Case Title: P. v. Boyer

Citation: 

Docket Number: S029476

State: california

Court: California Supreme Court

Date: 2006-05-11T00:00:00Z

Document:
1
Filed 5/11/06 
 
 
 
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 
 
THE PEOPLE, 
) 
 
 
) 
 
Plaintiff and Respondent, 
) 
 
 
) 
S029476 
 
v. 
) 
 
 
) 
  
RICHARD DELMER BOYER, 
) 
 
) 
Orange County 
 
Defendant and Appellant. 
) 
Super. Ct. No. C-51866 
___________________________________ ) 
 
In 1984, a jury convicted defendant Richard Delmer Boyer of the first 
degree murders (Pen. Code, §§ 187, subd. (a), 189)1 and robberies (§ 211) of 
Francis and Aileen Harbitz.  An allegation that defendant used a deadly weapon, a 
knife, in each of the offenses was sustained.  (§ 12022, former subd. (b), see now 
subd. (b)(1).)  Under the 1978 death penalty law, special circumstances of multiple 
murder (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(3)), and robbery murder (id., former subd. (a)(17)(i), 
see now subd. (a)(17)(A)) were found true.2  After a penalty trial, the jury 
sentenced defendant to death. 
We reversed the 1984 guilt and penalty judgments.  We concluded that 
defendant’s confession to the police in a custodial setting was obtained in violation 
of the Fourth Amendment and Miranda v. Arizona (1968) 384 U.S. 436, and that 
                                              
1  
All further unlabeled statutory references are to the Penal Code. 
2  
It was necessary to retry the guilt and special circumstance issues after the 
original guilt jury could not reach a verdict, resulting in a mistrial. 
 
 2
admission of the confession in evidence at his trial was prejudicial on the issue of 
guilt.  However, on the record before us, we saw no basis to conclude that other 
evidence admitted against him was tainted by the Fourth Amendment and 
Miranda violations, such that it could not be used in any retrial.  (People v. Boyer 
(1989) 48 Cal.3d 247 (Boyer I).) 
After a retrial, in which defendant’s confession was not admitted, a jury 
again found defendant guilty of the robberies and first degree murders of the 
Harbitzes.  A knife-use allegation was again sustained for each crime.  The jury 
found true, as special circumstances, that each murder was committed in the 
course of a robbery, and that defendant was convicted of more than one murder in 
the proceeding.  Pursuant to the jury’s penalty verdict, defendant was again 
sentenced to death. 
This appeal is automatic.  We will affirm the guilt and penalty judgments in 
full. 
I. GUILT PHASE EVIDENCE 
A.  Prosecution case. 
In December 1982, retirees Francis Harbitz, age 68, and his wife Aileen 
Harbitz, age 69,3 were stabbed to death in their Fullerton home.  Their bodies were 
discovered on the late evening of December 12, 1982, by their son William, who 
came to check on them after attempts to reach them by telephone during that day 
had failed.  William had last seen and spoken to his parents on December 5, 1982. 
A friend of Aileen’s had telephoned once on the evening of December 7, 
and several times on the morning of December 8, but got no answer.  Later on 
December 8, the friend went to the Harbitz residence, knocked, got no response, 
                                              
3  
In Boyer I, we mistakenly spelled this victim’s first name “Eileen.”  (Boyer 
I, supra, 48 Cal.3d 247, 256.) 
 
 3
and slipped a note under the door.  Papers with handwriting were found on the 
floor inside the front door on the night of December 12. 
When William entered the house, he found Francis’s body sitting upright 
against a bloody hallway wall.  Aileen’s was lying, surrounded by blood, on the 
floor of the living room.  Francis had sustained some 24 stab wounds to his neck, 
upper and lower chest, and back.  Three of his ribs were fractured by a knife 
entering his back, and he also suffered a broken arm.  One of the neck wounds 
severed his left carotid artery.  Three chest wounds penetrated his heart, and one of 
these also cut his ascending aorta.  Francis bled to death from the wounds to his 
heart and aorta.  Aileen suffered 19 stab wounds to her neck, chest, abdomen, and 
back.  One abdominal entry wound transected her left lung four times, indicating 
the assailant repeatedly withdrew the knife and reinserted it in the same track.  A 
wound beneath her left ear penetrated to her spine.  One of the chest wounds 
transected her ascending aorta.  She bled to death as a result. 
At the crime scene, a purse found in the kitchen contained no wallet.  Later, 
at the crime lab, two $50 bills were found folded inside a smaller container at the 
bottom of this purse.  A second purse, found in a back bedroom, contained a total 
of $40 in cash.  In Francis’s bedroom, a wallet in a dresser drawer contained 
approximately $260 in cash.  The premises showed no signs of forced entry or 
ransacking. 
On the night William discovered his parents’ bodies, he mentioned 
defendant’s name to the police.  William had met defendant three years earlier, 
when defendant lived near William and his wife in a Fullerton apartment complex 
known as the International Hotel.  William introduced defendant to his parents, 
and defendant had done yard work for the senior Harbitzes.  Defendant’s 
relationship with the victims was cordial, and they had lent him money.  
 
 4
According to William, defendant wore a “standard buck knife” in a sheath on his 
belt “all the time.” 
William had recently moved from the International Hotel, without telling 
defendant, but had kept his old telephone number.  William had not seen 
defendant for six months to a year.  During this period, defendant had called three 
times, though William did not speak to him personally.  Defendant telephoned 
William again on December 8, 1982, at which time they engaged in small talk. 
On December 14, 1982, police searched the El Monte residence defendant 
shared with his girlfriend, Cynthia Cornwell.  Items retrieved from the premises 
included a pair of Levi’s, a buck knife, and a sheath.  The burned remnants of a 
jacket were found in a hibachi on the kitchen stove of the El Monte house.  At 
some point, police also recovered Aileen’s wallet from a sewer. 
The Levi’s had a hole in the left knee and also contained three bloodstains.  
One stain, near the hole, was consistent with defendant’s blood, but not with the 
victims.’  A second stain was consistent with Francis’s blood, but not with 
Aileen’s or defendant’s.  A third stain was consistent with Aileen’s blood, but not 
with Francis’s or defendant’s.  The buck knife had a spot of human blood, but the 
sample was too small to analyze for identity.  The victims’ wounds could have 
been inflicted with the buck knife, but not with a kitchen knife found on a counter 
in the Harbitzes’ home. 
John Kennedy testified under a grant of immunity as follows:  In December 
1982, he lived in Temple City, near El Monte.  On December 7, 1982, Kennedy, 
driving his mother’s car, arrived at the El Monte house shared by defendant and 
Cornwell between 4:30 and 5:00 p.m.  Defendant asked for a ride to his parents’ 
house so he could pick up money his father had received for selling one of his 
guns.  After 45 minutes or so, they departed.  It was beginning to get dark.  
Defendant was walking and talking normally.  He was wearing a blue jacket. 
 
 5
Kennedy drove.  They first stopped to buy a quarter-gram of cocaine from a 
dealer Kennedy knew, with $25 Kennedy had borrowed from his brother for that 
purpose.  They injected the cocaine.  Typically, a cocaine injection produced a 
five-minute “rush” and a one-hour “high.” 
After they consumed the cocaine, defendant directed Kennedy on a 10-
minute drive to defendant’s parents’ house.  Kennedy stayed in the car.  Defendant 
went inside for 15 minutes.  He returned with a tire and a foam mattress and said 
his father had given him a check. 
Next, defendant directed Kennedy a short distance to an apartment 
complex, where defendant tried and failed to obtain a marijuana cigarette.  
Defendant then had Kennedy drive to the International Hotel in Fullerton to find 
“Bill.”  This trip took about 20 minutes.  When they arrived, both men went to an 
apartment door, and defendant knocked.  A young woman answered and said no 
Bill lived there. 
Remarking that Bill must have moved back with his parents, defendant told 
Kennedy to drive to another location.  Defendant first suggested they were headed 
to “some dope dealer’s house,” but when they arrived at their destination—three 
or four miles from the International Hotel— defendant said he was going “to Bill’s 
parents’ house.”  Darkness had fallen.  Defendant directed Kennedy where to park.  
Kennedy remained in the car.  Defendant got out, walked around a corner, and 
disappeared from view.  He was acting normally. 
After 45 minutes, defendant returned.  He seemed to be walking normally, 
and was carrying a towel.  At that moment, a patrol vehicle with red lights on its 
roof approached.  Defendant walked to the back of Kennedy’s car and began 
wiping the rear window with the towel.  After the patrol car passed, defendant got 
in and instructed Kennedy “to take off calmly, not to attract any attention.” 
 
 6
Kennedy did not know where they were, but, following defendant’s 
directions, he drove back to the freeway.  Defendant was “talk[ing] okay.”  As 
they drove, Kennedy saw defendant apply the towel to his left knee.  Defendant 
referred to “dope dealers that don’t have no dope,” and said “that he had to hurt 
‘em.”  Defendant indicated he himself had been stabbed. 
Once they were on the freeway, Kennedy saw defendant going through two 
wallets.  Defendant said he needed to find a bushy area beside the freeway.  As 
they passed such an area, between the Durfee and Peck Road offramps of 
Interstate 10 near El Monte, defendant threw out one of the wallets.  He discarded 
the second wallet in “a gutter, a sewer” beside the Temple City Boulevard 
offramp.  He instructed Kennedy not to tell anybody what had happened that 
night. 
When they arrived back at the El Monte house, Kennedy saw the stab 
wound in defendant’s knee.  Defendant and Cornwell went into the bathroom to 
tend the wound.  At the house, Kennedy noticed defendant was wearing his buck 
knife in a sheath on his waist.  Before leaving, Kennedy saw this knife lying on a 
dresser, blade open.  There was blood on the knife. 
To Kennedy’s knowledge, defendant injected cocaine three or four times a 
week.  Kennedy had, on occasion, seen defendant smoke phencyclidine (PCP) and 
marijuana, and had observed him ingest cocaine and alcohol in combination.4 
                                              
4  
With respect to Kennedy, the parties stipulated that (1) in his police 
interviews, including the interview concerning his immunity agreement, Kennedy 
never mentioned injecting cocaine with defendant on December 7, 1982, (2) in his 
original interview, Kennedy claimed defendant borrowed Kennedy’s car between 
5:00 and 6:00 p.m. on December 7, 1982, and returned it between 7:00 and 7:30 
p.m., and (3) at the preliminary hearing (preceding the 1984 trial), Kennedy 
described injecting cocaine with defendant as they drove around together on the 
evening of December 7, 1982. 
 
 7
Cynthia Cornwell testified under a grant of immunity as follows:  In 
December 1982, she, defendant, and her three children were living in a house on 
Gibson Street in El Monte.  Defendant and she were boyfriend and girlfriend.  
Cornwell’s welfare check had been substantially cut when defendant moved in.  
They were extremely poor and needed money for “everything.”   
On the afternoon of December 7, 1982, Kennedy came to the house.  
Sometime thereafter, Kennedy and defendant left together.  Defendant was 
wearing a blue jacket.  Before departing, he said he was going to try to borrow 
money from his parents.  He asked Cornwell for $30, which she knew was the 
price of cocaine.  There was no money to give him. 
When defendant and Kennedy returned, defendant was limping, and there 
was blood on his knee.  Cornwell asked where defendant had gone, what had 
happened, and whether he had gotten any money.  Defendant answered that he got 
no money; he had “tried going to a loan shark and got in an argument with him, 
and that’s what happened to his knee.”  Defendant gave Cornwell $10.  The two 
went into the bathroom, where Cornwell tended defendant’s wound. 
Before the police came to the house, but on the same day, defendant asked 
Cornwell whether she would wait for him if something happened.  Defendant then 
got a telephone call from his mother, which seemed to upset him.  When Cornwell 
asked what was wrong, defendant said “something about a murder” and told 
Cornwell “you are going to hate me.” 
That evening, after defendant left the El Monte house with the police, 
Cornwell burned defendant’s blue jacket in a hibachi on top of the kitchen stove.  
She did so because defendant would be in a bad mood when he returned, “so 
I figured if I burned the jacket, tomorrow was payday [i.e., welfare check day], he 
was going to get a new one and he would be pacified.”  The police arrested 
Cornwell as an accessory when she told them about the jacket. 
 
 8
B. Defense case. 
Dr. Ernest Klatte, a psychiatrist, interviewed defendant once in December 
1982, once in January 1983, and twice more in 1990, for a total of eight and three-
quarter hours.  Before the first interview, Dr. Klatte reviewed reports of the 
Harbitz murder investigation prepared by the public defender and the Fullerton 
Police, as well as the forensic report of the Orange County Sheriff’s crime lab.  He 
also reviewed defendant’s past medical reports.  These included indications that, 
in the past, defendant had suffered two serious traffic accidents, both of which 
rendered him temporarily unconscious.  According to Dr. Klatte, defendant 
provided the following version of the events of December 7, 1982: 
For some time, defendant had been injecting cocaine daily, and had been 
drinking considerably.  On December 7, he drank a “fair amount” of beer in the 
morning and a half-pint of whiskey in the afternoon.  After consuming the 
whiskey, he smoked a PCP cigarette.  He also shared a quarter-gram of cocaine 
with Kennedy. 
After injecting the cocaine, defendant and Kennedy drove to defendant’s 
parents’ house, where defendant hoped to talk his mother out of money for more 
drugs.  However, his father was home, so he could not obtain the money.  Next, 
defendant went looking for William Harbitz, but found he had moved.  Defendant 
then had Kennedy drive him to the home of William’s parents, who had been nice 
to him, to find out how to contact William.  Defendant was developing “one of his 
headaches, which he had on and off for some years.”  During these episodes, he 
did not like being around people and felt prone to anger easily.  He did not 
mention the headache to Kennedy.  He was also starting to feel effects of the PCP 
he had consumed. 
When they arrived in the Harbitzes’ neighborhood, defendant told Kennedy 
to park around the corner because Kennedy seemed “kind of edgy.”  When 
 
 9
defendant knocked on the Harbitzes’ door, Aileen invited him in.  The warmth 
inside the house bothered him.  After he chatted briefly with Aileen, she suggested 
he go to the back bedroom and talk with Francis.  He did so. 
As defendant was leaving Francis’s room, he noticed a billfold out of the 
corner of his eye, and “things started getting very strange.”  He felt he was part of 
Halloween II (1981), a popular horror movie.  Events kept changing speeds, and 
items inside the house became distorted. 
In the 1982-1983 interviews, defendant said he recalled only that he 
grabbed Aileen and that Francis came down the hall saying, “what’s going on 
here.”  According to defendant’s 1982-1983 account, he had no memory of pulling 
out his knife or stabbing, and he remembered nothing else until he was outside 
ready to leave in the car.  In 1990, he said he was “tripping” and had actually 
hallucinated a man coming at him with a knife. 
Defendant did remember that he had two wallets when he left the Harbitz 
house.  He also acknowledged that he went through the wallets looking for money, 
then discarded them in a bushy area and a sewer.  Defendant discussed these 
events in a way that implied he acted “to get rid of the evidence.” 
Assuming defendant told the truth about the drugs he ingested on 
December 7, 1982, Dr. Klatte opined that their effects would tend to make him 
impulsive and explosive, with an impaired ability to interpret events, act 
thoughtfully, exercise judgment, and weigh consequences.  He would likely have 
been paranoid, delusional, and excitable, and might have hallucinated. 
Dr. Klatte acknowledged that defendant had an antisocial personality, 
might have lied about the events of December 7, and might be malingering.  
Defendant’s antisocial personality, plus his understanding that the mental 
evaluation was intended to assist him at trial, raised a high clinical suspicion of 
malingering.  Kennedy’s and Cornwell’s assessments that defendant seemed sober 
 
 10
on December 7 also “raised a question in [Dr. Klatte’s] mind about what happened 
inside the [victims’] house,” although experienced drug users become more adept 
at masking their symptoms, and long-term use of drugs like cocaine and PCP can 
produce momentary psychotic or other explosive effects unrelated to the most 
recent ingestion.  Dr. Klatte did particularly suspect defendant’s 1990 
hallucination claim, because defendant had not mentioned this experience in his 
earlier interviews.  Dr. Klatte further conceded that, while defendant professed not 
to remember the stabbings, much of his activity that night was goal oriented, to 
obtain money for drugs. 
Lawrence Plon, a pharmacist, testified to the usual effects of cocaine and 
PCP.  Plon said cocaine is a central nervous system stimulant.  When injected, it 
produces a very excited “high” feeling often compared to sexual orgasm.  PCP 
separates the consciousness from the body.  It can produce excitement or catatonic 
withdrawal, aggression, paranoia, hallucinations, and delusions. 
II. PENALTY EVIDENCE 
A.  Prosecution case. 
The parties stipulated that on October 16, 1980, defendant pled guilty to 
committing a misdemeanor assault against James Davis on September 15, 1980.  
The prosecution also presented evidence, essentially uncontested, that defendant 
participated in the armed robbery of a Payless Shoe Source store in Temple City 
on October 12, 1982.  Defendant personally pulled a handgun on the clerk, Paula 
Kelly, and forced her to open both the cash register and the store safe. 
Finally, the prosecution sought to prove that defendant murdered 75-year-
old Houston Compton in Fullerton on August 22, 1980.  Compton’s blood-soaked 
body, with the back pants pocket pulled out, was found around 7:30 that same 
evening near the center of the Fullerton College campus.  The victim was last seen 
 
 11
alive between 6:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. at Coco’s, a restaurant less than two miles 
from the campus and about one mile from the International Hotel, where 
defendant then lived. 
The five-foot, two-inch, 115-pound victim suffered a stab wound to the 
upper chest and some 34 slash wounds to the fingers, hands, forearms, elbows, 
upper chest, face, and head.  The fatal wound extended from the side of the face to 
the neck, severed the jugular vein, and nicked the carotid artery, causing massive 
loss of blood.  The wounds could have been inflicted by a Frontiersman 124 buck 
knife. 
Compton’s early 1960’s Ford Fairlane was found abandoned in Santa 
Monica on September 11, 1980.  His wallet was lying on the front seat.  There 
were blood spots, spatters, and smears on the dashboard, the under-dash air 
conditioning unit, a seat cushion on the front passenger side, and the inside of the 
front passenger door, as well as pooled blood on the passenger side floorboards, 
both front and rear.  Extensive debris, including a McDonald’s restaurant bag with 
a receipt inside and other discarded food wrappings and containers, was removed 
from the car.  The receipt was for a purchase of two hamburgers at 10:12 p.m. on 
August 22, 1980, from the McDonald’s restaurant on Leffingwell Road in 
Whittier. 
The car’s interior also contained gun enthusiast magazines and papers 
which were marked with Japanese writing and the handwritten names and 
addresses, in English, of gun shops.  In the trunk, police discovered a box labeled 
“buck knife,” and, under a tire iron, a trench coat with the name “George Murphy” 
embroidered inside.  This coat also had labels identifying a tailor shop in Japan, as 
well as a tag with handwritten letters that appeared to be a P and a B.  No 
matchable fingerprints were found in the vehicle or on any items taken from it.  
 
