop that raped me, he was a bad cop that raped and 
murdered several people . . . .”  (Italics added.) 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
43 
Butler described how, at some point several months after her 
assault and after several visits to her incarcerated boyfriend at 
the county jail, she “kept seeing this cop.”  She “kept looking” at 
the officer and told him she knew him from somewhere and that 
he drove a white truck.  At first, he said she didn’t know him, 
but then he said, “Yeah, I arrested you in Arvin for under the 
influence” in his white squad car.  After Butler insisted that she 
had never been arrested in Arvin, only in Bakersfield, she had a 
revelation — “like somebody lifted a sheet” — that this was her 
assailant.  The uniform had thrown her off.  She looked at him 
“real hard” and he asked her whether she saw something that 
she recognized or knew.  She “got real smart with him, and said 
yeah I see something and I won’t soon forget.”  He told her, “I 
suggest if you want that visit you turn your ass around and keep 
your mouth shut.”   
In her testimony at petitioner’s trial, she gave a much 
more abbreviated version of these events, only mentioning in 
her direct examination that she had recognized petitioner while 
visiting her boyfriend in the Kern County jail.  In cross-
examination, she gave a version of the story in which she was 
incarcerated and her boyfriend was visiting her.  She asserted 
that in the process of being taken to the visiting room on the 
“A Deck,” she saw and recognized petitioner.  In her trial 
testimony, she did not mention talking to petitioner on the A 
Deck. 
In her evidentiary hearing testimony, she gave a version 
of recognizing petitioner that was like the account in her 
February 1987 jailhouse interview, except that her interaction 
with petitioner was more vivid.  After realizing who he was, she 
“star[ed] him down” with “vengeance” and “hate.”  After he 
heard her say, “I know who you are, you son of a bitch,” “he got 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
44 
right in [her] face” about three inches away, and said, in a quiet 
but threatening tone, that he knew who she was and she knew 
who he was, and that she had time to do and she could do it 
either the hard way or the easy way.19   
As described above, the referee found that petitioner had 
not, in fact, previously arrested Butler.  However, based on 
evidence submitted by petitioner, the referee found that 
petitioner had previously given Butler a notice to appear when 
she was leaving jail, which both petitioner and Butler signed.  
The referee found that this credible evidence established that 
there was some contact between them at that time because they 
both signed the notice at the same time and in the same area.   
The Attorney General also points to the fact that Butler 
mentioned in her 1987 jailhouse interview that, starting about 
two days after the assault, she believed her assailant began 
stalking her.  She first saw him watching her perform oral sex 
on a customer in a car, and then saw him several more times:  
two or three days later when he drove by; about a week after 
                                        
19  
Butler’s 1999 declarations described her recognition of 
petitioner in the Lerdo jail as follows:  She had been arrested 
and was in booking when she saw a deputy sheriff “who looked 
like the man who attacked me.  I’d been arrested and I was in 
booking.  The deputy I thought I recognized wasn’t actually 
booking people.  He was standing drinking a cup of coffee and 
he seemed to notice or recognize me.  I looked at him and I 
thought he was the man who attacked me.  I cursed him and he 
told me words to the effect of turn around and be quiet.  I felt 
frightened by him, because I thought he was the one who had 
attacked me, although nothing he said was actually threatening 
or indicated he was the man who attacked me.  I cannot recall if 
he had a moustache.  I knew I had seen him somewhere before.  
He said he had arrested me before, in Arvin, but I had never 
been arrested in Arvin.” 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
45 
that when she saw him sitting on his truck watching her; and 
sometime later when he parked and gestured for her to come to 
his truck, which she ignored.  The Attorney General contends 
that these later stalking episodes are additional instances, 
closer in time to the assault, when Butler saw petitioner, further 
reducing the significance of her seeing petitioner’s picture on the 
television.   
There is no reason to doubt the Attorney General’s 
underlying premise that a witness’s repeated opportunities to 
see a person could mean that a later observation does not matter 
because the witness already knew what the person looked like.  
Additionally, here, as the referee found, there appears to be no 
question that Butler and petitioner interacted in the jail before 
Butler saw his picture on the television.  But establishing the 
extent of Butler’s prior observations and recognition of petitioner 
relies on Butler’s own credibility, which the referee reasonably 
found was suspect.20  We have highlighted evidence of Butler’s 
propensity to change her story and to add significant details 
bolstering her accusations against petitioner.  To cite but a few 
significant examples:  At the evidentiary hearing Butler gave 
inconsistent versions of the incidents in which she claimed 
petitioner molested her in jail, and for the first time asserted 
that what she had previously described as dark moles on her 
                                        
20  
Unlike the witness Cade in In re Roberts, supra, 29 Cal.4th 
at pages 743-744, cited by the Attorney General, aside from 
giving broadly consistent testimony at trial and at the 
evidentiary hearing, Butler also signed a declaration containing 
statements markedly inconsistent with her testimony at either 
proceeding.  The referee here thus had a valid justification to 
reassess her credibility.  In this context we therefore do not defer 
to the jury’s credibility determination. 
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Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
46 
assailant’s lower back were “disgusting pimples” that she 
discerned on a photograph of petitioner’s back, and even claimed 
to have touched during the assault.  And at trial she had claimed 
for the first time that on the night she was attacked, her 
assailant had said his name was David.  Moreover, Butler’s 
assertion that she saw her assailant several times after the 
attack in the stalking incidents presupposes the ultimate issue 
— that petitioner was Butler’s attacker.   
5.  Butler’s testimony concerning the crimes for which 
she was arrested 
As described above, the referee found that Butler testified 
falsely when she answered the question “What are you in 
custody for?” by stating possession of heroin, instead of her more 
serious actual crime of felony possession for sale.  The Attorney 
General argues that the question asked was a general one, and 
Butler may have reasonably answered in kind with a general 
description of her conduct rather than a precise specification of 
the crime for which she was incarcerated.  In any event, he 
contends, even if she testified falsely in this respect, the 
falsehood was not significant.  He points out that Butler 
admitted to the jury that she remained a sex worker and drug 
addict despite having suffered multiple convictions and served 
multiple terms in jail for prostitution and drug offenses.   
We cannot say the referee’s finding — that Butler’s 
characterization of the offense was so obviously watered down 
that it rose to the level of a false response — was unsupported 
by the evidence.  The referee could reasonably believe that 
Butler, who had been arrested numerous times, would have 
known that felony possession for sale is an offense 
fundamentally different from simple possession.  Moreover, as 
with the testimony regarding the television broadcast, the 
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Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
47 
referee was entitled to consider Butler’s answer in connection 
with the general issue of her credibility as a witness.  Indeed, 
we note that felony possession of drugs for sale is a crime of 
moral turpitude that trial counsel might have used for 
impeachment purposes.  (People v. Castro, supra, 38 Cal.3d at 
p.  317.) 
C. Summary and Conclusions Regarding Referee’s 
Findings 
The record is not entirely devoid of evidence supportive of 
an inference that Butler testified sincerely and truthfully at 
petitioner’s trial — principally the match between Butler’s 
description of her assailant’s height and petitioner’s height and 
her coming forward to Deputy Lockhart, claiming she had 
recognized her assailant as someone who worked in the jail 
although she did not then identify petitioner.  Nevertheless, 
given the great weight to which a referee’s findings are entitled 
when, as here, they are supported by substantial evidence, we 
accept our referee’s finding that Butler testified falsely at 
petitioner’s trial in identifying him as her assailant based on 
(1) her subsequent doubts about her identification, as variously 
articulated in her declarations, (2) the discrepancies between 
petitioner’s physical appearance and her description of her 
assailant, as well as her description of her assailant’s pickup 
truck and the circumstance that petitioner did not even own a 
similar truck at the time of the assault on Butler (as to which 
we view the newly discovered evidence of Michael Ratzlaff’s 
assaults on other sex workers as providing significant context), 
and (3) her pattern of changing her testimony, especially her 
recent claim that petitioner molested her in jail.  We also accept 
the referee’s finding that Butler testified falsely at petitioner’s 
trial (1) in her denial that she saw petitioner on TV before 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
48 
identifying him, (2) in her denials relating to an expectation of 
leniency in exchange for her testimony, and (3) regarding the 
nature of the offense for which she was in custody at the time of 
trial.  Each of these findings is supported by the evidence 
presented at the evidentiary hearing. 
D. Materiality and Relief Under Section 1473 
“ ‘The statute [(§ 1473, subd. (b)(l))] and the prior decisions 
applying section 1473 make clear that once a defendant shows 
that false evidence was admitted at trial, relief is available 
under section 1473 as long as the false evidence was 
“material.” ’ ”  (In re Figueroa, supra, 4 Cal.5th at pp. 588-589.)  
“False evidence is ‘substantially material or probative’ if it is ‘of 
such significance that it may have affected the outcome,’ in the 
sense that ‘with reasonable probability it could have affected the 
outcome . . . .’  [Citation.]  In other words, false evidence passes 
the indicated threshold if there is a ‘reasonable probability’ that, 
had it not been introduced, the result would have been different.  
[Citation.]  The requisite ‘reasonable probability,’ we believe, is 
such as undermines the reviewing court’s confidence in the 
outcome.”  (In re Sassounian (1995) 9 Cal.4th 535, 546.)   
The Attorney General argues that relief is not warranted 
here because there was no reasonable probability that a 
different result would have been reached at the penalty phase 
in the absence of Butler’s false identification.  We are not 
persuaded. 
The Attorney General appears to contend that petitioner 
has not established that Butler’s testimony was the deciding 
factor in the jury’s penalty-phase verdict.  Petitioner’s burden, 
however, is not to show that Butler’s testimony “was the 
deciding factor.”  His burden is to show that the possibility of a 
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Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
49 
different verdict is “a chance great enough, under the totality of 
the circumstances, to undermine our confidence in the outcome.”  
(In re Roberts, supra, 29 Cal.4th at p. 742.)   
Preliminarily, we observe that the Butler evidence played 
a role in the prosecutor’s closing argument to the jury.  In her 