 12
DNA test results for the genetic materials collected in the case (i.e., blood, hairs, 
scrapings from the victim’s fingernails) did not point to defendant. 
Roger Green testified as follows:  In 1980, he owned a gun shop in 
Whittier.  In late August of that year, he sold a Frontiersman 124 buck knife, in its 
box, to two men.  The men also expressed an interest in purchasing a Walther 
handgun, which Green did not sell.  One of these customers resembled a photo of 
a man named Charles Connell. 
The prosecution sought to prove defendant’s identity as Compton’s killer in 
several ways.  William Harbitz testified as follows:  One evening in August 1980, 
defendant came to the door of Harbitz’s apartment.  Defendant had been drinking, 
and said he had been in a knife fight.  There was blood on defendant’s T-shirt.  
The next morning, Harbitz found blood on the fender of his dune buggy, which 
was parked in the direction from which defendant had approached. 
Linda Weissinger testified as follows:  In August 1980, then 16 years old, 
she worked at the McDonald’s restaurant on Leffingwell Road in Whittier.  
Around 10:15 p.m. on August 22, 1980, during the closing rush, a man driving a 
white early ‘60s car like Compton’s ordered two hamburgers at the drive-through 
window.  Weissinger took the order, while another employee, Shelly Stowell, 
received the customer’s money and handed him the food.  They noticed the man 
because he had blood on his T-shirt—Stowell remarked what a “slob” he was—
and because, unlike most customers, he parked away from the drive-through 
window, and leaned toward the passenger side of the car, as if he did not wish to 
be seen.  Weissinger observed the man for 40 to 50 seconds.  From her angle, she 
saw him only in three-quarters profile, and the car’s roof prevented her from 
observing his upper forehead and hair.  Nonetheless, in May 1983, she picked 
defendant’s picture from a six-photo array.  At trial in 1992, Weissinger confirmed 
 
 13
she was “sure” in May 1983 that the photo she picked at that time showed the man 
she saw at McDonald’s on August 22, 1980. 
During direct and cross-examination, Weissinger revealed that, before she 
identified defendant in May 1983, she had picked other men at November 1980 
and July 1981 live lineups.  The man Weissinger identified with “99 percent” 
certainty at the November 1980 live lineup was some 50 pounds heavier than the 
person she saw on August 22, 1980, and there were also differences in facial hair 
and hair style and color.  The man she identified at the July 1981 live lineup 
“seem[ed] to have lost some weight and grown some facial hair.”  Weissinger 
explained that the police had told her to discount such differences, because 
someone’s appearance could change in those ways over time.  After picking 
defendant from the May 1983 photo array, she was shown the same group of 
photos on two later occasions—in April 1985 and January 1991.  These were the 
only times she saw the same photos more than once. 
B. Defense case. 
Responding to Weissinger’s testimony for the prosecution, Dr. Kathy 
Pezdek, a clinical psychologist, testified about factors undermining the accuracy of 
eyewitness identifications.  Dr. Pezdek indicated that stress, a poor opportunity to 
observe in the first instance, and loss of memory due to passage of time can all 
contribute to mistaken identification.  Accuracy can also be compromised, Dr. 
Pezdek explained, when the witness is anxious to help the police by identifying 
someone.  In Dr. Pezdek’s view, Weissinger’s multiple identifications of different 
persons implied she was suggestible in this way.  The sharply different 
appearances of the other men Weissinger identified cast further doubt on her 
accuracy.  Moreover, Dr. Pezdek observed, one who meets many people, such as a 
McDonald’s worker, might misidentify someone observed on a particular occasion 
 
 14
by unconsciously transferring a memory of someone seen in a entirely different 
context, such as a neighbor.5 
Dorothy Boyer, defendant’s adoptive mother, testified that defendant was 
four years old when adopted.  Dorothy and her husband Del went to the apartment 
of defendant’s natural mother to pick defendant up.  Conditions in that home were 
poor.  The natural mother was anxious to get rid of defendant, and he showed no 
emotion at their parting.  The Boyers agreed on the spot to take defendant’s 
younger sister also.  When defendant was adopted, he could hardly talk, and he 
communicated with grunts.  He was in poor physical condition, with boils all over 
his body, the result of an inadequate diet.  The natural mother said defendant’s 
speech problems were because he “didn’t get enough oxygen or something” at 
birth. 
Dorothy recounted that as a young child, defendant had many friends, and 
the Boyer living room “belonged to the whole neighborhood.”  However, speech 
problems persisted through defendant’s childhood, despite the Boyers’ attempts to 
help, and he began wearing glasses in the third or fourth grade.  As a consequence, 
other children made fun of him, and his social and academic development was 
impaired.  He became more withdrawn.  He wet his bed until he was 10 or 11 
years old.  Initially, he worked hard in school and obeyed the rules, but he 
repeated second grade, and despite home tutoring, his performance worsened 
through elementary school.  The Boyers spent money to support defendant’s 
                                              
5  
With respect to the defense effort to focus suspicion on “Charles Connell” 
and “George Murphy” as Compton’s killers, the parties stipulated, at the 
conclusion of the defense case, to the following:  In 1974, one Charles Connell 
was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to prison.  Men named 
Charles Connell and George Murphy, who had been housed in the same cellblock, 
were released from the Orange County Jail within half an hour of each other on 
the morning of August 22, 1980.  One Charles Connell died in a Veterans’ 
Administration hospital in 1989. 
 
 15
interests in art and music.  Del, whom defendant idolized, engaged in many 
pursuits with him, including homework, chess, baseball, and soapbox derby.  The 
family attended church regularly, traveled to Yosemite each year, and took ski 
vacations together in the winter. 
Defendant’s school attendance and performance deteriorated further during 
his teenage years.  Dorothy’s communication with him became difficult, though he 
remained close to Del and protective of his younger sister.  When defendant was 
17, money and a small television turned up missing from the Boyer home.  The 
Boyers suspected drugs.  As a result, Del told defendant he would have to leave 
home when he turned 18.  Around the same time, defendant had two traffic 
accidents.  The first time, he was thrown from a car onto the pavement.  He hit his 
head, and was hospitalized for three or four days.  Subsequently, in a motorcycle 
crash, he seriously fractured his leg and crushed his hip.  This time he was in the 
hospital for three or four months. 
After defendant left home, the Boyers moved to a condominium complex 
on East Oxford Drive in La Mirada.  Around August 1980, defendant periodically 
visited them there.6  During this period, Dorothy sensed that defendant had a 
continuing drug problem and was not choosing his friends well. 
Dorothy indicated that she and Del tried to visit defendant in prison, but 
were treated so badly that defendant urged them not to return.  Thereafter, they 
                                              
6  
Defense counsel had previously elicited from prosecution witness 
Weissinger, who identified defendant’s photo in relation to the Compton murder, 
that in August 1980, Weissinger lived with her parents in a condominium on East 
Oxford Drive in La Mirada—apparently located in the same complex where 
defendant visited his parents around that time.  This, in turn, was intended to 
support the defense theory, alluded to by Dr. Pezdek, the defense eyewitness 
identification expert, that Weissinger may have seen defendant in the complex, 
then mistakenly transferred that memory to the man she saw at the McDonald’s 
restaurant on August 22, 1980.   
 
 16
spoke with him by telephone twice a week, and he regularly sent handmade 
birthday and holiday cards with his own drawings and cartoons.  Dorothy said 
defendant had often expressed remorse for killing the Harbitzes. 
Nancy Ann Lucia was the neighbor of the Boyers’ who helped arrange his 
adoption.  She accompanied the Boyers to pick up defendant and his sister from 
their natural mother.  Nancy confirmed defendant’s poor environment and 
physical condition at that time, as well as the obvious lack of bonding between 
child and natural mother.  Nancy said defendant was “a very frightened little boy.”  
According to Nancy, the Boyers were loving and attentive adoptive parents, but 
Del was a perfectionist who put too much pressure on defendant.  Defendant and 
Nancy’s son, who was the same age, had a normal playmate relationship.  The 
Lucias moved away permanently when the two boys were in the fourth or fifth 
grade, and Nancy did not see defendant after that. 
Luis Lucia, Nancy’s son, confirmed his close childhood friendship with 
defendant.  Luis did not know defendant as an adult guilty of capital crimes, but he 
insisted that everyone makes mistakes, and that defendant did not deserve to die. 
Sally Forbes, a marriage, family, and child counselor, conducted multiple 
interviews with defendant and his parents.  On this basis, she testified at length 
about defendant’s background and its effect on his psychological makeup.  Forbes 
attached particular significance to defendant’s lack of emotion upon parting from 
his natural mother.  Forbes stressed the importance of the first four years of 
childhood as an influence on later behavior.  During this period, Forbes said, 
children develop autonomy and self-esteem, and they learn about trust and 
mistrust.  Instinctively aware of their need for adult care, they will cling to parents 
despite neglect and mistreatment.  Defendant’s lack of bonding with his natural 
parent, Forbes opined, thus indicated severe mental and emotional deprivation 
during his earliest years.  Moreover, childhood events described by defendant and 
 
 17
the Boyers—his persistent speech problem, his night fears including visual 
hallucinations, and his bed wetting—as well as his episodes of “acting out,” such 
as lying and setting fires, also suggested some great fear- or terror-inducing 
trauma in his background. 
Defendant scored 90 on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, indicating 
low average intelligence.  With effort, Forbes indicated, defendant thus should 
have been able to do adequate schoolwork.  It appeared from defendant’s school 
history that, responding to the Boyers’ love and attention, he was initially 
enthusiastic, but that he later lacked motivation and simply gave up.  As a possible 
explanation, Forbes noted that adopted children are always insecure about why 
their real parents did not want them.  Usually, Forbes observed, this issue gets 
worked out through family communication and therapy, but here it did not.  
Forbes acknowledged school reports documenting an increasing degree of 
antisocial behavior as defendant got older, and she agreed that his adolescent 
truancy suggested problems with drugs and alcohol. 
Considering the extent of defendant’s difficulties, Forbes felt her initial 
interviews did not uncover the “full story” of his possible preadoption trauma.  In 
1984, after 30 or 40 interviews, defendant revealed that his natural father had 
sexually abused him.  Defendant said the father would come home, send 
defendant’s older sister out to play, take defendant into the bedroom, force him to 
perform oral sex, give him pink and orange cookies, and make him promise not to 
tell.  Forbes believed this occurred when defendant was between two and four 
years old.  Early childhood sexual abuse, Forbes indicated, produces deep-seated 
guilt feelings.  It could account, she believed, for defendant’s night fears, fire 
setting, and bed wetting during childhood, and could permanently impair his 
ability to trust, thus producing an alienated “loner.” 
 
 18
In Forbes’s later interviews with defendant, he had softened his cynical 
attitudes, and had become more compassionate, mature, and insightful—a change 
also noticeable in his artwork.  He was now able, Forbes said, to set short-term 
goals, postpone gratification, avoid losing his temper, and judge and react 
appropriately to situations. 
Dr. Jonathan Salk, a psychiatrist, had a single interview with defendant at 
the Orange County jail.  Forbes accompanied Dr. Salk to the jail, but she left the 
interview room when defendant expressed embarrassment about discussing certain 
matters in her presence.  Defendant then confirmed to Dr. Salk his memories of 
sexual abuse by an adult male, probably his natural father, when he was a very 
young child.  The details generally corresponded to those defendant had given 
Forbes.  Defendant also recalled incidents of physical violence at his father’s 
hands.  In Dr. Salk’s opinion, defendant’s demeanor and manner of describing 
these events indicated he was telling the truth.  Defendant generally depicted his 
preadoption childhood as chaotic; his mother was an alcoholic, his father was at 
home only intermittently, and his older sister was his primary caregiver.  Dr. Salk 
believed defendant exhibited many childhood behaviors linked to severe 
psychological trauma. 
Luis Munoz and Edward Wood, Orange County jail guards, testified that 
defendant was an average, cooperative inmate who gave no trouble while confined 
there.  Defendant volunteered to clean up the cafeteria, a duty that allowed him to 
be out of his cell.  Toni Bovee, a defense investigator, showed examples of the 
many original drawings and poems defendant had sent her and her daughter.  
Bovee said defendant had often expressed remorse for the Harbitz homicides. 
Clayton Griffith, a prison art instructor, testified that, in their initial 
encounters, defendant displayed a “biker macho” demeanor, and his artwork was 
cold, impersonal, and detached.  Over time, however, defendant’s artwork 
 
 19
softened, and he began to combine poetry with drawing.  Defendant was always 
reserved, but after six months or so, he became less formal, and more friendly and 
expressive.  His hard demeanor came to seem more like a façade.  Defendant was 
generally polite and caring of others insofar as he had contact with them.  He 
appeared to have good relations with peers and supervisors. 
Because he was unavailable at the 1992 trial, the testimony of James 
Verwys from the prior trial was read into the record as follows:  Verwys was a Los 
Angeles police officer.  He occupied the hospital bed next to defendant’s after 
defendant’s motorcycle accident.  Verwys liked defendant the best of his 20 or so 
hospital roommates.  Defendant seemed a genuine, caring person.  He was the 
only roommate to return after his release from the hospital to visit Verwys.  They 
kept in touch and socialized after Verwys was released.  Defendant has redeeming 
qualities and is worth keeping alive. 
III. 
PRETRIAL ISSUES 
A. Motion to suppress evidence. 
As noted above, in Boyer I we reversed defendant’s original conviction on 
grounds that his confession in police custody was illegally obtained and should 
have been suppressed, but we ruled that other evidence in the case was not 
similarly subject to exclusion as the product, or “tainted fruit,” of the illegal police 
conduct.  (Boyer I, supra, 48 Cal.3d 247, 276 et seq.)  Prior to the retrial, 
defendant moved anew to suppress evidence other than his confession, including 
the evidence discussed in Boyer I, on multiple grounds.  His motion was denied, 
and the challenged evidence was again admitted against him on the issue of guilt. 
Defendant urges on appeal that the trial court committed multiple errors in 
denying his new suppression motion.  We find no prejudicial error.  Our analysis 
requires, at the outset, an extensive factual recitation. 
 
 20
1. Factual and procedural background. 
Before the 1984 trials, defendant moved to exclude his incriminating 
statements to police, as well as other evidence, on grounds they were obtained in 
violation of his rights under the Fourth Amendment and Miranda v. Arizona, 
supra, 384 U.S. 436.  On the motion, the following facts were adduced: 
On the evening of December 14, 1982, without an arrest or search warrant, 
or probable cause for either, detectives from the Fullerton and El Monte Police 
Departments surrounded the El Monte house defendant shared with Cynthia 
Cornwell and her children.  When defendant emerged from the back door, he was 
detained, and he agreed to accompany detectives to the Fullerton police station for 
an interview about the Harbitz murders. 
Once at the station, defendant received Miranda warnings and then 
underwent a two-hour tape-recorded interrogation by Detective Lewis.  Lewis 
indicated he thought defendant was guilty, did not credit defendant’s contrary 
protestations, and believed defendant could not live with the guilt.  Defendant’s 
efforts to invoke his Miranda rights to silence and counsel, and to ascertain 
whether he was under arrest, were repeatedly ignored or evaded.  However, 
questioning finally ceased, and the recorder was turned off. 
Lewis then asked defendant if the police could search the El Monte house.  
Defendant said it was all right with him, but they would have to obtain Cornwell’s 
consent, because “[i]t’s her house.”  Officers Davinroy and Ritter, waiting in El 
Monte, were dispatched to obtain Cornwell’s permission. 
Meanwhile in Fullerton, defendant consented to fingerprinting and was 
taken to the jail facility for that purpose.  When he returned from fingerprinting, he 
spoke with Cornwell by telephone.  Though defendant had not yet made any 
incriminating statements and, according to Lewis, was not under arrest, Lewis 
overheard defendant tell Cornwell he was being charged with two counts of 
 
 21
murder.  Defendant advised Cornwell that the decision whether to allow a 
residential search was hers, because it was her house.  After speaking with 
defendant, and with her own attorney, Cornwell gave oral consent, and the search 
began.7 
At the Fullerton police station, Lewis asked defendant to step back into the 
interrogation room “for a few minutes.”  The tape recorder was not turned on.  
Lewis indicated he could not solicit further statements from defendant, because 
defendant had asked for an attorney.  However, Lewis said, he wanted to “tell 
[defendant] a couple things.”  Lewis then related to defendant that certain portions 
of defendant’s story did not ring true, in that Paul Harbitz, one of the victims’ 
sons, indicated defendant had done yard work for the senior Harbitzes more 
recently than defendant maintained.  Hence, Lewis admonished, he would be 
“checking further into the case with Bill Harbitz.” 
As Lewis then turned to leave the room, defendant called him back and said 
“I did it.”  Lewis reactivated the tape recorder and took a new waiver of 
defendant’s Miranda rights.  Defendant thereupon gave a more complete 
statement.  (Boyer I, supra, 48 Cal.3d 247, 263-267.) 
Among other things, defendant disclosed that during the fatal encounter, he 
had stabbed himself in the knee.  He revealed that the knife he used to stab the 
Harbitzes was in his bedroom in El Monte, most likely in a dresser drawer.  He 
said that he had worn Levi’s and a blue jacket the night of the murders, and that 
the jacket had gotten blood on it.  He indicated the jacket was on the bedroom 
                                              
7  
Neither Cornwell nor the attorney with whom she spoke testified in the 
suppression hearing that preceded the 1984 trials.  Evidence of the circumstances 
of her consent to the search of the El Monte house came from Detective Lewis, 
who overheard defendant’s end of the telephone conversation with Cornwell, and 
from Detectives Davinroy and Ritter, who were at the El Monte house to obtain 
Cornwell’s consent. 
 
 22
floor and the Levi’s were in the bedroom closet.  Defendant represented that he 
had gone alone to the victims’ home in a car belonging to the mother of his friend 
John Kennedy.8  At some point, defendant also directed police to the location of 
Aileen Harbitz’s wallet, which he had discarded near a freeway off-ramp. 
As soon as defendant confessed, information about the Levi’s, the jacket, 
and the knife was transmitted to the officers searching the El Monte house.  They 
recovered bloody Levi’s from the bedroom closet and a knife from a dresser 
drawer, but they found no blue denim jacket.  When they asked Cornwell about 
the jacket, she told them she had burned it in a hibachi on the kitchen stove.  The 
officers advised her she might thereby be implicated in a murder.  They placed her 
under arrest as an accessory and advised her of her Miranda rights.  She agreed to 
cooperate. 
Detectives also located and questioned Kennedy, who ultimately admitted 
he drove defendant from the El Monte house to the Harbitz residence on the night 
of the murders.  Kennedy also confirmed the exact location where defendant had 
discarded the wallet beside the freeway off-ramp. 
Defendant’s motion to suppress was denied, and his statement to the police 
was introduced in the prosecution’s case-in-chief.  Both Kennedy and Cornwell 
testified for the prosecution under grants of immunity.  The knife, the bloody 
Levi’s, and the recovered wallet were also admitted in evidence. 
On appeal from the 1984 judgment, we agreed with defendant that his 
incriminating statements to the police on December 14, 1982, were the product of 
                                              
8  
At various points in this opinion, we recite, and rely upon, facts that are 
gleaned from the record of the 1984 trials, but do not appear on the face of our 
opinion in Boyer I.  By prior order in this appeal, we granted defendant’s requests 
that we take judicial notice of the entire record of the proceedings leading to the 
appeal in Boyer I.  (Evid. Code, §§ 452, subd. (d), 459; cf. People v. Snow (2003) 
30 Cal.4th 43, 109-110, fn. 26 (Snow).) 
 