very brief argument (spanning just over six pages in the 
reporter’s transcript), the prosecutor mentioned Butler’s 
testimony only once, but she did so in a manner calculated to 
bring out the emotional power of the testimony:  “You heard the 
testimony of Tambri Butler describing David Rogers, the 
defendant, who has no problem at all using violence against her.  
You heard her describe a man who took a gun, held it across in 
front of her nose and pulled the trigger to get what he wanted.  
[¶]  Can you imagine the fear she must have felt when that 
happened?”  Although the mention was brief, the prosecutor’s 
dramatic invocation of Butler’s terror in her argument added to 
the likely impact of Butler’s testimony on the jury. 
The totality of the relevant circumstances also includes the 
other evidence, aggravating and mitigating, presented in the 
penalty phase.  The Attorney General contends that “even if 
Butler’s testimony was impactful, the almost complete lack of 
mitigating circumstances, combined with several substantial 
aggravating circumstances, made it not reasonably probable 
that had Butler’s testimony not been included in the penalty 
phase that the jury would have decided against a death 
sentence.”  The Attorney General concludes that “[s]imply put, 
the aggravating circumstances in this case, even without 
Butler’s testimony, far outweighed anything [petitioner] 
presented in mitigation; there was nothing saving [petitioner] 
from these murders.  The jury would have sentenced him to 
death regardless of whether Butler testified . . . because the 
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Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
50 
aggravating circumstances far outweighed the mitigating 
circumstances.”   
Contrary to the Attorney General’s contention, Butler’s 
false testimony likely had a significant effect on the outcome of 
the penalty phase.  The trial court’s ruling on petitioner’s 
automatic application for modification of the death verdict 
under section 190.4, subdivision (e) explains why.  The trial 
court noted that both of petitioner’s murders involved the use of 
force or violence, then added:  “But I think that his actions with 
Tambri Butler shocked me almost more than any other case I 
have ever heard.  [¶]  The use of a cattle prod or the taser or 
whatever you call it, and the firing of the shot across the bridge 
of her nose, and requiring her to engage in all of these various 
and sundry sexual activities, that probably influenced the jury, 
in my view, and this court more than any other because not only 
has it happened once with Janine Benintende, twice with Tracie 
Johann Clark; we know that it happened with Angela [M.]; we 
know that it happened with Tambri Butler.” 
Petitioner’s Strickland expert at the evidentiary hearing, 
David Coleman, also testified as follows:  “Butler’s evidence 
essentially was a surrogate for the two victims.  There was very 
little known about some of the circumstances around the two 
victims’ deaths.  There was [petitioner’s] confession, which could 
be viewed as self-serving, with regard to one case [Clark].  With 
regard to the other [Benintende], there was a dearth of 
evidence. . . .  What Tambri Butler did was to essentially serve 
as a surrogate for those two victims in the courtroom and 
describe an incident which I believe the jury quite possibly 
thought was exactly the kind of incident or very similar to the 
incidents that the two victims had gone through.  And it was 
horrifying. . . .  [S]o it gave life to something that was absent 
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Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
51 
from the case.  [¶]  Now, independently of that, the actions 
described by Ms. Butler are so shocking that in and of 
themselves in a case where the whole point is [whether] this 
man should . . . die, . . . [this] made a terrible contribution to the 
conclusion that he should die.”   
We agree with these assessments of the likely impact of 
Butler’s testimony on the penalty phase jury.  The other 
aggravating 
evidence 
could 
be 
considered 
substantial:  
Petitioner, a sworn law enforcement officer, murdered two sex 
workers and in another incident detained a sex worker and took 
intimate photographs of her.  We reject, however, the Attorney 
General’s assertion that mitigating evidence was almost 
completely lacking.  To the contrary, petitioner presented a 
substantial and multifaceted case in mitigation.  It included 
testimony of a psychologist that petitioner had acted under 
extreme emotional disturbance caused by sexual and physical 
abuse in childhood — testimony that Butler’s narrative of 
sadistic violence essentially negated — and of petitioner’s 
brother, Dale Rogers, tending to corroborate the history of 
abuse.  It also included testimony by petitioner’s wife and 
stepdaughter describing petitioner’s good qualities and their 
strong relationships with him.  Several of petitioner’s law 
enforcement colleagues also testified regarding his laudable 
performance as a deputy.  Given this mitigating evidence, there 
is a reasonable probability that the added weight of Butler’s 
false testimony on the aggravating side of the scale — 
recounting an especially brutal attack that could have led the 
jury to infer that the attacks on the two murder victims were 
similarly brutal — affected the jury’s balancing of the 
sentencing factors and hence its penalty verdict.  The false 
testimony here undermines our confidence in the outcome of the 
IN RE ROGERS 
Opinion of the Court by Cantil-Sakauye, C. J. 
52 
trial and therefore was material.  (In re Roberts, supra, 
29 Cal.4th at p. 742.)  Petitioner consequently is entitled to 
relief on this claim as to the penalty verdict, and we need not 
address here the other claims in our order to show cause.   
VI.  DISPOSITION 
The petition for writ of habeas corpus is granted insofar as 
it seeks relief from the judgment of death.  The judgment of the 
Kern County Superior Court in People v. David Keith Rogers, 
1988, No. 33477, is vacated to the extent that it imposes a 
sentence of death.  The petition’s remaining claims will be 
resolved by later order to be filed separately. 
Upon finality of our opinion, the Clerk of the Supreme 
Court is to remit a certified copy of the opinion and the order to 
the Kern County Superior Court for filing, and respondent 
Attorney General is to serve a copy of the opinion on the 
prosecuting attorney.  (See Pen. Code, § 1382, subd. (a)(2); see 
also In re Sixto (1989) 48 Cal.3d 1247, 1265-1266; In re Hall 
(1981) 30 Cal.3d 408, 435, fn. 9.) 
 