 23
violations of his rights under the Fourth Amendment and Miranda v. Arizona, 
supra, 384 U.S. 436.  Thus, we ruled, these statements should not have been 
admitted in the prosecution’s case-in-chief to prove defendant’s guilt, and the error 
was prejudicial.  On this basis, we reversed defendant’s conviction.  (Boyer I, 
supra, 48 Cal.3d 247, 267-275.) 
Defendant pressed the further contention that the knife and bloody Levi’s, 
Kennedy’s testimony, and the wallet recovered near the freeway offramp were  
“ ‘tainted fruit’ of the illegal police conduct,” and thus also inadmissible.  (Boyer 
I, supra, 48 Cal.3d 247, 256.)  He urged that the evidence recovered from the El 
Monte house was based on his invalid consent to search given while he was 
illegally detained.  He further asserted that the authorities had improperly obtained 
Kennedy’s testimony, and had recovered the wallet, as the result of information 
invalidly obtained from defendant.  (Id. at p. 276 et seq.) 
We rejected these arguments.  Based on the record then before us, we 
reasoned as follows:  The search of the El Monte house was based not on 
defendant’s invalid consent, but on the voluntary, untainted consent of Cornwell.  
During the consensual search, and after the authorities located the knife and 
bloody Levi’s the search would inevitably have produced, Cornwell volunteered 
she had burned the blue jacket, an inherently suspicious event leading to the arrest 
that persuaded her to cooperate with the authorities.  Cornwell’s cooperation 
would have led the police to Kennedy, for she knew defendant was in Kennedy’s 
company on the night of the murders.  Armed with information from Cornwell 
about Kennedy’s involvement, police would certainly have obtained his 
cooperation.  Thus, both his testimony and his independent knowledge of the 
discarded wallet’s location would have been procured regardless of defendant’s 
statement.  (Boyer I, supra, 48 Cal.3d 247, 276-279.) 
 
 24
On retrial, defendant filed a new motion seeking to suppress the knife, the 
Levi’s, the wallet, and the anticipated testimony of both Cornwell and Kennedy as 
“tainted fruit” of his illegal detention and confession.  Defendant also claimed that 
Cornwell’s consent to search the El Monte house, and her anticipated testimony on 
retrial, were the result of coercive tactics by the authorities against her.  Defendant 
sought an evidentiary hearing on these issues. 
The trial court determined that our decision in Boyer I was the law of the 
case as to all issues addressed therein, and that relitigation of those issues was thus 
foreclosed.  Accordingly, the court ruled, defendant could not raise claims (1) that 
the search of the El Monte house was the “tainted fruit” of defendant’s illegal 
detention, confession, and consent, (2) that Cornwell’s consent to the search was 
involuntary, or (3) that procurement of Kennedy’s information and testimony was 
not inevitable. 
However, the trial court permitted defendant to litigate his claim, not raised 
or addressed in Boyer I, that Cornwell’s testimony should be excluded as the result 
of official coercion against her, and as the tainted product of defendant’s illegal 
arrest, detention, and confession.  The parties stipulated “as far as the purposes of 
this hearing,” that the facts recited by our opinion in Boyer I were true. 
At the evidentiary hearing, Detective Lewis testified for the prosecution as 
follows:  When he and other officers approached the El Monte house on the 
evening of December 14, 1982, he knew defendant lived there with a woman and 
her three children.  Had defendant not been home, and had the woman been 
cooperative, Lewis would have inquired about defendant’s whereabouts, and 
would also have asked her where defendant was on the night of December 7.  If 
she were not cooperative, Lewis would have left.9 
                                              
9  
On cross-examination, Lewis indicated that he might have told Cornwell 
what the investigation was about and asked if she was willing to talk, but if she 
 
 25
When the officers knocked, Cornwell came to a window and indicated that 
defendant was there but could not come to the front door because it was 
jammed.10  After defendant emerged from the back door and was detained, the 
officers and defendant went back inside, where Lewis explained to Cornwell, who 
was very emotional, that defendant had agreed to accompany them to the Fullerton 
station for an interview.  Lewis indicated defendant would be gone about three 
hours.  Cornwell asked if defendant was under arrest; Lewis said he was not.  
Cornwell also asked if she could follow them to the police station.  Lewis agreed, 
but Cornwell was unable to arrange transportation or child care.  Lewis did not 
recall telling Cornwell that the matter involved a murder investigation. 
While in Lewis’s presence at the station, defendant had two phone 
conversations with Cornwell, one “after the initial interview,” and the second after 
defendant returned from fingerprinting.  In the first call, Lewis heard defendant 
tell Cornwell it was her decision whether to allow a search.11  Lewis did not know 
the substance of the second call, but he did hear defendant tell Cornwell he was 
“arrested for a couple murders.”12  To the best of Lewis’s recollection, both of 
these calls occurred before defendant confessed. 
Other evidence established that Cornwell was arrested and jailed overnight 
after officers searching the El Monte house pursuant to her prior oral consent 
                                                                                                                                      
 
had strongly expressed an unwillingness to cooperate, he said, “at that point in the 
investigation, I wouldn’t have been that strong on whether or not I talked to her.” 
10  
Lewis considered Cornwell to be cooperative at this point, but in hindsight, 
he conceded, she might just have been trying to buy time for defendant to escape 
out the back. 
11  
Lewis confirmed that, at some point, there was a decision by police to seek 
a permissive search. 
12  
Lewis conceded that Detective Ritter, who was then at the El Monte house, 
placed the calls on Cornwell’s behalf, and that Cornwell would not have been 
allowed to speak immediately to defendant if Ritter had not placed the calls. 
 
 26
learned of defendant’s confession and the significance of the blue jacket, asked her 
about the jacket, and were told she had burned it.  (See discussion, ante and post.)  
In response to defense counsel’s question on cross-examination, Lewis agreed 
that, before defendant confessed, it would not have been appropriate to arrest 
someone as an accomplice for destroying evidence such as a bloody jacket, 
because until then, “I didn’t know he had committed the murder.” 
On December 21, 1982, Lewis returned to the El Monte house to interview 
Cornwell further.  Cornwell was “edgy” but calmer than on December 14.  She 
said she was under a doctor’s care and did not want to speak to the police.  Lewis 
told her defendant had confessed, “so she might as well talk to us.”  In taking this 
approach, Lewis, aware of Cornwell’s emotional attachment to defendant, was 
seeking to persuade her that she “wouldn’t be telling us anything we didn’t already 
know.”  Cornwell declined to talk on that occasion but said she might do so later 
after speaking to her psychologist and her attorney. 
Cynthia Cornwell testified for the defense as follows:  On December 14, 
1982, some three or four hours after defendant was taken to the police station, “at 
least” two other detectives came to the house.  She did not recall whether they 
asked to search, or whether she consented to the search before or after she learned 
defendant had been arrested.  She did speak by telephone both to defendant and to 
her attorney about allowing a search.  She remembered little about the substance 
of those conversations, or how the calls were placed.  During the search, she knew 
defendant was suspected of murder.  She also was aware the police had not kept 
their promise to have defendant home in two or three hours. 
According to Cornwell, both before and during the search, the officers 
mentioned that her children could be taken away because the house was dirty and 
messy.  She could not recall whether this was first said before or after she 
consented to the search, but it was after she spoke to defendant and her attorney.  
 
 27
She took the reference to her children as a threat unless she cooperated against 
defendant.  During this time, Cornwell was “upset,” “scared,” and “very, very 
emotional.” 
Something that “terrified” Cornwell during the search was that one of the 
officers tossed or dropped her infant daughter off a bed, from a height of 12 to 18 
inches, so he could look underneath it.  One other detective and Cornwell’s five-
year-old daughter were also in the room at this time.  The baby was not hurt, but 
Cornwell felt the officer did this to “intimidate me.”  Also, Cornwell wanted to 
give her children baths to keep them calm, but detectives would not let her do so 
unless an officer “stood right there and watched the whole thing.” 
During the search, the officers asked Cornwell where certain items of 
clothing could be found, “and I was telling them.”  When they asked about the 
jacket, she told them she burned it on the stove.  She showed the officers the 
scraps that were left.  They said she could or would be charged as an accessory.  
They arrested her, had her sign a search consent form, and took her to jail.  At the 
time she was arrested, she knew defendant had confessed.  She felt that some 
pressure was being applied against her at the time of her arrest.  The police sought 
to interview her while she was in jail, but she realized they had lied to her, and 
were still lying to her, so she refused. 
Cornwell was released the next day; she assumed it was because she was 
sick.  She did not know whether she would be charged, and she did not want to 
know.  She did not call a lawyer after she was released.  Shortly after her release, 
she was hospitalized with hepatitis and jaundice.  She also was placed on 
medication for mental problems, including anxiety, “so I [could] walk out of my 
house without panicking if I saw a man in a business suit.”  The medication 
helped, and she was no longer taking it. 
 
 28
Cornwell thought any information she had would help defendant, because 
she “honestly did not believe he did it,” but at first she was not willing to testify.  
Defendant’s confession had nothing to do with her ultimate decision to cooperate.  
She decided to do so when told she would have immunity, out of fear she would 
otherwise be prosecuted.  Moreover, though she later realized they could not take 
her children, the police threats to do so, and the incident with her baby daughter, 
caused her to believe that her own life was threatened, and that the police might 
find a way to retaliate. 
At one point, the court asked Cornwell, “[a]s I understand, your consent to 
search the house was based on the activities of the officers making the threats and 
the way they threatened your child . . . also, is that correct?”  (Italics added.)  
Cornwell replied, “Correct.” 
Ruth Ohanessian testified for the defense as follows:  Cornwell had 
previously consulted Ohanessian, then a lawyer, about a custody matter.13  Late 
one December night, Cornwell called to seek advice about whether she should 
allow the police to search her house.  Cornwell, who was “very upset,” and 
“almost hysterical,” indicated “they were threatening to take the children.”  
Ohanessian told Cornwell to stay calm and not to antagonize the officers until 
Ohanessian called back. 
Ohanessian then tried two or three times to call Cornwell directly.  Each 
time, a “brusque” male voice answered, saying Ohanessian had a wrong number, 
disclaiming that Cornwell was there, and then terminating the conversation.  
Finally, with operator assistance, Ohanessian reached someone who identified 
himself as a police officer.  Ohanessian asked why they were saying they were 
                                              
13  
At the time of her testimony, Ohanessian was serving a six-year sentence 
upon a conviction for grand theft. 
 
 29
going to take the children.  The other party was not willing to give much 
information.  He did not seem surprised at the question, did not deny discussing 
the children with Cornwell, and gave no legitimate reason why they could be 
taken.  However, he acted somewhat conciliatory and said “they really didn’t have 
any intentions of taking the children.  He indicated they were there about 
something that had nothing to do with [Cornwell], something having to do with 
her boyfriend.” 
Ohanessian then spoke to Cornwell.  Ohanessian advised that Cornwell 
“didn’t have to be terribly worried about their taking the children” and should 
“give as little permission as she could” to avoid having the children taken.  They 
were able to talk only briefly, and Ohanessian told Cornwell she would call back 
later.  As the conversation ended, Cornwell was “still upset,” but, having been 
reassured about the children, she was “a tiny bit calmer.” 
After again trying several times without success, Ohanessian called back 
much later, shortly after midnight, and spoke to Cornwell.  Cornwell said she was 
being arrested and asked Ohanessian to contact a family member for assistance 
with the children and possibly to arrange bail. 
Detective Rick Ritter testified for the People in rebuttal as follows:  He 
arrived at the El Monte house around 5:50 p.m. on December 14, 1982, and left 
sometime after 1:00 a.m.  He obtained Cornwell’s consent to search some four or 
five hours after he first arrived.14  His partner, Detective Davinroy, had been told 
                                              
14  
Read out of context, Ritter’s testimony might suggest he was in Cornwell’s 
home at all times between 5:50 p.m. and 1:00 a.m., but all other evidence, 
including Cornwell’s own testimony, is that officers left the house when defendant 
was taken to the police station.  Though perhaps stationed nearby, they apparently 
did not return until several hours later when, after defendant indicated that a search 
was up to Cornwell, they received word from the Fullerton police station that they 
should attempt to obtain Cornwell’s consent to search. 
 
 30
over the telephone at a nearby fire station that defendant had given permission to 
search, “and we were to contact [Cornwell] at the residence and explain to her 
what the situation was and request to be allowed to search.” 
Cornwell was nervous when her consent was requested, and she may have 
cried at some point.  Initially, she expressed particular distrust of Davinroy and 
said that if Davinroy was going to participate in the search, she wanted to be 
present, and she wanted receipts.  Ritter agreed. 
Ultimately, six or seven officers were present in the house.  Davinroy and 
Ritter had called for additional officers so that, if consent was refused, the 
premises could be secured while a warrant was obtained.  While the officers were 
in the house, and prior to Cornwell’s arrest, detectives were monitoring 
Cornwell’s calls.  Davinroy was answering the telephone because the officers were 
expecting and receiving calls from the police station.  However, when Cornwell 
said she wanted to call her attorney before authorizing a search, Ritter said “go 
ahead.”  When Ohanessian called back, she was allowed to speak to Cornwell 
once she identified herself. 
Ritter insisted he made no threats, about the children or otherwise, to 
Cornwell at any time, nor did he hear anyone else do so.  According to Ritter, 
when Cornwell first realized she was going to be arrested, she was concerned 
about what would happen to the children, but when Ritter assured her they would 
be taken care of, she calmed down. 
At some time during the evening, Ritter saw two detectives, Cornwell, 
Cornwell’s daughter, and an infant together in the bedroom, but he never observed 
anyone touch the baby, pick up the baby, or toss the baby on the floor.  He was not 
always in the same room with every child or every officer.  However, he stayed 
with Cornwell at all times and never let her out of his sight, because “she was a 
witness in a homicide and/or a suspect.” 
 
 31
At the time the detectives obtained Cornwell’s consent, they did not know 
defendant had confessed.  However, they did know of defendant’s confession by 
the time Cornwell was arrested. 
On this record, the trial court ruled that Cornwell’s testimony was neither 
coerced nor tainted.  The court found nothing coercive in the initial contact with 
the police, particularly since Cornwell was told that she could accompany 
defendant to the station and that the interview would last only two or three hours.  
Similarly, the court saw nothing objectionable in “the officer . . . answering the 
phone and things of that nature.”  As to the claim of a threat to take Cornwell’s 
children, the court found that no such threat occurred.  The court surmised that 
Cornwell, in an emotional state and already concerned about child custody issues, 
might have misinterpreted innocent remarks.  While the court declined to 
determine whether Cornwell’s baby was tossed from the bed, the court’s 
comments suggested doubt that such an incident occurred.15  In the court’s words, 
“I don’t see there’s anything here that the officers did that was certainly 
threatening to the children.” 
The court next noted our conclusions in Boyer I—accepted for purposes of 
this hearing—that, though initially hostile when asked for consent to search, 
Cornwell became cooperative after consulting with defendant, “which she did,” 
and with her attorney, “which she surely did,” and that during the ensuing lawful 
search, the police found the knife and bloody Levi’s and asked about the jacket.  
The court also noted our Boyer I determination that, even if defendant had not 
mentioned the jacket and its significance, the officers would have discovered the 
                                              
15  
After noting that the evidence was in conflict on this issue, the court said, 
“I don’t know if it happened or it didn’t happen.  [It] [w]ould seem to me that the 
officers would pick up on the fact that they are dealing with someone who is 
difficult because of her emotional situation, so we have that situation to start 
with.” 
 
 32
burned jacket, scraps of which were still flying around the kitchen, would have 
questioned Cornwell about this “unusual and suspicious event,” and would have 
received the explanation Cornwell readily volunteered. 
In sum, the court concluded “that [Cornwell] cooperated of her own free 
will and volition,” and that her later statements were not tainted by defendant’s 
illegal arrest because her testimony would inevitably have been procured by 
lawful means.  Accordingly, the court denied defendant’s motion to suppress. 
On appeal defendant renews his contention that the testimony of Cornwell 
and Kennedy, the bloody Levi’s, the knife, and the wallet should have been 
suppressed because (1) they were obtained by exploiting defendant’s illegal 
detention and the invalid confession thereby obtained, and (2) they would not 
inevitably have been procured by, other lawful means.  He urges further that 
Cornwell’s consent to the search of the El Monte house, and her agreement to 
testify at trial, were the involuntary products of official coercion toward her.16 
                                              
16  
In Boyer I, we concluded that defendant had suffered violations of his 
rights under both the Fourth Amendment and Miranda v. Arizona, supra, 384 U.S. 
436.  However, the new suppression motion on retrial was brought under Penal 
Code section 1538.5 (governing suppression of evidence obtained as a result of 
illegal searches and seizures), and to the extent the new motion argued that 
evidence should be excluded as the “tainted fruit” of the illegal police conduct 
found in Boyer I, it did not allude to Miranda.  Similarly on appeal, defendant has 
not cited Miranda as a basis for his “tainted fruit” arguments.  With respect to 
these claims, we therefore address only the exclusionary rules applicable to search 
and seizure violations under state and federal law.  In that regard, we note that the 
Harbitz murders were committed in December 1982, after the effective date (June 
1982) of Proposition 8’s Truth-in-Evidence provisions (Cal. Const., art. I, § 28, 
subd. (d)).  Proposition 8 therefore applies to this case.  (People v. Smith (1983) 
34 Cal.3d 251, 257-263.)  Accordingly, relevant evidence obtained in violation of 
defendant’s rights, state or federal, against unreasonable searches and seizures 
may be excluded only as required under the Fourth Amendment.  (In re Lance W. 
(1985) 37 Cal.3d 873, 890.) 
 
 33
2. Law of the case. 
Defendant first asserts, as he did below, that the trial court should not have 
invoked the law-of-the-case doctrine to limit the suppression theories he could 
litigate on retrial.  He argues the doctrine is inapplicable at the threshold because 
Boyer I’s discussion of evidence other than defendant’s illegal confession was 
mere dictum.  He further contends that, because “inevitable discovery” and the 
validity of Cornwell’s consent to search were not litigated in the original trial, the 
record we analyzed in Boyer I was not fully developed.  By invoking the law of 
the case in order to allow the introduction of incriminating evidence on untested 
theories of consent and inevitable discovery, defendant insists, the instant trial 
court thus lightened the prosecution’s burden of proof in violation of the due 
process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.  As a consequence, defendant urges, 
he suffered infringement of his Sixth Amendment rights to a jury trial and to 
present a defense, and of his Eighth Amendment right to present all evidence 
material to his defense against a judgment of death.17 
                                              
17  
With respect to this and virtually every other claim raised on appeal, 
defendant urges that the error or misconduct he is asserting infringed various of 
his constitutional rights to a fair and reliable trial.  In most instances, insofar as 
defendant raised the issue at all in the trial court, he failed explicitly to make some 
or all of the constitutional arguments he now advances.  In each instance, unless 
otherwise indicated, it appears that either (1) the appellate claim is of a kind (e.g., 
failure to instruct sua sponte; erroneous instruction affecting defendant’s 
substantial rights) that required no trial court action by the defendant to preserve it, 
or (2) the new arguments do not invoke facts or legal standards different from 
those the trial court itself was asked to apply, but merely assert that the trial 
court’s act or omission, insofar as wrong for the reasons actually presented to that 
court, had the additional legal consequence of violating the Constitution.  To that 
extent, defendant’s new constitutional arguments are not forfeited on appeal.  (See 
People v. Partida (2005) 37 Cal.4th 428, 433-439; see also People v. Cole (2004) 
33 Cal.4th 1158, 1195, fn. 6; People v. Yeoman (2003) 31 Cal.4th 93, 117.) 
 
In the latter instance, of course, rejection, on the merits, of a claim that the 
trial court erred on the issue actually before that court necessarily leads to 
 
 34
“[W]here an appellate court states a rule of law necessary to its decision, 
such rule ‘ “must be adhered to” ’ in any ‘ “subsequent appeal” ’ in the same case, 
even where the former decision appears to be ‘ “erroneous” ’ ”  (People v. Whitt 
(1990) 51 Cal.3d 620, 638 (Whitt), quoting People v. Shuey (1975) 13 Cal.3d 835, 
841.)  Thus, the law-of-the-case doctrine “prevents the parties from seeking 
appellate reconsideration of an already decided issue in the same case absent some 
significant change in circumstances.”  (Whitt, supra, at p. 638.)  The doctrine is 
one of procedure, not jurisdiction, and it will not be applied “where its application 
will result in an unjust decision, e.g., where there has been a ‘manifest 
misapplication of existing principles resulting in substantial injustice’ 
[citation] . . . .”  (People v. Stanley (1995) 10 Cal.4th 764, 787 (Stanley).) 
Defendant first suggests the law-of-the-case doctrine is inapplicable here 
because Boyer I’s discussion of evidence other than the illegal confession that led 
to our reversal was not “necessary to [our] decision” (Whitt, supra, 51 Cal.3d 620, 
638), but was mere dictum (see Stockton Theaters v. Palermo (1956) 47 Cal.2d 
469, 474).  We disagree.  In Boyer I, supra, 48 Cal.3d 247, 256, defendant pressed 
his “tainted fruit” arguments for the clear purpose of establishing that not only his 
confession, but also most of the other evidence introduced against him, was subject 
to exclusion.  Had we accepted defendant’s claims, the result might well have 
been to preclude a retrial for lack of legally sufficient admissible evidence.  
Boyer I’s determination that the challenged evidence appeared free of taint thus 
ensured that the case could properly be set at large. 
Moreover, “[a] decision on a matter properly presented on a prior appeal 
becomes the law of the case even though it may not have been absolutely 
                                                                                                                                      
 
rejection of the newly applied constitutional “gloss” as well.  No separate 
constitutional discussion is required in such cases, and we therefore provide none.   
 
 35
necessary to the determination of the question whether the judgment appealed 
from should be reversed.  [Citations].”  (Steelduct Co. v. Henger-Seltzer Co. 
(1945) 26 Cal.2d 634, 643.)  Thus, application of the law-of-the-case doctrine is 
appropriate where an issue presented and decided in the prior appeal, even if not 
essential to the appellate disposition, “was proper as a guide to the court below on 
a new trial.”  (Westerfield v. New York Life Ins. Co. (1910) 157 Cal. 339, 345.) 
On the other hand, the law-of-the-case doctrine governs only the principles 
of law laid down by an appellate court, as applicable to a retrial of fact, and it 
controls the outcome on retrial only to the extent the evidence is substantially the 
same.  (E.g., People v. Barragan (2004) 32 Cal.4th 236, 246.)  The doctrine does 
not limit the new evidence a party may introduce on retrial.  (Id. at p. 247.)  Thus, 
it does not preclude the presentation of new evidence on suppression issues when 
an appellate court reverses a conviction and sets the cause at large for a new trial. 
We so concluded, on the People’s behalf, in People v. Mattson (1990) 
50 Cal.3d 826 (Mattson II).  Previously, in People v. Mattson (1984) 37 Cal.3d 85 
(Mattson I), we had reversed the defendant’s convictions of capital and noncapital 
crimes because the trial record indicated that, in violation of California law, he had 
confessed to two murders and various sexual offenses in response to custodial 
interrogations initiated by police officers after he invoked his rights to silence and 
counsel.  On retrial, the People were allowed to relitigate the admissibility of the 
confessions.  The People presented evidence, not previously adduced, that the 
defendant had initiated the conversations leading to his confessions, and the trial 
court admitted the confessions.  On appeal, the defendant urged that relitigation of 
this issue was inappropriate because, among other reasons, Mattson I’s 
determination that the confessions were inadmissible was the law of the case. 
We rejected this contention, explaining that “[t]he law-of-the-case doctrine 
binds the trial court as to the law but controls the outcome only if the evidence on 
 
 36
retrial or rehearing of an issue is substantially the same as that upon which the 
appellate ruling was based.  [Citations.]  The law-of-the-case doctrine applied to 
this court’s prior ruling only insofar as we held that California law governed the 
admissibility of the confessions.  The trial court did not depart from that ruling in 
its determination, based on new evidence, that the confessions were admissible.”  
(Mattson II, supra, 50 Cal.3d 826, 850.)18 
The same principle governs here.  Our discussion of suppression issues in 
Boyer I was based on the record then before us.  Even if the law-of-the-case 
doctrine makes Boyer I conclusive on the legal principles there established, the 
                                              
18  
Mattson II also found no other basis for precluding relitigation of the 
confessions’ admissibility after a reversal on appeal.  As we explained, “A reversal 
of a judgment without directions is an order for a new trial.  (§ 1262.)  ‘An 
unqualified reversal remands the cause for new trial and places the parties in the 
trial court in the same position as if the cause had never been tried.’  [Citation.]  
‘The granting of a new trial places the parties in the same position as if no trial had 
been had. . . .’  (§ 1180.)  [¶]  That status even permits amendment of the 
accusatory pleading [citation], as well as renewal and reconsideration of pretrial 
motions and objections to the admission of evidence.  [Citation.]”  (Mattson II, 
supra, 50 Cal.3d 826, 849.) 
 
As noted above (fn. 15, ante), defendant’s renewed suppression motion, 
which included claims previously addressed in Boyer I, was brought under section 
1538.5, governing the suppression of evidence obtained as the result of illegal 
searches and seizures.  Section 1538.5 imposes certain limits on the relitigation of 
suppression issues.  However, no case has decided the extent to which section 
1538.5 precludes such relitigation after an appellate reversal.  (See, e.g., 
Mattson II, supra, 50 Cal.3d 826, 850, & fn. 10; but cf. People v. Brooks (1980) 
26 Cal.3d 471, 475-483; Lorenzana v. Superior Court (1973) 9 Cal.3d 626, 640-
641.)  Moreover, aside from a brief response at oral argument to a question from 
the bench, the People have never argued, either in the trial court or on appeal, that 
the new suppression motion in this case was barred by section 1538.5.  We 
therefore do not address the issue. 
 
 37
doctrine did not foreclose new evidence on retrial indicating that the dispositive 
facts are materially different than those we addressed.19 
The trial court therefore erred in ruling that the law-of-the-case doctrine 
precluded defendant from relitigating, on the basis of new evidence, the issues we 
addressed in Boyer I.  The question remains whether we can nonetheless uphold 
the trial court’s denial of defendant’s motion to suppress, in whole or in part.  For 
the reasons that follow, we conclude that we may affirm the trial court’s ruling in 
its entirety. 
3. Claim that Cornwell’s testimony was coerced. 
We first address defendant’s claim that Cornwell’s testimony was procured 
by coercive police tactics.  This assertion, not raised in the original trials or 
addressed in Boyer I, was fully litigated on retrial.  On the record thus developed, 
we find no basis to disagree with the trial court’s determination that Cornwell’s 
testimony was not suppressible on this ground. 
The principles applicable to a coerced-testimony claim are settled.  The 
defendant has no standing to assert a violation of another’s constitutional rights.  
The coerced testimony of a witness other than the accused is excluded in order to 
protect the defendant’s own federal due process right to a fair trial, and in 
particular, to ensure the reliability of testimony offered against him.  A claim that 
                                              
19  
Stanley, supra, 10 Cal.4th 764 is not to the contrary.  There, after the trial 
court granted in part, and denied in part, a motion to suppress evidence in a capital 
case, both the defense and the prosecution petitioned for writs of mandate.  In an 
unpublished decision, the Court of Appeal granted in part, and denied in part, each 
petition.  We denied the defendant’s petition for review.  On automatic appeal 
from the subsequent death judgment, the defendant sought our reconsideration of 
the exact suppression issues previously, and finally, decided by the Court of 
Appeal.  We concluded that, absent manifest injustice or an intervening change in 
applicable law, the law-of-the-case doctrine precluded such reconsideration.  
(Stanley, supra, at pp. 786-790.) 
 
 38
a witness’s testimony is coerced thus cannot prevail simply on grounds that the 
testimony is the “fruit” of some constitutional transgression against the witness.  
Instead, the defendant must demonstrate how such misconduct, if any, has directly 
impaired the free and voluntary nature of the anticipated testimony in the trial 
itself.  (People v. Badgett (1995) 10 Cal.4th 330, 342-350 (Badgett); People v. 
Douglas (1990) 50 Cal.3d 468, 501-502.) 
On appeal, we independently review the entire record to determine whether 
a witness’s testimony was coerced, so as to render the defendant’s trial unfair.  
(Badgett, supra, 10 Cal.4th 330, 350-351.)  In doing so, however, we defer to the 
trial court’s credibility determinations, and to its findings of physical and 
chronological fact, insofar as they are supported by substantial evidence. 
Applying these standards, we accept the trial court’s finding that the 
authorities engaged in no improper coercive conduct toward Cornwell that caused 
her testimony at the 1992 retrial to be involuntary.  Cornwell implied that she was 
intimidated by events that occurred on the night of December 14, 1982, when the 
police searched the El Monte house.  These incidents, according to Cornwell, 
included police threats to take away her children, and her observation of an officer 
tossing her infant daughter off a bed. 
However, the trial court credited the testimony of Detective Ritter that no 
threats about the children’s custody were made.  Detective Ritter further testified 
that he had Cornwell in his sight at all times on the night of December 14, and he 
neither committed nor saw any physical mishandling of a child.  On this basis, the 
court properly expressed doubt about the “baby tossing” episode as well. 
Moreover, Cornwell herself made clear that her primary reason for her 
cooperation at trial was the prosecution’s offer of immunity from prosecution as 
an accessory, based on her burning of the jacket defendant wore on the night of the 
murders, in return for her truthful testimony.  There is nothing improperly coercive 
 
 39
about confronting a lesser participant in a crime with his or her predicament, and 
offering immunity from prosecution for the witness’s criminal role in return for 
the witness’s promise to testify fully and fairly.  (Badgett, supra, 10 Cal.4th 330, 
354-355; People v. Daniels (1991) 52 Cal.3d 815, 862; People v. Allen (1986) 
42 Cal.3d 1222, 1252 (Allen).)  As we conclude elsewhere in this opinion, 
Cornwell’s immunity agreement was not coercive, because it did not require her to 
testify to a particular version of events, or in conformity with any prior statement, 
but was conditioned entirely on her telling the truth.  (See discussion, post, at 
pp. 56-57.) 
Cornwell testified in both trials, and there was more than a nine-year lapse 
between the 1982 murders and Cornwell’s testimony in defendant’s 1992 retrial.  
This ample period for reflection, during which Cornwell conceded she realized the 
police could not take her children, further ameliorates any effect of her 
confrontation with the police on December 14, 1982, as a factor undermining the 
voluntary nature of her subsequent testimony.  (See, e.g., Badgett, supra, 
10 Cal.4th 330, 353.)  Under these circumstances, the record amply persuades us 
that Cornwell’s testimony was not improperly coerced. 
4. Claim of involuntary consent to search. 
Defendant next urges that Cornwell’s consent to search the El Monte house 
she shared with defendant was involuntary and thus invalid because she was 
coerced by police threats and intimidation.  A warrantless search may, of course, 
be based on the consent of a person, other than the accused, who has joint 
dominion or control over the area or thing to be searched.  However, the defendant 
may challenge the validity of the consent insofar as the search infringed his own 
expectations of privacy under the Fourth Amendment.  (Minnesota v. Carter 
(1998) 525 U.S. 83, 88; United States v. Matlock (1974) 415 U.S. 164, 170-171; 
 
 40
People v. Jenkins (2000) 22 Cal.4th 900, 971-972 (Jenkins).)  A consent to search 
is invalid if not freely and voluntarily given.  (Florida v. Royer (1983) 460 U.S. 
491, 497 (Royer).) 
The voluntariness of consent is a question of fact to be determined from the 
totality of circumstances.  (Schneckloth v. Bustamonte (1973) 412 U.S. 218, 227 
(Schneckloth); Jenkins, supra, 22 Cal.4th 900, 973.)  If the validity of a consent is 
challenged, the prosecution must prove it was freely and voluntarily given—i.e., 
“that it was [not] coerced by threats or force, or granted only in submission to a 
claim of lawful authority.”  (Schneckloth, supra, at p. 233; see Royer, supra, 
460 U.S. 491, 497.) 
In Boyer I, we found, on the record then before us, “no evidence or 
contention that Cornwell was improperly coerced to give her consent.”  (Boyer I, 
supra, 48 Cal.3d 247, 276.)  Specifically, we noted, Cornwell, “[t]hough initially 
hostile,  . . . became cooperative” (id. at p. 278) after consulting with defendant, 
who left the matter entirely up to her, and with an attorney (id. at pp. 277-278). 
Though defendant insists otherwise, it appears any new facts bearing on 
this issue were fully disclosed during the suppression hearing conducted on retrial.  
There, in the context of litigating whether Cornwell’s testimony was coerced (see 
text discussion, ante, pp. 37-39)—and with the burden of proof on the People—the 
circumstances surrounding Cornwell’s consent to search were thoroughly 
explored.  Detective Lewis testified, as in the prior trial, about the circumstances 
of defendant’s preconsent telephone conversation with Cornwell.  Cornwell and 
Detective Ritter, both present at the El Monte house, described at length the events 
there that led to Cornwell’s consent to search.  Ruth Ohanessian, the lawyer with 
whom Cornwell consulted, also testified about the circumstances and substance of 
their conversations.  In response to a specific question by the trial court, Cornwell 
 
 41
conceded she was describing the events crucial to her agreement to allow the El 
Monte house to be searched. 
Under these circumstances, we are convinced we may confirm, on the 
totality of circumstances, our prior conclusion that Cornwell’s consent to search 
was voluntary.  The request for consent took place in an environment most 
familiar and comforting to her—her own home.  Cornwell was, of course, upset 
and emotional when the police took defendant to the Fullerton station, and again 
when officers returned to seek permission to search.  Such events are inherently 
stressful.  However, several hours intervened between the officers’ original 
departure and their return.  No effort was made to secure the premises during this 
interlude.  Cornwell was alone with her children, giving her time for reflection and 
calm.  Indeed, she took the opportunity to burn the jacket defendant wore on the 
night of the murder. 
Once the detectives did return, there is no indication, other than as 
discussed below, that they behaved discourteously.  Though eventually there were 
six or seven officers on the premises, Cornwell gave no indication her will was 
overborne by the sheer number of personnel in the house.  (Cf., e.g., People v. 
Weaver (2001) 26 Cal.4th 876, 924 (Weaver).)  Similarly, Cornwell did not 
suggest she was affected by the monitoring of her telephone, or by her 
understanding that defendant was suspected of murder. 
Significantly, Cornwell acknowledged she was allowed to consult with both 
defendant and an attorney before giving her permission.  Despite her stress, she 
had the presence of mind to insist on doing both.  Though she signed a written 
 
 42
consent form only after her arrest, she gave oral permission well before that 
time.20 
Cornwell did testify at the suppression hearing on retrial that she was 
threatened with the loss of her children, and that an officer roughly handled her 
infant daughter, with the purpose, Cornwell believed, of “intimidat[ing]” her.  
However, based on the contrary testimony of Detective Ritter, and its observation 
of both witnesses, the trial court declined to credit Cornwell on these points.  We 
have no basis to disagree.  (See Jenkins, supra, 22 Cal.4th 900, 973.)  In our view, 
the record, now fully developed, amply demonstrates that Cornwell gave voluntary 
consent to the search of the El Monte house.21 
                                              
20  
There is no evidence the officers specifically told Cornwell she had a right 
to refuse consent, but such advice is not essential to a finding of valid consent.  
(Schneckloth, supra, 412 U.S. 218, 231.) 
21  
Defendant urges that even if the searching officers did not actually threaten 
to take Cornwell’s children, the officers knew (by overhearing Cornwell’s 
telephone statements to her lawyer, Ohanessian, and by one officer’s direct 
telephone exchange with Ohanessian) that Cornwell believed such threats had 
been made.  They therefore engaged in subtle “coercion,” he insists, by doing 
nothing to allay Cornwell’s fears.  However, the issue is whether the officers 
obtained Cornwell’s consent by “official coercion” (Schneckloth, supra, 412 U.S. 
218, 229), i.e., by “threat,” express or implied, or “force,” overt or covert (id. at 
p. 228).  While the subject’s personal characteristics, including his or her 
“possibly vulnerable subjective [mental] state,” are relevant, in the totality of 
circumstances, to whether the officers used coercive tactics (id. at p. 229), the 
subject’s mere perception of coercion cannot support a finding of involuntary 
consent when, in fact, there was no coercion, plain or subtle.  Were it otherwise, 
no search based on consent could be upheld against the subject’s testimony that he 
or she perceived a threat.  Moreover, we know of no case, and defendant has cited 
none, for the proposition that the police, having made no threats, express or 
implied, are guilty of “official coercion” (id. at p. 229) unless they take pains to 
disclaim threats merely perceived by the subject. 
 
 43
5. “Tainted fruit” claim. 
Finally, defendant urges that the testimony of Cornwell and John Kennedy, 
and the admission into evidence of the knife, Levi’s, and wallet, are “tainted fruit” 
of the illegal police conduct toward defendant himself, and are therefore subject to 
suppression.  In Boyer I, we concluded, based on the record then before us, that 
regardless of the police illegality, the evidence there challenged (which did not 
include Cornwell’s testimony) was nonetheless admissible because it would 
inevitably have been discovered by lawful means. 
As previously noted, defendant complains that the instant trial court 
erroneously invoked the law of the case to foreclose full litigation of the issue of 
“taint,” and to insulate the People from proving the evidence was not tainted.  In 
any event, he urges, the existing record does not support a conclusion that the 
challenged evidence is untainted.  The record does not show, he insists, that at 
every step, the police investigation was proceeding on a lawful track which would 
“inevitably” have procured the evidence at issue, or that the means by which such 
evidence was obtained was otherwise “attenuated” from the original illegality.  We 
nonetheless confirm our prior conclusion that the evidence under scrutiny was 
properly admissible. 
Evidence need not be suppressed as “fruit of the poisonous tree,” though 
actually procured as the result of a Fourth Amendment violation against the 
defendant, if it inevitably would have been obtained by lawful means in any event.  
(Nix v. Williams (1984) 467 U.S. 431, 441-448 (Nix).)  Moreover, suppression is 
not necessarily required even if the evidence would not have come to light but for 
an infringement of the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights.  (Wong Sun v. 
United States (1963) 371 U.S. 471, 487-488 (Wong Sun).) 
Rejecting a strict “but for” test, the United States Supreme Court has 
admonished that in such cases, “the more apt question . . . is ‘whether, granting 
 
 44
establishment of the primary illegality, the evidence to which instant objection is 
made has been come at by exploitation of that illegality or instead by means 
sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint.’  [Citation.]”  (Wong 
Sun, supra, 371 U.S. 471, 488.)  “Under Wong Sun, evidence is not to be excluded 
merely because it would not have been obtained but for the illegal police activity.  
[Citation.]  The question is whether the evidence was obtained by the 
government’s exploitation of the illegality or whether the illegality has become 
attenuated so as to dissipate the taint.  [Citation.]”  (People v. Caratti (1980) 
103 Cal.App.3d 847, 851.) 
Relevant factors in this “attenuation” analysis include the temporal 
proximity of the Fourth Amendment violation to the procurement of the 
challenged evidence, the presence of intervening circumstances, and the flagrancy 
of the official misconduct.  (Brown v. Illinois (1975) 422 U.S. 590, 603-604 
(Brown).)  Where the testimony of live witnesses is at issue, the test focuses 
primarily on the effect of the illegality on the witness’s willingness to testify, and 
less on whether illegal conduct led to discovery of the witness’s identity.  (United 
States v. Ceccolini (1978) 435 U.S. 268, 276-277.) 
Granting, as we do, the prosecution’s burden of proof on issues of 
attenuation, including inevitable discovery (See, e.g., Nix, supra, 467 U.S. 431, 
447; Dunaway v. New York (1979) 442 U.S. 200, 204), we may nonetheless 
resolve such issues on appeal, even if not explicitly litigated below, if their factual 
bases are fully set forth in the record.  (E.g., People v. Robles (2000) 23 Cal.4th 
789, 801, fn. 7; People v. Clark (1993) 5 Cal.4th 950, 993, fn. 19 (Clark); Green v. 
Superior Court (1985) 40 Cal.3d 126, 137-138 (lead opn. of Kaus, J.).)  We 
conclude that such is the case here. 
Defendant first contends there is no proof the police, lacking hard evidence 
of defendant’s involvement in the Harbitz murders, would inevitably have sought 
 
 45
Cynthia Cornwell’s cooperation, including her consent to search the El Monte 
house.  For a contrary inference, defendant stresses Detective Lewis’s testimony 
that, on December 14, 1982, if defendant had not been home and if Cornwell had 
proven uncooperative, Lewis would simply have gone away. 
However, as we noted in Boyer I, “[l]acking a ready suspect for two brutal 
homicides, the police were pursuing a broad-based investigation of every person 
who might possibly be involved.”  (Boyer I, 48 Cal.3d 247, 278; see also People v. 
Carpenter (1999) 21 Cal.4th 1016, 1040 [noting “sheer size and scope of the 
investigation” as factor bearing on inevitability that evidence would be 
discovered].)  Information received from William Harbitz had focused particular 
suspicion on defendant.  The police evidenced this suspicion, and their intent to 
pursue it, in numerous ways.  Detectives learned where, and with whom, 
defendant lived.  They surrounded his El Monte home, detained him, and asked 
him to accompany them to the Fullerton police station for an interview.  When 
they departed with defendant, they left officers behind in El Monte, poised to 
commence a search of the house if the opportunity presented itself. 
Then, before defendant had said anything incriminating that might further 
isolate him as a suspect, the police asked for his consent to search the El Monte 
house.22  When defendant said it was up to Cornwell, they immediately pursued 
that avenue by dispatching the officers who were standing by in El Monte to 
request Cornwell’s permission.  Under these circumstances, the record sufficiently 
                                              
22  
Before being transported to the Fullerton station on the evening of 
December 14, 1982, and before hearing his Miranda rights, defendant mentioned 
that, earlier in the week, he had used a car belonging to the mother of his friend 
John Kennedy to visit his own parents in La Mirada.  (Boyer I, supra, 48 Cal.3d 
247, 277.)  While the La Mirada destination was relatively near the murder scene 
(ibid.), there is nothing to indicate that this remark, made at this stage of the 
investigation, further aroused police interest in defendant as a suspect in the 
Harbitz murders. 
 