 
 
 
 
CANTIL-SAKAUYE, C. J. 
 
We Concur: 
CHIN, J. 
CORRIGAN, J. 
LIU, J. 
CUÉLLAR, J. 
KRUGER, J. 
GROBAN, J. 
 
 
See next page for addresses and telephone numbers for counsel who argued in Supreme Court. 
 
Name of Opinion In re Rogers 
__________________________________________________________________________________ 
 
Unpublished Opinion 
Original Appeal 
Original Proceeding XXX 
Review Granted 
Rehearing Granted 
 
__________________________________________________________________________________ 
 
Opinion No. S084292 
Date Filed: July 15, 2019 
__________________________________________________________________________________ 
 
Court: Superior 
County: Kern 
Judge: Louis P. Etcheverry 
 
__________________________________________________________________________________ 
 
Counsel: 
 
Law Office of Alan W. Sparer, Alan W. Sparer, Law Office of AJ Kutchins, AJ Kutchins, Nerissa Huertas; 
Chatfield & Reisman, Alex Reisman and Kate Chatfield for Petitioner David Keith Rogers. 
 
Bill Lockyer, Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Kamala D. Harris and Xavier Becerra, Attorneys General, Dane R. 
Gillette, Robert R. Anderson and Gerald A. Engler, Chief Assistant Attorneys General, Mary Jo Graves, 
Acting Assistant Attorney General, Michael P. Farrell, Assistant Attorney General, Catherine Chatman, 
John G. McLean, George M. Hendrickson, Ryan B. McCarroll and Henry J. Valle, Deputy Attorneys 
General, for Respondent the State of California. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Counsel who argued in Supreme Court (not intended for publication with opinion): 
 
AJ Kutchins 
Law Office of AJ Kutchins 
P.O. Box 5138 
Berkeley, CA  94705 
(510) 841-5635 
 
Henry J. Valle 
Deputy Attorney General 
1300 I Street, Suite 125 
Sacramento, CA  94244-2550 
(916) 322-4650