 46
establishes that, aside from their illegal detention and interrogation of defendant, 
the police meant to search the house, and to do so with the permission of an 
authorized consenter if possible. 
Defendant next urges the evidence fails to show that, absent the illegal 
police conduct against defendant, Cornwell would inevitably have consented to 
the search.  We need not resolve this question directly because, even if Cornwell’s 
consent was not “inevitable”—i.e., even if, in the strictest sense, it might not have 
been obtained “but for” the illegal conduct—it was nonetheless sufficiently 
attenuated from the primary illegality to purge any taint.  (Wong Sun, supra, 
371 U.S. 471, 477-488.) 
When the accused claims a consent to search is tainted by a prior Fourth 
Amendment violation, mere voluntariness of the consent is not enough to dissipate 
the taint.  (E.g., United States v. Bautista (9th Cir. 2004) 362 F.3d 584, 592; 
People v. Richard (5th Cir. 1993) 994 F.2d 244, 252 (Richard).)  In such cases, we 
must additionally examine the “attenuation” factors set forth in Brown, supra, 
422 U.S. 590, to determine whether, on the particular facts, the twin purposes of 
the “poisonous fruit” rule—to deter the exploitation of official misconduct and to 
promote judicial integrity—are outweighed by the cost of excluding the 
challenged evidence. 
We first consider temporal proximity.  The request for Cornwell’s 
permission to search occurred several hours after defendant was taken to the 
Fullerton police station.  In the meantime, Cornwell was left alone.  The 
substantial lapse of time between the Fourth Amendment violation and the 
challenged consent weighs in favor of a finding that any taint had dissipated. 
Moreover, significant intervening events separated the Fourth Amendment 
violation against defendant from Cornwell’s later voluntary consent to search.  For 
one thing, discussions with Cornwell about obtaining her permission for the search 
 
 47
occurred at a location remote from where defendant was being detained illegally.  
(Compare, e.g., Richard, supra, 994 F.2d 244, 252 [finding, as a significant 
intervening circumstance, that consent provided, in noncoercive circumstances, by 
defendant’s girlfriend was remote in time and place from invalid consent given by 
defendant himself; taint deemed purged even though girlfriend was told that 
defendant had given consent].) 
Moreover, Cornwell was permitted to consult not only with defendant,23 
but with an attorney, before deciding whether to allow the search.  Cases have 
stressed that the opportunity for legal consultation is critically important in 
determining whether a consent to search was purged of the primary taint of a prior 
Fourth Amendment violation.  Closely on point in this regard is United States v. 
Wellins (9th Cir. 1981) 654 F.2d 550.  There, police illegally entered the 
defendant’s hotel suite, illegally conducted a “sweep search” of the premises, and 
illegally arrested him.  He then consented to a more complete search after he was 
allowed, in the officers’ presence, to speak with his attorney by telephone.  On 
appeal, the court deemed this factor “dispositive” in determining that the consent  
                                              
23  
It is true that Cornwell’s conversation with defendant occurred while he 
was still in police custody, and this may marginally weigh against a finding of 
attenuation.  Still, that fact seems to have had little bearing on the consent 
ultimately obtained from Cornwell.  In the conversation, defendant simply told her 
that it was her decision.  Cornwell never testified that defendant’s illegal custodial 
status had any bearing on her decision to consent.  On appeal, defendant 
speculates vaguely about the possibility of a police “conspiracy” to enlist his aid in 
obtaining Cornwell’s consent.  But he never raised any such theory below, and the 
record belies it by demonstrating that he provided no such aid—he simply 
professed neutrality. 
 
 48
was sufficiently attenuated by intervening events from the prior illegal conduct, 
and therefore valid.  (Id. at p. 555.)  Similar reasoning applies here.24 
Finally, the police erred seriously by subjecting defendant to an illegal 
custodial interrogation without a warrant or probable cause for his arrest.  As a 
consequence, all resulting statements obtained from defendant have been 
suppressed.  (Boyer I, supra, 48 Cal.3d 247, 275.)  Nonetheless, we do not deem 
the misconduct against defendant so “flagrant” as to require suppression of 
evidence obtained as a result of Cornwell’s later voluntary consent to search.  It 
does not appear the one had any strong bearing on the other.  Cornwell did not 
suggest her consent was influenced by the fact of defendant’s illegal arrest, and 
her consent was obtained by means essentially independent of the specific 
illegalities committed against defendant.  Accordingly, we conclude the consent 
was not “ ‘come at by exploitation of [the primary] illegality, [but] by means 
sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint.’ ”  (Wong Sun,  
                                              
24  
(See also, e.g., United States v. Washington (9th Cir. 2004) 387 F.3d 1060, 
1073-1074 [where defendant’s consent occurred shortly after police illegally 
arrested him and viewed interior of his hotel room, his signature on consent form 
advising of right to refuse consent did not substitute, as significant intervening 
event, for appearance before a magistrate or consultation with an attorney]; United 
States v. McCoy (D.Or. 1993) 839 F.Supp. 1442, 1447 [consent to search given by 
defendant’s handcuffed girlfriend, minutes after both were illegally called out of 
their home and arrested, was not purged of primary taint; brief opportunity to 
consult with family members was not akin to consultation with attorney that might 
constitute significant intervening circumstance]; also cf. United States v. Kelley 
(5th Cir. 1993) 981 F.2d 1464, 1471-1472 [even if “seat belt” detention and 
questioning of defendant driver was illegal, at-the-scene consent to search vehicle 
by its owner-passenger was purged of primary taint by police advice of her right to 
refuse consent].) 
 
 49
supra, 371 U.S. 471, 488.)  That being so, the cost of excluding the highly relevant 
evidence thereby obtained outweighs the deterrent value of suppressing it.25 
We remain persuaded, as in Boyer I, that once Cornwell did validly consent 
to the search of the El Monte house, the challenged testimony and physical 
evidence would inevitably have been procured.  When alerted that defendant had 
indicated where to find the Levi’s and knife, officers were already searching the 
bedroom in which these articles were located.  Because both items contained 
blood, no competent officer would have overlooked them in any event.  (Boyer I, 
supra, 48 Cal.3d 247, 277, fn. 18.)  The subsequent forensic analyses would have 
confirmed their evidentiary significance to the case. 
As defendant observes, he also told police he had worn the blue jacket on 
the night of the Harbitz murders, and this led the searching officers to ask 
Cornwell about it.  However, they inevitably would have come upon the jacket 
evidence anyway.  A thorough and competent search of the El Monte house could 
                                              
25  
Defendant claims the police misconduct here was more egregious than in 
People v. Superior Court (1969) 71 Cal.2d 265 (hereafter Shasta County), a case 
in which we found that a consent to search was not attenuated from a prior 
illegality.  There, during a traffic stop, a highway patrol officer illegally searched a 
passenger’s purse, finding a small quantity of marijuana.  He held the remaining 
occupants of the stopped car at the scene for 30 minutes, without explanation, 
while backup officers arrived.  Then he approached the vehicle and asked another 
passenger, the owner, for consent to search the car.  That search disclosed larger 
quantities of marijuana, leading to drug charges against the driver.  On those 
particular facts, we found a “straight” road from the first illegal search to the 
subsequent consent, declining to hold, under the circumstances, that the 30-minute 
hiatus between the two events was sufficient attenuation.  (Id. at p. 274.)  Here, by 
contrast, there is no evidence that the illegal police conduct toward defendant was 
the impetus for the decision to attempt to search the El Monte house.  The request 
for Cornwell’s consent came hours after defendant had been transported to the 
Fullerton station, and at a residential location remote from the detention; Cornwell 
was left free and unmolested in the meantime.  She was allowed to consult an 
attorney before deciding whether to consent.  Nothing in Shasta County precludes 
us from finding Cornwell’s consent valid. 
 
 50
hardly have missed the unusual spectacle, in plain view, of a hibachi containing 
scraps of recently burned clothing, sitting atop the kitchen stove.  Cornwell 
testified in the prior trial that “ ‘little pieces of [the] jacket’ ” were still “ ‘flying 
around’ ” “ ‘in the kitchen.’ ”  (Boyer I, supra, 48 Cal.3d 247, 278, fn. 20, italics 
omitted.) 
Furthermore, even without defendant’s confession or the details supplied by 
him, the police would have grasped the potential criminal significance of the 
obvious fact that Cornwell had burned this item.  Common sense did not readily 
disclose an innocent reason for doing so.  Accordingly, competent officers would 
have inquired, as they did.  Cornwell’s implausible explanation, that she burned 
the jacket, without informing defendant, because she intended to buy him a new 
one, would only have increased police suspicion. 
Moreover, officers already had, or shortly would have, found the bloody 
Levi’s and defendant’s knife containing traces of human blood.  These 
incriminating items tightened the evidentiary net around defendant and cast further 
doubt on the innocent nature of Cornwell’s action.  In addition, the police knew 
she had burned the jacket immediately after he was taken from the El Monte house  
 
 51
to the Fullerton police station.  The timing of her act enhanced the compelling 
inference that she was destroying evidence.26 
Under these circumstances, the police undoubtedly would have pressed the 
issue by explaining to Cornwell her vulnerability as an accessory.  Most likely 
they would have arrested her at that time, as they did.  But even if not, they 
certainly would have taken such action as soon as forensic analysis revealed that 
the Levi’s recovered from the El Monte house contained blood consistent with that 
of the murder victims.  Cornwell conceded that her arrest and the legitimate threat 
of prosecution as an accessory to murder were the prime factors leading to her 
cooperation and eventual testimony.27 
Finally, defendant insists there is no proof Kennedy would inevitably have 
been found, or his testimony procured.  However, it appears manifest that once 
Cornwell agreed to cooperate, police would inevitably have learned of Kennedy’s 
                                              
26  
The evidence does not indicate that if Cornwell meant to destroy evidence, 
she did so only because of the illegal police activities on the night of 
December 14, 1982.  Cornwell testified in the retrial itself that when defendant left 
the El Monte house with Kennedy on December 7, he was wearing the blue jacket.  
When the two men returned, Cornwell recounted, defendant’s Levi’s were 
bloodstained, and he had a wound in his knee, for which he gave a suspicious 
explanation.  Cornwell also indicated that earlier on December 14, defendant 
seemed upset after receiving a telephone call from his mother; when Cornwell 
asked what was wrong, defendant said “something about a murder” and told 
Cornwell “you are going to hate me.”  Shortly thereafter, the police arrived and 
departed with defendant, leaving nobody behind to secure the premises.  Thus, at 
most, they merely gave Cornwell the opportunity to get rid of an item she already 
had every reason to suspect was evidence in a murder case. 
27  
We need not give dispositive effect to Detective Lewis’s testimony that it 
would not have been appropriate to arrest anyone as an accessory for burning the 
jacket until after defendant confessed.  Lewis was suggesting, at most, that other 
evidence of defendant’s guilt would have been required.  Forensic analysis of the 
bloody Levi’s would inevitably have produced such evidence. 
 
 
 52
involvement and obtained his cooperation.  As she testified in both trials, Cornwell 
knew Kennedy had left and returned with defendant on the night of the murders.  
She undoubtedly would so have informed the police.  Kennedy’s telephone 
number was written down at the El Monte house.  His address was traced from the 
telephone number.  (Boyer I, supra, 48 Cal.3d 247, 277.) 
Defendant asserts that Kennedy’s cooperation cannot be deemed automatic, 
especially in light of the fact that he “lied” to the police when they first spoke with 
him.  But the record belies defendant’s argument in several respects.  At the prior 
trial, there was evidence that as soon as the police told Kennedy they suspected his 
involvement, he “ ‘became visibly shaken and stated that he didn’t want to go to 
jail on that type of thing.’ ”  (Boyer I, supra, 48 Cal.3d 247, 277.)  At the 1992 
retrial, Kennedy did testify that when detectives first contacted him, they simply 
told him defendant claimed to have borrowed a car belonging to Kennedy’s 
mother, and Kennedy did not contradict them.  However, Kennedy insisted, he 
later contacted the police on his own initiative and asked them to return for 
another interview, because he “wanted to tell them the truth.”  As a result of this 
second interview, in which Kennedy admitted he was with defendant on the night 
of the murders, Kennedy was arrested, and he gave the statements leading to his 
immunized testimony at trial. 
In sum, the record, as augmented by the retrial suppression hearing, 
demonstrates that the physical and testimonial evidence introduced against 
defendant was not the product of improper coercion, and would inevitably have 
been obtained, or was otherwise procured by means sufficiently attenuated from 
the Fourth Amendment violation committed against defendant.  Hence, we affirm 
our conclusion in Boyer I, supra, 48 Cal.3d 247, that this evidence was not 
suppressible. 
 
 53
B. Kennedy’s immunity agreement. 
John Kennedy testified for the prosecution pursuant to an immunity 
agreement.  Defendant claims the agreement was improperly coercive, in that it 
obliged Kennedy, as a condition of immunity, to testify in strict accordance with 
certain prior statements he gave the police.  Admission of this coerced testimony, 
defendant avers, violated his Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights to due 
process; his Sixth Amendment rights to a fair trial, fair cross-examination, and a 
jury trial; and his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights to reliability in the 
guilt and sentencing phases of a capital trial.  (See, e.g., People v. Riel (2000) 
22 Cal.4th 1153, 1179; Allen, supra, 42 Cal.3d 1222, 1251.) 
At the outset, defendant has forfeited the claim by failing to raise it below.  
In both trials, defendant urged that Kennedy’s testimony was the “tainted fruit” of 
illegal police conduct against defendant (see text discussion, ante), but defendant 
never asserted, until now, that the immunity agreement was coercive as to 
Kennedy for the reasons advanced in this appeal.  (People v. Kennedy (2005) 
36 Cal.4th 595, 612.)28 
                                              
28  
Defendant urges that, despite the lack of a specifically focused objection, 
the issue was before the court by virtue of defense counsel’s cross-examination of 
Kennedy concerning the terms of the grant of immunity.  (See text discussion, 
post.)  We disagree.  This examination, in the course of Kennedy’s trial testimony, 
was intended only to impeach Kennedy’s credibility before the jury.  The defense 
never asked the trial court to exclude or strike Kennedy’s testimony on grounds 
that his grant of immunity was improperly coercive. 
 
 54
Moreover, defendant’s argument on appeal is clearly meritless.  Defendant 
has materially mischaracterized the agreement at issue. 
The written immunity agreement, entered before the original trial, said 
Kennedy had been told that he would not be prosecuted for “any act or fact 
concerning which [he] was required to testify in this case,” but that “this immunity 
does not extend to any false testimony that may be given under oath by [him] in 
this case, which testimony would make [him] subject to prosecution for perjury.”  
Further, the agreement stated, “the witness has represented that [his] testimony . . . 
will be in substance as follows:  Consistent with the tape recorded statements 
given to Fullerton Police Department, Detective Lewis, on December 17, 1982, 
. . . and December 20, 1982, . . . [t]ranscriptions of which are attached hereto and 
incorporated by reference.”  At the preliminary hearing, the magistrate explained 
to Kennedy that, under the agreement, “the District Attorney can prosecute if they 
find that you have lied, prosecute you for perjury.” 
During cross-examination of Kennedy at the retrial, defense counsel asked 
Kennedy whether it was explained to him, in court proceedings concerning the 
immunity agreement, “that if your testimony was inconsistent with what you had 
been telling the District Attorney . . . that all bets were off and you could be 
prosecuted for this case again.”  Kennedy replied, “Yes.”  On redirect, however, 
the prosecutor asked Kennedy whether “you [were] ever told anything by a 
member of the District Attorney’s office other than to testify truthfully,” and 
whether “you [were] ever told what to testify to or how to testify.”  Kennedy 
answered both questions “[n]o.” 
A prosecutor may grant immunity from prosecution to a witness on 
condition that he or she testify truthfully to the facts involved.  (People v. Green 
(1951) 102 Cal.App.2d 831, 838-839.)  But if the immunity agreement places the 
witness under a strong compulsion to testify in a particular fashion, the testimony 
 
 55
is tainted by the witness’s self-interest, and thus inadmissible.  (People v. Medina 
(1974) 41 Cal.App.3d 438, 455.)  Such a “strong compulsion” may be created by a 
condition “ ‘that the witness not materially or substantially change her testimony 
from her tape-recorded statement already given to . . . law enforcement officers.’ ”  
(People v. Medina, supra, 41 Cal.App.3d at p. 450.) 
On the other hand, we have upheld the admission of testimony subject to 
grants of immunity which simply suggested the prosecution believed the prior 
statement to be the truth, and where the witness understood that his or her sole 
obligation was to testify fully and fairly.  Thus, in People v. Fields (1983) 
35 Cal.3d 329 (Fields), defense counsel elicited from a prosecution witness that 
her immunity was conditioned on testimony consistent with her prior statement.  
On redirect, however, the witness made clear that her prior statement was the 
truth, that the prosecutor had asked her to testify to the truth, and that she was 
never asked to testify to a certain story.  (Id. at pp. 359-360.)  As we explained, the 
record suggested, at most, that the witness understood she was obliged to recount 
her prior statement because it was the truth.  We found the evidence insufficient to 
conclude that the grant of immunity required the witness to testify in accord with a 
prior statement regardless of its truth.  (Id. at pp. 360-361.) 
Similarly, in People v. Garrison (1989) 47 Cal.3d 746 (Garrison), witness 
Roelle’s plea agreement, as disclosed at his preliminary hearing, provided that 
Roelle would testify truthfully at Garrison’s trial, and that “ ‘a further part of this 
. . . agreement is that. . . [Roelle] has already truthfully stated to the investigating 
detectives what happened in this case.’ ”  (Id. at p. 768, italics omitted.)  Roelle’s 
counsel advised the court that Roelle had passed a polygraph examination, and the 
prosecutor examined Roelle on voir dire to confirm the latter’s understanding that, 
as part of his bargain, “ ‘he [was] going to come in and tell the truth about what 
happened.’ ”  (Ibid.) 
 
 56
On this record, we declined to accept the premise that Roelle’s bargain was 
conditioned on the truthfulness of his prior statements.  Rather, we noted that as in 
Fields, “the record does not demonstrate either that the plea bargain required 
Roelle to testify in accord with his statement regardless of its truth, or that Roelle 
so understood the agreement.”  Instead, we observed, “the record reflects that the 
district attorney and Roelle’s counsel sought to ensure that the record reflected the 
factual basis for their belief that permitting Roelle to plead guilty to the lesser 
charges would be appropriate in light of their understanding of his actual 
involvement in the offenses.”  (Garrison, supra, 47 Cal.3d 746, 770.)  We held 
that “unless the bargain is expressly contingent on the witness sticking to a 
particular version, the principles of [People v.] Medina, supra, 41 Cal.[App.]3d 
438, and [People v.] Green, supra, 102 Cal.App.3d 831, are not violated.”  
(Garrison, supra, at p. 771, italics added.) 
That reasoning governs here.  The grant of immunity to Kennedy, by its 
terms, was based on his truthful testimony, which Kennedy himself “represented” 
would be in accordance with his prior statements.  Thus, the agreement simply 
reflected the parties’ mutual understanding that the prior statements were the truth, 
not that Kennedy must testify consistently with those statements regardless of their 
truth.  Kennedy so confirmed on the stand.29  Accordingly, Kennedy’s testimony 
was not rendered inadmissible by the terms of his grant of immunity. 
 
                                              
29  
Indeed, Kennedy’s trial testimony departed from the specified statements in 
at least one significant respect.  In his taped police interviews of December 17 and 
December 20, 1982, Kennedy consistently denied that he had consumed any drugs 
before he drove defendant to the Harbitzes’ residence on December 7, 1982, and 
he also stated he did not see defendant do so.  At the retrial, by contrast, he 
testified that he and defendant ingested cocaine together before proceeding to the 
victims’ residence.  (See text discussion, ante, p. 5.) 
 
 57
C. Cornwell’s immunity agreement. 
Defendant makes similar arguments concerning Cornwell’s grant of 
immunity, and we reach the same results.  As with Kennedy, the defense never 
objected below that Cornwell’s testimony should be excluded because her 
immunity agreement improperly forced her to testify to a certain version of events 
regardless of its truth.  Hence, the claim is forfeited. 
It is also meritless.  Cornwell’s grant of immunity, like Kennedy’s, 
specified that the immunity did not extend to false testimony, which could make 
the witness subject to prosecution for perjury.  The immunity agreement also 
stated that “the witness represented that the testimony of the witness will be 
truthful and in substance as follows:  consistent with the statements and 
information given to the Fullerton Police Department Investigation Officers in the 
attached reports. . . .”  (Italicized words added by handwritten interlineation.)  At 
the suppression hearing on retrial, Cornwell indicated she understood that if she 
testified falsely, she could be prosecuted for perjury, and she insisted that she had 
testified truthfully, pursuant to this agreement, at the prior trial. 
Thus, Cornwell’s grant of immunity, like Kennedy’s, simply reflected the 
parties’ mutual understanding that the information the witness had previously 
supplied to the police was truthful, not that the witness had to iterate her prior 
statements, regardless of their truth.  The witness confirmed her understanding 
that, to retain immunity, she must testify truthfully.  As discussed above, at the 
retrial suppression hearing, Cornwell implied that her testimony was obtained by 
improperly coercive police and prosecutorial tactics.  We have rejected that claim.  
(See text discussion, ante, pp. 38-39.)  Nothing in Cornwell’s assertions on this 
subject implies she was coerced to testify falsely, or to a particular version of 
 
 58
events, in return for immunity.  Cornwell’s testimony was not subject to exclusion 
on the ground now asserted.30 
IV. 
 
GUILT TRIAL ISSUES 
A. Defendant’s statements to defense mental health experts as “fruit of 
the poisonous tree.” 
Defendant urges the trial court wrongly allowed the prosecutor, at the 1992 
guilt trial, to cross-examine the defense mental health expert, Dr. Klatte, about 
damaging statements defendant made to other experts who were consulted by the 
defense prior to the original trial but after the erroneous denial of defendant’s 
motion to suppress his confession to the police.  Defendant insists that if the 
confession had been suppressed in advance of the original trial, as should have 
occurred (Boyer I, supra, 48 Cal.3d 247, 267-275), these experts would not have 
been consulted, and their reports or testimony containing defendant’s damaging 
statements would thus not have been available for use in cross-examining Dr. 
Klatte. 
Accordingly, defendant argues, this material was the “tainted fruit” of his 
confession obtained in violation of his rights under the Fourth Amendment and 
Miranda v. Arizona, supra, 384 U.S. 436.  As such, he insists, it could not be used 
to impeach a defense witness.  (Citing James v. Illinois (1990) 493 U.S. 307 
                                              
30  
Defendant posits that the presumed reliability of immunized testimony, and 
the ability of informed juries to assess such reliability, are “legal fictions.”  Hence, 
he argues, as to both Kennedy and Cornwell, that (1) their testimony should have 
been excluded because it was improperly obtained in return for promises of 
leniency, and (2) the Eighth Amendment’s concern for reliability in capital cases 
required the trial court, before admitting immunized testimony, to make special 
findings that it contained particularized guarantees of trustworthiness.  The 
contentions are forfeited because they were not raised in the trial court.  In any 
event, they lack support in the case law and run contrary to well-settled precedent 
that grants of immunity conditioned solely on truthful testimony are valid. 
 
 59
(James).)  Defendant asserts violations of his rights under the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, 
and Fourteenth Amendments.  We reject the contention. 
1. Factual and procedural background. 
The issue arises in the following factual context:  Dr. Klatte was called by 
the defense at the 1992 guilt trial to testify concerning defendant’s probable 
mental state during the attack on the Harbitzes.  As a basis for his expert opinion, 
Dr. Klatte testified at length about defendant’s descriptions of these events 
obtained in the course of their interviews. 
Just before Dr. Klatte took the stand, defendant’s counsel moved in limine 
to preclude cross-examination of the witness about defendant’s statements 
contained in reports and testimony of other experts consulted by the defense prior 
to the original trial.  Counsel represented as follows:  In advance of the first trial, 
after the motion to suppress defendant’s confession was erroneously denied, the 
defense “had to make some decisions.”  The defense consulted psychiatrists Dr. 
Loomis and Dr. Kaufman, who interviewed defendant, obtained information from 
him, and wrote reports.  Counsel supplied these reports to Dr. Klatte, “who was 
[also] involved in the case back then.”  If the motion to suppress had been granted, 
“defendant wouldn’t have gone to -- and talked to” Dr. Loomis and Dr. Kaufman, 
and counsel would not have furnished their reports to Dr. Klatte.  Moreover, the 
defense would not have put psychopharmacologist Dr. Siegal on the stand at the 
prior trial, thus making available, for use in cross-examining Dr. Klatte, Dr. 
Siegal’s report and testimony containing statements made to him by defendant. 
Counsel argued that because the reports and testimony of Dr. Loomis, Dr. 
Kaufman, and Dr. Siegal were thus “tainted fruit” of defendant’s invalid 
confession, their use to impeach Dr. Klatte would violate defendant’s Fourth and 
Fifth Amendment rights.  The trial court denied the motion to limit cross-
 
 60
examination, ruling that while the prosecution could not use defendant’s statement 
to the police to impeach a defense witness, statements voluntarily made by 
defendant to defense experts could be used to cross-examine Dr. Klatte as to the 
basis for his expert opinion.31 
On direct examination, Dr. Klatte testified, among other things, that in 
1990, appellant said he was “tripping” at the Harbitz residence, felt like he was in 
the movie Halloween II, and “actually hallucinated a man coming at him with a 
knife.”  However, Dr. Klatte related, in earlier interviews, in 1982 and 1983, 
defendant did not mention this hallucination.  Hence, Dr. Klatte stated, he did not 
use the “hallucination” statement to form any conclusions about defendant’s 
mental state at the time of the homicides, “because I felt if he hadn’t told me the 
first time, I wasn’t sure that it was true.” 
Dr. Klatte also recounted claims by defendant about his drug history and 
the drugs he consumed on December 7, 1982.  According to Dr. Klatte, defendant 
said that around the time of the murders, he had for some time been injecting 
cocaine almost daily, and was drinking considerably.  Defendant indicated that, on 
the day of the murders, he drank a fair amount of beer in the morning, ingested a 
half-pint of whiskey in the afternoon, and smoked a PCP cigarette.  He also 
confirmed sharing a quarter-gram of cocaine with Kennedy. 
Dr. Klatte noted that cocaine use can make people aggressive, impulsive, 
and manic, and that those who use cocaine over a long period can become 
psychotically paranoid and delusional.  He also explained that PCP ingestion is 
associated with distorted perception, hallucinations, and “very aggressive, 
                                              
31     The court also denied a defense objection, under Evidence Code section 352, 
that the challenged impeachment evidence was more prejudicial than probative, 
but did so without prejudice to renewal of the motion in the course of Dr. Klatte’s 
testimony.  The motion was not renewed, and defendant does not claim error on 
that basis. 
 
 61
explosive kinds of behavior.”  Dr. Klatte opined that if defendant told the truth 
about the drugs he ingested on December 7, 1982, he would be acting 
thoughtlessly and explosively and could misinterpret events around him.  
Moreover, Dr. Klatte indicated, defendant’s ingestion of PCP on the day of the 
murders “might” have caused him to hallucinate. 
On cross-examination by the prosecutor, Dr. Klatte admitted that defendant 
has an antisocial personality, and that one would “highly suspect” malingering by 
such a person seeking a diagnosis for use in a murder trial.  Dr. Klatte agreed that 
this suspicion would “go even stronger” upon hearing something different from 
defendant in 1990 (i.e., the hallucination claim) than “from his same mouth in ’82 
and ’83.”  Dr. Klatte also acknowledged that, despite defendant’s claims of drug-
induced hallucinations and memory loss, much of his activity on the night of the 
murders seemed directed toward obtaining money for drugs. 
The prosecutor examined Dr. Klatte at some length on the report and prior 
testimony of Dr. Siegal.  The thrust of this examination was that, in contrast to the 
relatively sketchy drug-use information defendant gave Dr. Klatte, defendant had 
provided Dr. Siegal a more detailed account indicating that, since adolescence, he 
had been a serious, chronic abuser of many illegal substances.  The prosecutor 
apparently sought to show that if defendant did not tell Dr. Klatte (or if Dr. Klatte 
did not learn) the whole truth about defendant’s drug history, Dr. Klatte’s final 
conclusions about the effect of drugs on defendant’s conduct might be similarly 
flawed.  More specifically, the prosecutor also sought to undermine Dr. Klatte’s 
basic opinion—that defendant may have killed the Harbitzes because he was under 
the influence of drugs—by suggesting grounds for an inference that defendant 
simply robbed and killed the Harbitzes to get money for his chronic drug habit. 
Dr. Klatte responded by noting that, while he did not recall everything in 
Dr. Siegal’s report and testimony, Dr. Siegal’s account was generally consistent 
 
 62
with Dr. Klatte’s own understanding of defendant’s drug background.  Dr. Klatte 
also iterated that defendant’s antisocial personality, and his consequent capacity 
for lying and malingering, had come through “loud and clear” in their face-to-face 
interviews. 
The prosecutor also asked whether Dr. Klatte recalled that when Dr. Siegal 
suggested to defendant he might have been playing the role of the character 
“Michael Myers” in Halloween II, defendant denied doing so.  Dr. Klatte said he 
did not recall that.  Finally, on recross-examination, the prosecutor queried 
whether Dr. Klatte agreed with Dr. Kaufman “that the hallucination and flashback 
is unlikely.”  In response, Dr. Klatte said he “wasn’t convinced that [defendant] 
actually hallucinated.” 
Citing the “poisonous tree” analysis of James, supra, 493 U.S. 307, the 
defense proposed an instruction that evidence elicited on cross-examination of Dr. 
Klatte about what defendant told Dr. Siegal and Dr. Kaufman should be 
disregarded.  The instruction was refused. 
In his argument to the jury, the prosecutor posed the rhetorical question 
why, if there was corroboration for what defendant told Dr. Klatte, the defense had 
not called the psychopharmacologist, Dr. Siegal.  Defendant objected that this was 
inappropriate comment on the defendant’s failure to call witnesses, and might also 
be “compound[ing]” what “is already error” under James.  The objection was 
overruled.  The prosecutor then remarked, “If the defendant had that much to say 
about pycho -- about the drugs and everything, the psychopharmacologist, we 
would have heard about it.” 
2. Discussion. 
As indicated above, defendant insists that the defense decisions to have Dr. 
Kaufman and Dr. Siegal interview defendant and prepare reports, to furnish Dr. 
 
 63
Kaufman’s report to Dr. Klatte, and to put Dr. Siegal on the stand in the prior trial 
were dictated by the erroneous denial, in the earlier proceedings, of his motion to 
suppress his illegally obtained confession.  Hence, defendant urges, those reports 
and testimony were “tainted fruit” of the illegal police conduct, and thus could not 
be used to impeach Dr. Klatte.  For multiple reasons, we disagree. 
In the first place, the factual premise upon which defendant relies is 
dubious.  Prior to the original trial, defendant’s motion to suppress was denied in 
its entirety.  This allowed not only defendant’s confession, but other strong 
evidence of his identity as the Harbitzes’ killer (including the testimony of 
Cornwell and Kennedy, and the incriminating physical evidence recovered from 
the El Monte house) to be introduced against him.  As we later concluded in 
Boyer I, supra, 48 Cal.3d 247, and in the instant appeal (see discussion, ante, p. 37 
et seq.), this other evidence was properly admitted.  We find it difficult to infer 
that the tactical decisions defendant identifies were made solely on the basis of the 
improperly admitted confession.32 
In any event, the trial court’s ruling was correct.  On direct examination, 
Dr. Klatte was allowed to describe statements made to him by defendant as 
matters considered by Dr. Klatte in forming his expert opinion of defendant’s 
mental state.  (Evid. Code, § 802; see People v. Montiel (1993) 5 Cal.4th 877, 918-
                                              
32  
Defendant’s factual claims are further undermined by his concession that 
Dr. Klatte was also involved in the case prior to the original trial.  Because Dr. 
Klatte appeared as a defense witness in the retrial, from which the illegal 
confession was excluded, there obviously is no claim that his involvement is only 
as a result of the erroneous earlier failure to suppress the confession.  On retrial, 
the defense also presented testimony by a psychopharmacologist, Dr. Plon.  Thus, 
the illegal confession aside, the defense has consistently perceived the need to 
explore, and ultimately to present, evidence that the killings were committed while 
defendant was in an altered mental state influenced by the ingestion of drugs.  In 
substance, defendant’s dilemma is simply that he prefers some of the expert 
opinions he obtained over others. 
 
 64
919 (Montiel).)  Accordingly, under general evidentiary principles, the prosecution 
could challenge the credibility of that opinion by confronting Dr. Klatte with 
defendant’s inconsistent statements to other defense experts, as included in 
testimony or reports to which Dr. Klatte had access in forming his own 
conclusions.  (See Evid. Code, § 771, subd. (b); Montiel, supra, at pp. 923-924.)  
Defendant concedes as much. 
However, defendant claims defendant’s statements to Dr. Kaufman and Dr. 
Siegal were nonetheless inadmissible to impeach Dr. Klatte because they were the 
“tainted fruit” of his illegal confession.  We disagree. 
Under certain circumstances, evidence obtained in violation of the 
defendant’s rights, though unavailable for use in the prosecution’s case-in-chief, 
can be used to impeach an accused who elects to testify in his or her own behalf.  
(See United States v. Havens (1980) 446 U.S. 620; Oregon v. Haas (1975) 420 
U.S. 714; Harris v. New York (1971) 401 U.S. 222; Walder v. United States (1954) 
347 U.S. 62.)  In such cases, the interest in deterring illegal police conduct is not 
sufficient to accord the defendant a license to commit perjury. 
However, in James, supra, 493 U.S. 307, the court held that the 
impeachment exception to the exclusionary rule does not apply to defense 
witnesses other than the defendant himself.  The court explained that the concern 
with perjury in such cases is insufficient to allow the state to “brandish” illegally 
obtained evidence as a sword to chill defendants “from presenting their best 
defense—and sometimes any defense at all—through the testimony of others.”  
(Id. at pp. 314-315.)  Moreover, the court indicated, extending the “impeachment” 
exception beyond the narrow confines of the accused’s own testimony to all 
defense witnesses would unduly encourage police misconduct by preserving a 
broad area in which the evidence could be used despite its illegal procurement.  
(Id. at pp. 317-319.) 
 
 65
Though defendant insists otherwise, that reasoning has no application here.  
Dr. Klatte was not cross-examined with evidence illegally obtained by the police.  
Defendant and his counsel created the basis for impeachment themselves by their 
voluntary decisions to consult Dr. Kaufman and Dr. Siegal, obtain reports from 
these experts, furnish the reports to another defense expert, Dr. Klatte, present Dr. 
Siegal’s testimony in the prior trial, and have Dr. Klatte himself testify in the 
retrial. 
Defendant urges that probative material is not free of taint in prosecution 
hands simply because it came into being as the result of tactical decisions by the 
defense, if the defense’s motivation was to counter the prosecution’s use of 
illegally obtained evidence.  Thus, defendant notes, an accused’s own testimony 
may be tainted by illegal police conduct if the reason he took the stand was to 
rebut his wrongfully obtained extrajudicial statements introduced against him by 
the prosecution.  (Harrison v. United States (1968) 392 U.S. 219; see Boyer I, 
supra, 48 Cal.3d 247, 280; People v. Spencer (1967) 66 Cal.2d 158, 164.)  In such 
a case, as Harrison explained, the testimony is itself “the fruit of the poisonous 
tree, to invoke a time-worn metaphor.”  (Harrison, supra, at p. 222.) 
The situation before us, however, is a far cry from the one presented in 
Harrison.  In a case like that, the prosecution seeks, in effect, to circumvent the 
invalidity of an illegal confession, and to obtain its full benefit, by arguing that the 
defendant provided similar information through live testimony he was forced to 
give because the confession was introduced against him. 
Here the prosecution did not seek to profit from defendant’s wrongly 
admitted confession by pointing to testimony, or other evidence, defendant himself 
felt forced to introduce in order to counter the confession’s effects.  Instead, the 
prosecutor cross-examined a defense expert—whose testimony was voluntarily 
proffered in a retrial from which defendant’s illegal confession had been 
 
 66
excluded—about the foundation for the expert’s opinion.  The basis for 
impeachment was not the confession, or any testimony defendant gave in direct 
consequence thereof, but otherwise pertinent and admissible evidence generated 
by the defense as part of its own preparation for the prior trial. 
It would stretch the “tainted fruit” doctrine beyond breaking to hold that 
this witness, presented by the defense in a trial free of the illegal confession, may 
escape impeachment with information voluntarily compiled by the defense itself, 
and may thus assume a misleading aura of credibility, simply because the defense 
obtained the self-damaging information out of concern that the prosecution would 
introduce the confession in an earlier trial.  In no meaningful sense did the 
prosecution “come at” the challenged impeachment evidence by “exploitation” of 
the “primary illegality” of defendant’s confession.  (Wong Sun, supra, 371 U.S. 
471, 488.)  Denying the prosecution the use of the impeachment evidence in this 
attenuated context33 would significantly undermine the truth-seeking process 
while having a negligible deterrent effect on police misconduct.  We decline to 
strike that balance.34 
                                              
33  
Defendant insists there is no “independent intervening act” sufficient to 
break the causal chain between the illegal confession and the prosecution’s use of 
the challenged impeachment evidence, and thus dissipate the taint.  (Citing 
People v. Sims (1993) 5 Cal.4th 405, 445.)  On the contrary, the defendant’s 
decision to present Dr. Klatte as an expert witness in a trial free of the illegal 
confession amply serves that purpose.  Under such circumstances, defendant 
simply cannot insulate this witness from damaging impeachment with information 
defendant himself voluntarily provided to other defense experts. 
34  
As the People point out, at least one decision has held that James, supra, 
493 U.S. 307, does not preclude the impeachment of a defense expert with 
defendant’s suppressed statement to the police.  (Wilkes v. United States (D.C. 
1993) 631 A.2d 880, 885-891.)  This case is several steps removed even from that 
scenario. 
 
 67
In a related aside, defendant suggests he was somehow denied his Sixth 
Amendment rights to present witnesses in his defense, and to the effective 
assistance of counsel, insofar as he was unable to call other experts, such as Dr. 
Siegal, for fear they would be impeached in violation of the James rule, as Dr. 
Klatte purportedly was.  Moreover, defendant complains, this disability was 
improperly exploited by the prosecutor in his remarks to the jury.  The argument is 
nonsense.35  That defendant may originally have consulted those experts in 
consequence of defendant’s illegal confession has no bearing on his ultimate 
decision whether to call them in a later trial from which the confession was 
excluded.  And defendant fails to explain how they could be “impeached” with 
their own “tainted” evidence.  We reject the claim. 
Finally, even if we found error, we would discern no prejudice under any 
applicable standard.  Dr. Klatte made clear that, independent of the reports and 
testimony of Dr. Kaufman and Dr. Siegal, he seriously questioned the veracity of 
defendant’s “hallucination” claim.  Moreover, he indicated that the drug history 
recounted by Dr. Siegal essentially conformed to his own understanding and did 
not alter his conclusions.  No basis for reversal of defendant’s convictions appears. 
B. Failure to give limiting instruction on proper use of defendant’s 
statements to defense experts. 
Defendant urges the trial court erred in failing to instruct the jury, such as 
by CALJIC No. 2.10,36 that his statements to the defense experts, as disclosed by 
                                              
35  
It is also disingenuous in the extreme.  Defendant cannot urge, on the one 
hand, that the reports and testimony of Dr. Siegal and Dr. Kaufman should have 
been excluded as damaging impeachment of Dr. Klatte’s testimony, because he 
would never have consulted those experts but for the prosecution’s anticipated use 
of his illegal confession, yet argue, on the other, that he was denied an opportunity 
he otherwise would have taken to call those witnesses directly. 
36  
CALJIC No. 2.10 provides:  “There has been admitted in evidence the 
testimony of a medical expert of statements made by the defendant in the course of 
 
 68
the testimony of Dr. Klatte, could not be considered for their truth, but only to 
evaluate the basis of Dr. Klatte’s expert opinion.  The error, he asserts, resulted in 
lowering the prosecution’s burden of proof in violation of the Fifth Amendment, 
denied him his Sixth Amendment rights to confront the nontestifying experts, and 
contravened the Eighth Amendment’s concern for heightened reliability in capital 
cases. 
No instructional error occurred under California law.  While the trial court 
should give such an instruction upon request (Evid. Code, § 355; People v. Dennis 
(1998) 17 Cal.4th 468, 532-534), it need not do so sua sponte.  (E.g., Montiel, 
supra, 5 Cal.4th 877, 918; People v. Cantrell (1973) 8 Cal.3d 672, 683.)  Hence, 
failure to request such an instruction in the trial court forfeits a direct appellate 
claim that it should have been given.  (Ibid.) 
Defendant concedes he did not request a limiting instruction as such, but he 
asserts that, for two reasons, he may nonetheless complain of the instructional 
omission.  First, he notes he did propose an instruction that evidence of the 
statements defendant made to Dr. Kaufman and Dr. Siegal should be entirely 
disregarded.  (See text discussion, ante, at p. 61.)  Even if this proposed 
instruction was too broad, he insists, it generated a duty in the trial court to fashion 
a correct, more limited substitute.  (Cf., e.g., People v. Fudge (1994) 7 Cal.4th 
1075, 1110; People v. Hall (1980) 28 Cal.3d 143, 159.) 
However, the instruction defendant requested was premised on the theory 
that his statements to particular experts, Dr. Kaufman and Dr. Siegal, were the 
“tainted fruit” of defendant’s illegal confession, and were thus inadmissible for 
                                                                                                                                      
 
an examination of the defendant which were made for the purpose of [diagnosis] 
[treatment].  These statements may be considered by you only for the limited 
purpose of showing the information upon which the medical expert based [his] 
[her] opinion.  This testimony is not to be considered by you as evidence of the 
truth of the facts disclosed by defendant’s statements.” 
 
 69
any purpose.  Neither defendant’s proposed instruction, nor his argument that it be 
given, offered any hint of the completely different premise that all his statements 
to experts, including Dr. Klatte, should be limited to their proper nonhearsay 
uses.37 
Defendant urges that such a request would have been futile, because the 
prosecutor, in opposing the proposed defense instruction, persuaded the trial court 
that defendant’s statements to defense experts were admissible for all purposes, 
including as substantive evidence of his mental state.  We disagree with 
defendant’s complaint.  While the prosecutor did make such an argument, and the 
trial court appeared at length to accept it, defendant was not prevented from 
contradicting the prosecutor’s view and proposing a more limited instruction.  He 
simply failed to do so. 
In any event, we discern no prejudice under any applicable standard.  
Defendant’s strategy, in essence, was to tell his story through his expert witness—
i.e., to persuade the jury he might have killed the Harbitzes while mentally 
impaired by drug ingestion, but to make that point without subjecting himself to 
cross-examination by taking the stand personally to describe his symptoms and 
reactions.  Hence, insofar as they supported his claim, defendant wanted the jury 
to believe his hearsay statements, at least those he made to Dr. Klatte. 
Had defendant testified, he presumably could have been impeached with 
inconsistent statements he gave to various doctors.  By the same token, even if 
defendant’s jury had been specifically instructed about the limited use it should 
make of defendant’s hearsay statements to experts, the jury would nonetheless 
                                              
37  
The proposed instruction provided:  “You must disregard for all purposes 
testimony elicited from Dr. Ernest Klatte regarding statements [defendant] made 
to Dr. Kaufman and Dr. Siegal regarding [defendant’s] history of drug abuse and 
any exhibit which reflects those statements.  This information should not have 
been admitted into evidence and is hereby stricken.”  (Italics added.) 
 
 70
understand that it must evaluate the credibility of those statements in order to 
determine whether the experts’ resulting opinions were soundly based. 
Under these circumstances, the line between use of defendant’s statements 
for their substantive “truth,” on the one hand, and simply as the basis for doctors’ 
diagnoses on the other, is subtle indeed.  There is no reasonable basis to conclude 
the jury’s guilt verdict would have been altered had the limiting instruction 
defendant now proposes been given.  No ground for reversal appears. 
C. Failure to instruct that Kennedy might be accomplice. 
Defendant urges that the court, sua sponte, should have instructed the jury 
to consider whether prosecution witness John Kennedy was an accomplice and, if 
so, that his testimony (1) should be viewed with distrust and (2) required 
corroboration by other evidence “tend[ing] to connect the defendant with the 
commission of the offense.”  (§ 1111; People v. Zapien (1993) 4 Cal.4th 929, 982 
(Zapien).)  Omission of such instructions, defendant insists, violated his Fifth and 
Sixth Amendment due process and fair trial rights, as well as his Eighth 
Amendment reliability interest in a capital trial. 
The court need give such instructions only where there is substantial 
evidence that the witness was an accomplice.  (E.g., People v. Lewis (2001) 
26 Cal.4th 334, 369 (Lewis); People v. Frye (1998) 18 Cal.4th 894, 965-966; 
People v. Gordon (1973) 10 Cal.3d 460, 469-470; People v. Blevins (1960) 
54 Cal.2d 71, 76.)  “An accomplice is . . . one who is liable to prosecution for the 
identical offense charged against the defendant” (§ 1111) and does not include an 
accessory (§§ 31, 32; People v. Tewksbury (1976) 15 Cal.3d 953, 960).  “An 
accomplice must have ‘ “guilty knowledge and intent with regard to the 
commission of the crime.” ’  [Citation.]”  (Lewis, supra, at p. 369.) 
 
 71
As indicated above, Kennedy testified he drove defendant to the Harbitzes’ 
residence because defendant said he wanted to ask them how to contact their son 
William.  Kennedy stated he parked the car at some distance from the Harbitz 
home, remained in the car while defendant went inside, never approached the 
house himself, waited until defendant returned, then drove away when directed by 
defendant to do so.  Kennedy insisted he had no prior inkling of defendant’s intent 
to kill and rob the Harbitzes, was not present at the murders, and did not 
participate in those crimes.  The record contains no contrary evidence. 
Defendant insists the jury could infer Kennedy’s accomplice status because 
Kennedy shared drugs with defendant on the night of the murders, and thus also 
presumably shared defendant’s need for drug money.  Moreover, defendant notes, 
by his own admission, Kennedy “was involved with [defendant] at every step of 
the process leading up to the homicides,” and the jury could infer he acted as a 
“lookout.”  Moreover, defendant points out that Kennedy helped him flee the 
crime scene, with apparent knowledge that he had engaged in criminal activity, 
and that Kennedy acknowledged he was initially arrested and charged with 
conspiracy, accessory to murder, and accomplice to murder. 
We need not decide whether accomplice instructions should have been 
given on the premise that the jury could infer Kennedy was an aider and abetter, 
and thus an accomplice, of crimes committed against the Harbitzes.  If error 
occurred, it was harmless by any applicable standard.  Even where accomplice 
instructions were required, we have found no prejudice where, in fact, the 
witness’s testimony was sufficiently corroborated.  (Zapien, supra, 4 Cal.4th 929, 
982.)  “ ‘Such [corroborative] evidence “may be slight and entitled to little 
consideration when standing alone.  [Citations.]” ’  (People v. Miranda (1987) 
44 Cal.3d 57, 100.)  ‘Corroborating evidence “must tend to implicate the 
defendant and therefore must relate to some act or fact which is an element of the 
 
 72
crime but it is not necessary that [such] evidence be sufficient in itself to establish 
every element of the offense charged.”  [Citation.]’  (People v. Sully (1991) 
53 Cal.3d 1195, 1228.)”  (Zapien, supra, at p. 982.) 
Here there was ample corroboration tending to connect defendant with the 
commission of the Harbitz murders.  Cynthia Cornwell testified that defendant left 
the El Monte house with Kennedy, then later returned with him, on the night of the 
murders.  Cornwell confirmed that defendant came home with a stab wound in his 
knee, then later hinted that he had been involved in a murder.  The bloody Levi’s 
recovered from defendant’s house contained stains that matched both of the 
victims’ blood.  Thus, any error in failing to instruct on Kennedy’s accomplice 
status was harmless.38 
D. Unconsciousness as complete defense. 
The jury received instructions, among others, on robbery, both the 
premeditated and felony-murder forms of first degree murder, express- and 
implied-malice second degree murder, and voluntary and involuntary 
manslaughter.  Defendant requested, and received, an instruction that if, while 
                                              
38  
Defendant insists Kennedy was the sole witness tending to negate the 
defense theory that defendant, while hallucinating under the influence of drugs, 
attacked the Harbitzes in an honest, if unreasonable, belief in the need for self-
defense and was thus guilty, at most, of voluntary manslaughter.  There was no 
corroboration, defendant asserts, of Kennedy’s testimony that defendant seemed 
sober, and acted rationally, both before he left the car to go into the Harbitz 
residence, and after he returned.  Even were we to accept the dubious proposition 
that corroboration on these specific matters was required (see text discussion, 
ante), we conclude it was amply provided by Cornwell.  She also testified that 
defendant seemed sober at all times she saw him on the evening of December 7, 
1982.  Moreover, the explanation he gave her for the wound in his knee (i.e., that 
he got into an argument with a loan shark) was inconsistent with his theory that he 
attacked the Harbitzes while in a delusional state.  Finally, we note the concession 
by Dr. Klatte that, according to defendant’s own statement, much of his activity on 
the night of the murders appeared goal-directed, i.e., to obtain money for drugs. 
 
 73
unconscious as the result of voluntary intoxication, he killed without malice or 
intent to kill, the crime was not murder, but involuntary manslaughter.  The jury 
was also instructed, as to crimes requiring specific intent, that it must consider the 
effect of defendant’s voluntary intoxication, if any, when determining whether he 
formed such intent.  Finally, the jury heard it could convict defendant of voluntary 
manslaughter if he killed in the honest, though unreasonable, belief in the need for 
self-defense.39 
Defendant now urges that the court erred by failing to instruct, sua sponte, 
on the complete defense of unconsciousness.  He asserts that the error violated his 
Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights to have the jury consider every material 
fact presented by the evidence. 
As the basis of his claim, defendant cites the California rule that, as a 
corollary of its duty to instruct on all principles closely and openly connected with 
the facts of the case, and which are necessary for the jury’s understanding of the 
case (People v. Flannel (1979) 25 Cal.3d 668, 681; People v. St. Martin (1970) 
1 Cal.3d 524, 531), the court must instruct on an affirmative defense, specifically 
including unconsciousness, even in the absence of a request, “if it appears the 
defendant is relying on such a defense, or if there is substantial evidence 
supportive of such a defense and the defense is not inconsistent with the 
defendant’s theory of the case.”  (People v. Sedeno (1974) 10 Cal.3d 703, 716.) 
One cannot be guilty of a crime if he or she “committed the act charged 
without being conscious thereof.”  (§ 26, par. Four.)  On the other hand, voluntary 
intoxication, even if it induced unconsciousness, is not a defense to crime as such, 
                                              
39  
The court refused an instruction, proffered by defendant, that made clear 
such an unreasonable belief could stem from defendant’s “mental illness, 
voluntary intoxication, or both.”  However, the instruction actually given did not 
preclude the jury from so concluding. 
 
 74
though it may be relevant to whether the defendant formed a specific intent 
necessary for its commission.  (§ 22; see, e.g., People v. Kelly (1973) 10 Cal.3d 
565, 572-573 (Kelly); People v. Conley (1966) 64 Cal.2d 310, 323.)  Voluntary 
intoxication can prevent formation of any specific intent requisite to the offense at 
issue, but it can never excuse homicide.  Hence, at the time defendant committed 
his crimes, where voluntary intoxication rendered the defendant unconscious,  
“ ‘criminal negligence [was] deemed to exist irrespective of unconsciousness,’ ” 
and the offense was involuntary manslaughter.  (People v. Tidwell (1970) 3 Cal.3d 
82, 86.)40  As noted above, the trial court instructed in accordance with these 
principles. 
However, defendant urges there was substantial evidence, i.e., evidence 
from which a rational jury could conclude, that he killed the Harbitzes while 
hallucinating, and thus unconscious, for reasons not related to the immediate 
effects of voluntary intoxication—including the lingering effects of chronic drug 
abuse41 and past head injuries.  He points to expert testimony that he was a 
                                              
40  
In 1995, section 22 was amended to provide prospectively that when the 
charge is murder, “voluntary intoxication is admissible solely on the issue  
. . .whether the defendant premeditated, deliberated, or harbored express malice 
aforethought.”  (Stats. 1995, ch. 793, § 1, p. 6149.)  Hence, depending on the facts, 
it now appears that defendant’s voluntary intoxication, even to the point of actual 
unconsciousness, would not prevent his conviction of second degree murder on an 
implied malice theory, or of voluntary manslaughter based on his or her 
potentially lethal act, committed with “conscious disregard” for life, in response to 
provocation or as the result of an honest, though unreasonable, belief in the need 
for self-defense.  (See People v. Lasko (2000) 23 Cal.4th 101, 107-113; People v. 
Blakely (2000) 23 Cal.4th 82, 87-91; but cf. People v. Wright (2004) 35 Cal.4th 
964.) 
41  
Defendant cites no California cases, and we have found none, that directly 
decide whether unconsciousness based on the lingering effects of chronic drug 
ingestion can be a complete defense to homicide, or any crime.  In Kelly, supra, 
10 Cal.3d 565, we concluded that an insanity defense could be based on such a 
theory, but we appeared to distinguish the defense of unconsciousness.  (Id. at 
 
 75
chronic drug abuser, that the substances he habitually ingested could produce 
long-term mental effects, including delusions and hallucinations, and that he had 
hallucinated on a previous occasion after suffering a motorcycle accident in which 
he hit his head.  Defendant also notes John Kennedy’s testimony that defendant 
seemed sober both immediately before and immediately after the Harbitz 
killings—thus suggesting, in defendant’s view, that, while he was in the Harbitz 
home, he had a momentary “flashback” not related to the immediate intoxicating 
effects of recently ingested drugs. 
We need not address whether the trial court erred by failing, sua sponte, to 
instruct on the complete defense of unconsciousness.  We find that if error 
occurred, it was harmless by any applicable standard. 
In the first place, very strong evidence suggested that defendant killed the 
Harbitzes, while conscious, in the course of a robbery.  As Kennedy noted, 
defendant seemed mentally normal at all times during the evening of December 7, 
1982.  In particular, his activity following the homicides appeared entirely rational 
and goal-directed.  When he saw a patrol car, he tried to deflect suspicion by 
pretending to wipe the rear window of Kennedy’s vehicle.  Defendant told 
Kennedy to drive away without attracting attention, directed Kennedy, who was in 
unfamiliar territory, back to the freeway, and began going through wallets he had 
retrieved from the Harbitz residence. 
There is no evidence defendant told either Kennedy or Cynthia Cornwell, 
while the experience was still fresh, that he suffered hallucinations, delusions, or a 
temporary blackout while inside the house.  Instead, to explain his knee wound, 
                                                                                                                                      
 
pp. 574-576.)  Subsequently, the Legislature made clear, for purposes of crimes 
thereafter committed, that the insanity defense may not be based upon “an 
addiction to, or abuse of, intoxicating substances.”  (§ 25.5, added by Stats. 1994, 
1st Ext. Sess. 1993-1994, ch. 10, p. 8562.) 
 
 76
defendant lied to Kennedy that he had encountered “dope dealers that don’t have 
no dope” and had to “hurt ‘em.”  Defendant similarly lied to Cornwell that he had 
gotten into a fight with a loan shark. 
Defendant’s own experts were hardly enthusiastic in their support for his 
“hallucination” theory.  Indeed, they carefully refrained from expressing any 
opinions that defendant actually hallucinated at the Harbitz residence.  Dr. Klatte, 
the principal defense expert, indicated considerable skepticism on the issue, for 
multiple reasons.  He acknowledged that defendant, who exhibited an antisocial 
personality, had a “loud and clear” capacity for malingering when it suited his 
purposes.  Dr. Klatte’s suspicions were further aroused by defendant’s failure to 
mention hallucinations to him until many years after their initial interviews.  
Finally, Dr. Klatte conceded that much of defendant’s activity on the night of the 
murders appeared goal-directed, i.e., to obtain money for drugs. 
The premise that hallucinations may have stemmed from a prior head injury 
was particularly flimsy.  Dr. Klatte testified that, while defendant had hallucinated 
shortly after his motorcycle accident, it was not known whether the hallucinations 
were the result of the accident or of drug ingestion. 
Finally, as noted above, the jury was instructed that “voluntary” 
intoxication warranted a verdict of involuntary manslaughter, rather than murder.  
While the instructions did not specify what the jury should do if it found he was 
unconscious for reasons beyond his control, such as brain damage, it is 
inconceivable the jury would believe that, in such a circumstance, it should (1) 
convict him of murder, a crime greater than manslaughter, then (2) find true 
special circumstances rendering him death-eligible, then (3) sentence him to death.  
(See People v. Turner (1990) 50 Cal.3d 668, 692-693.)  The only logical inference 
is that the jury rejected defendant’s claim of unconsciousness entirely.  Hence, an 
 
 77
instructional failure to explain the jury’s duty in the event it found involuntary 
unconsciousness can have caused no prejudice.42 
E. Failure to define unconsciousness. 
Defendant contends that, when instructing on unconsciousness by voluntary 
intoxication (CALJIC No. 8.47), the court erred by failing, sua sponte, also to 
instruct on the legal definition of unconsciousness.43  Thus, defendant urges, the 
jury was deprived of learning that, for legal purposes, unconsciousness extends to 
those “who are not conscious of acting but who perform acts while asleep or while 
suffering from a delirium of fever,” and (of particular importance, in defendant’s 
view) “does not require that a person be incapable of movement.”  (CALJIC No. 
4.30, italics added; see People v. Saille (1991) 54 Cal.3d 1103, 1121.)44 
                                              
42  
In light of the verdicts actually rendered by this jury, we are not persuaded 
to a contrary conclusion by our awareness that, in the first of the two guilt trials 
leading to the original death judgment, the jury (1) was instructed it could acquit 
defendant if he was unconscious for various involuntary reasons, including 
“[involuntary] drug-related flashback,” (2) repeatedly asked if a “flashback” could 
be “involuntary” if the original drug ingestion was voluntary, (3) was advised, in 
essence, that a “flashback” caused by voluntary drug ingestion was itself 
voluntary, and (4) two days later, after complaining through the foreperson of one 
juror who “refuses to listen or discuss this case,” announced it could not reach a 
verdict, thereby requiring a mistrial.  Defendant’s insinuation that the “flashback” 
issue must have caused the deadlock is pure speculation. 
43  
The People urge the claim was forfeited by failure to request a clarifying 
instruction in the trial court.  But this contention overlooks the exact nature of 
defendant’s argument on appeal, which is that the court was required on its own 
motion to define a term with “ ‘ “a technical [meaning] peculiar to the law.” ’ ”  
(People v. Estrada (1995) 11 Cal.4th 568, 574.) 
44  
CALJIC No. 4.30, which applies to the complete defense of 
unconsciousness not induced by voluntary intoxication, provides in pertinent part:  
“A person who while unconscious commits what would otherwise be a criminal 
act, is not guilty of a crime.  [¶]  This rule of law applies to persons who are not 
conscious of acting but who perform acts while asleep or while suffering from a 
delirium of fever, or because of an attack of [psychomotor] epilepsy, a blow on the 
head, the involuntary taking of drugs or the involuntary consumption of 
 
 78
We are not persuaded.  Even “[a]ssuming . . . that ‘unconscious’ has a 
sufficiently legal, technical meaning to require a sua sponte instruction [citation],” 
the instructions as given adequately conveyed the concepts defendant here 
stresses.  (Clark, supra, 5 Cal.4th 950, 1020.)  Thus, CALJIC No. 8.47 itself 
advised that one who, “while unconscious as a result of voluntary intoxication, 
killed another human being without an intent to kill and without malice 
aforethought” is guilty of involuntary manslaughter, and that one who becomes 
voluntarily intoxicated “to the point of unconsciousness . . . assumes the risk that 
while unconscious [he] [she] will commit acts dangerous to human life or safety.”  
(Italics added.)  No reasonable juror could fail to understand from this instruction 
that one can perform acts while unconscious.  (Clark, supra, at p. 1020; see also 
People v. Hughes (2002) 27 Cal.4th 287, 343-344 (Hughes).)45 
Nor, in the context of this case, was it necessary to advise the jury specially 
that one could be unconscious while acting in a “delirium.”  That defendant killed 
while hallucinating he was in the movie Halloween II was the essence of his 
defense.  Under these circumstances, jurors receiving an instruction on 
unconsciousness would necessarily understand that it related to defendant’s 
hallucination claim.  No rational jury, having heard the trial evidence and an 
instruction permitting it to find that defendant killed while unconscious, would 
                                                                                                                                      
 
intoxicating liquor, or any similar cause.  [¶]  Unconsciousness does not require 
that a person be incapable of movement.” 
45  
Defendant stresses that in Clark, where we reached a similar conclusion, 
the jury received both CALJIC No. 8.47 and CALJIC No. 4.31, the “presumption 
of unconsciousness” instruction, which advises that a reasonable doubt the 
defendant was conscious requires a finding of unconsciousness even if the 
defendant “acted as if he were conscious.”  As defendant notes, the instant jury did 
not receive CALJIC No. 4.31 or an equivalent instruction.  But as we made clear 
in Clark, “[b]oth of these instructions unmistakably convey to a reasonable juror 
the information that defendant claims was missing from the instructions.”  (Clark, 
supra, 5 Cal.4th 950, 1020, italics added.) 
 
 79
require further instructions to realize that it could accept defendant’s hallucination 
claim as one of unconsciousness.  No instructional error occurred.46 
F. Instruction on involuntary manslaughter as general intent crime. 
As noted above, the jury received a version of CALJIC No. 8.47, advising 
that if defendant, while unconscious as the result of voluntary intoxication, killed 
without intent to kill and malice, the crime is involuntary manslaughter, in that, 
when one voluntarily becomes intoxicated to the point of unconsciousness, he 
assumes the risk he will commit acts inherently dangerous to human life or safety, 
and the law thus implies criminal negligence.  The jury was further instructed, 
under CALJIC No. 8.45, on a “misdemeanor manslaughter” theory of involuntary 
manslaughter, with three possible underlying misdemeanors—assault, assault with 
a deadly weapon or by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury, and 
battery with serious bodily injury. 
Finally, upon prompting by the prosecutor, and without objection by the 
defense, the jury was instructed, under CALJIC No. 3.30, that involuntary 
manslaughter requires a union or joint operation of act or conduct and “general 
criminal intent,” such that “[w]hen a person intentionally does that which the law 
declares to be a crime, he is acting with general criminal intent, even though he 
                                              
46  
Defendant urges the prosecutor exploited the instructional “omission” in his 
remarks to the jury by saying, “I can just see an unconscious man opening up his 
sheath, pulling out a knife, opening up the knife and stabbing.  I can just see an 
unconscious man doing that, especially with the facts we have here.”  (Italics 
added.)  In his responsive argument, defense counsel urged that opening and 
closing a knife is not a complex act, and that even sleepwalkers can perform 
motions.  The prosecutor did not claim the law precluded a finding of 
unconsciousness.  His fleeting suggestion, rebutted by defense counsel, that 
defendant’s claim of unconsciousness was not convincing does not undermine the 
conclusion that the jury was not misled about what evidence permitted it to find 
unconsciousness. 
 
 80
may not know that his act or conduct is unlawful.”  (Italics added.)47  In an oral 
extrapolation, the court explained that involuntary manslaughter “is no specific 
intent or mental state.  In other words, . . . analogous to drunk driving[,] [if] you 
do the act, it’s presumed that the particular general intent is there when you do the 
particular crime.”  (Italics added.) 
Defendant now urges the trial court erred, and thereby violated his rights to 
due process and a fair trial under the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments, by 
instructing on involuntary manslaughter as a general intent crime where the theory 
of involuntary manslaughter was unconsciousness by voluntary intoxication.  On 
the instant facts, he insists, this improper combination of instructions may have 
misled the jurors to conclude they could not convict him of involuntary 
manslaughter even if they believed he killed while unconscious due to voluntary 
intoxication.  Thus, he claims, they were left with an unwarranted all-or-nothing 
choice between a murder conviction and complete acquittal. 
In this regard, defendant reasons as follows:  Involuntary manslaughter 
while voluntarily unconscious is necessarily based on the assumption that the 
defendant killed without any awareness of his or her lethal act, and thus without 
intent to commit it.  In such cases, the mental element is criminal negligence, not 
“intentionality.”  However, the instruction that involuntary manslaughter requires 
general criminal intent contradicted this premise by indicating that one cannot be 
guilty of involuntary manslaughter unless he or she did intend the act which 
produced the victims’ death.  Taken literally, the general intent instruction advised 
that if defendant killed the Harbitzes, but could not intend the lethal acts because 
                                              
47  
The clerk’s transcript indicates that the defense joined in requesting the 
instruction.  The record does not make clear whether this decision was a 
“conscious and deliberate” tactical choice, thus forfeiting, under the doctrine of 
“invited error,” an appellate claim that the instruction was erroneous or 
misleading.  (See, e.g., Weaver, supra, 26 Cal.4th 876, 970.) 
 
 81
he was unconscious due to voluntary intoxication, he was not guilty of involuntary 
manslaughter.  This left jurors only a choice between convicting him of murder or 
acquitting him. 
We are not persuaded.  At the outset, we find no reasonable likelihood the 
instructions, fairly read, confused or misled the jury about the connection between 
unconsciousness due to voluntary intoxication and the appropriate homicide 
verdict.  (See, e.g., People v. Ochoa (1998) 19 Cal.4th 353, 421 (Ochoa); 
People v. Clair (1992) 2 Cal.4th 629, 663 (Clair); cf. Estelle v. McGuire (1991) 
502 U.S. 62, 72.)  After all, the jurors had before them an instruction expressly 
stating that if one kills unintentionally while unconscious as a result of voluntary 
intoxication, “the crime is involuntary manslaughter.”  They had also been 
instructed on the distinct theory of misdemeanor manslaughter, which was not 
dependent on unconsciousness.  Under these circumstances, there seems little 
chance the jury would conclude that the instruction defining involuntary 
manslaughter as a general intent crime negated the instruction defining an 
unintentional homicide while unconscious from voluntary intoxication as 
involuntary manslaughter, and thus precluded such a conviction based on 
voluntarily induced unconsciousness. 
Any such risk was further diminished by the trial court’s oral modification 
of the instruction defining involuntary manslaughter as a general intent crime.  
Though the court gave the settled explanation of general intent as involving an 
intent to do the act made criminal, the court further indicated that such intent was 
presumed insofar as the defendant simply did the criminal act.  As pertinent here, 
this amplification reconciled the “unconsciousness” and “general intent” 
instructions, making clear that one who was unconscious due to voluntary 
intoxication satisfied any general intent element of involuntary manslaughter by 
simply engaging in the conduct, while in that state, that caused the victims’ deaths. 
 
 82
Even if error occurred, we find no prejudice by any applicable standard.  
The jury was provided with multiple opportunities to absolve defendant of crimes 
involving specific intent, such as robbery, and of murder in favor of lesser 
homicide offenses, on the basis of his impaired mental state produced by voluntary 
intoxication, or for other reasons.  The jury rejected all such available lesser 
homicide verdicts, including both involuntary and voluntary manslaughter, found 
defendant guilty of robbery, and convicted him of two counts of first degree 
murder. 
Moreover, as we have already observed, it is illogical to assume a jury, 
instructed that one who kills while “voluntarily” intoxicated is guilty only of 
involuntary manslaughter, would find such intoxication, and yet convict the 
defendant of the greater crime of murder, add special circumstances, and sentence 
him to death.  The only rational inference is that the jury simply discredited 
defendant’s claim he was unconscious when he killed the Harbitzes. 
Under these circumstances, we are persuaded that no prejudice arose from 
the general intent instruction defendant challenges.  No basis for reversal appears. 
G. Cumulative guilt phase error. 
As noted, we have identified no clear errors affecting the guilt trial.  
Moreover, we have concluded that if any such errors did occur, they were 
undoubtedly harmless.  We therefore reject defendant’s claims of cumulative 
error. 
V. PENALTY ISSUES 
A.  Evidence of Compton murder. 
As aggravating evidence, at the penalty phase, of other violent criminal 
activity by the defendant (§ 190.3, factor (b)), the prosecution introduced evidence 
that 75-year-old Houston Compton was brutally stabbed to death in Fullerton on 
 
 83
the evening of August 22, 1980.  Compton’s body, which had sustained numerous 
knife wounds, was found on the Fullerton College campus.  His abandoned 
vehicle, containing substantial blood residue, was later located in Santa Monica. 
To demonstrate that defendant was Compton’s killer, the prosecution 
presented testimony of William Harbitz that on an August evening in 1980, he saw 
defendant wearing a bloody T-shirt; defendant, who had been drinking, said he 
had been in a knife fight.  The prosecution also presented the testimony of Linda 
Weissinger, who, then 16 years old, had worked in August 1980 at a McDonald’s 
restaurant on Leffingwell Road in Whittier.  Weissinger indicated that, in a photo 
lineup conducted in May 1983, she positively identified defendant as the man 
wearing a bloodstained T-shirt who came to the drive-through window of the 
Whittier McDonald’s around 10:15 p.m. on August 22, 1980, driving an old white 
car, and bought two hamburgers.  The prosecution showed that a receipt recovered 
from Compton’s abandoned vehicle (a white Ford Fairlane from the early 1960’s) 
was for two hamburgers purchased at the same Whittier McDonald’s at 10:12 p.m. 
on August 22, 1980. 
Defendant makes several related contentions concerning the admissibility, 
and sufficiency, of the Compton murder evidence.  We find no basis to disturb the 
penalty judgment. 
Defendant first urges at considerable length that the trial court wrongly 
denied him a so-called Phillips hearing (see People v. Phillips (1985) 41 Cal.3d 29 
(Phillips)), with presentation of live testimony by the parties, to determine, in 
advance of the penalty trial, whether evidence he committed the Compton murder 
was legally sufficient to present to the penalty jury.48  In particular, defendant 
                                              
48  
In Phillips, we admonished that “in many cases it may be advisable for the 
trial court to conduct a preliminary inquiry before the penalty phase to determine 
whether there is substantial evidence to prove each element” of other violent 
 
 84
asserts, the court should have determined whether, because of improper pretrial 
lineup procedures, his due process rights would be violated by admission of 
Weissinger’s crucial eyewitness identification. 
Defendant further contends that Weissinger’s testimony was 
constitutionally tainted by the pretrial lineup procedures, and should have been 
excluded from evidence.  Moreover, he insists that, with or without her 
identification, the evidence he murdered Compton was legally insufficient. 
Once before the beginning of jury selection, and again prior to the penalty 
phase, the trial court entertained in limine defense motions to withhold all 
evidence of the Compton murder from the penalty jury.  Each time, the defense 
sought an evidentiary hearing as to whether Weissinger’s anticipated identification 
testimony was tainted by improper pretrial lineup procedures, and whether the 
prosecution’s proof that defendant committed this crime was sufficient to go to the 
jury.49  On both occasions, the court received the prosecution’s offers of proof and 
heard extensive argument.  Without taking live evidence, it then ruled that the 
                                                                                                                                      
 
crimes the prosecution intends to introduce in aggravation under section 190.3, 
factor (b).  (Phillips, supra, 41 Cal.3d 29, 72, fn. 25.) 
49  
Both motions were made in writing and included points and authorities.  
The second motion, filed between the guilt and penalty trials, incorporated factual 
assertions made in the first, and urged that admission of the Compton murder 
evidence would violate Evidence Code section 352, as well as defendant’s rights 
to due process, and a fair and reliable trial, under both the state and federal 
Constitutions.  In his argument on the motion, counsel urged that upon a defense 
objection to the “relevance” of the Compton murder evidence (i.e., that there was 
insufficient competent evidence of defendant’s involvement), the prosecution was 
obliged, under Evidence Code section 403, to prove, in an evidentiary hearing out 
of the jury’s presence, the “preliminary fact” of the relevance of this evidence.  
(See also Evid. Code, § 402.) 
 
 85
Compton murder evidence, including the testimony of Weissinger, could be 
admitted.50 
As noted, defendant insists these procedures were inadequate to resolve his 
objections to the Compton murder evidence.  However, we need not determine 
whether the trial court should have given greater attention, in limine, to the issues 
raised by defendant,51 including whether Weissinger’s identification was tainted 
by improper pretrial lineup procedures (see, e.g., People v. Citrino (1970) 
11 Cal.App.3d 778, 783 [where defendant objects to in-court identification, court 
must determine, as “preliminary fact,” whether prosecution has carried burden of 
showing pretrial identification procedures were not unduly suggestive]).  That is 
because we independently conclude in any event that (1) Weissinger’s 
identification testimony at trial was not excludable as the tainted product of flawed 
lineups, and (2) the evidence that defendant murdered Compton was legally 
sufficient for consideration by the penalty jury.  We address those issues in turn. 
1. Pretrial lineups. 
Given the August 22, 1980, receipt linking Compton’s murderer to the 
McDonald’s restaurant on Leffingwell Road in Whittier, there is little doubt that 
Weissinger, who was working at the McDonald’s that night, observed the killer.  
                                              
50  
When it denied the second motion, just prior to the penalty phase, the court 
did indicate that after the Compton murder evidence was presented to the jury, the 
court would entertain, if presented, a motion under section 1118 for relief akin to 
acquittal.  No such motion was made. 
51  
We note, of course, that Phillips, supra, 41 Cal.3d 29, did not require trial 
courts to conduct the hearings described in our opinion.  (E.g., Clair, supra, 
2 Cal.4th 629, 677-678.)  Nor did we suggest that such hearings, if conducted, 
must include live testimony.  Moreover, a trial court’s decision to admit “other 
crimes” evidence at the penalty phase is reviewed for abuse of discretion, and no 
abuse of discretion will be found where, in fact, the evidence in question was 
legally sufficient.  (See id. at pp. 676-677.) 
 
 86
The only issues concern Weissinger’s identification of defendant as the man she 
saw. 
As recounted above, Weissinger picked other men from live lineups, 
conducted in November 1980 and July 1981,52 before she picked defendant from a 
photo lineup in May 1983.  Subsequently, in October 1983, Weissinger tentatively 
identified defendant in a live lineup.  The parties agree that the October 1983 
lineup was conducted in the unwaived absence of defendant’s counsel, and the 
penalty jury heard no reference to it.  On two later occasions, in 1985 and 1991, 
Weissinger was shown the same photo array from which she had identified 
defendant in May 1983. 
At trial, Weissinger testified that, although she took her time to decide, she 
ultimately was certain, when she picked a photo from the May 1983 array, that the 
picture she selected showed the man she saw at the McDonald’s restaurant on the 
night of August 22, 1980.  Weissinger confirmed that she so advised Detective 
Lewis, who was supervising the May 1983 photo lineup.  The defense stipulated 
that the photo in question was defendant’s.  Neither the prosecutor nor defense 
counsel inquired specifically about any identification Weissinger made after May 
1983.  Neither counsel sought to confirm whether, at the time of the 1992 trial, 
Weissinger was still sure she had picked the right man in May 1983.  Moreover, 
Weissinger was not asked to identify defendant in person as he sat before her in 
the courtroom, and she did not do so.53 
                                              
52  
Apparently these lineups did not include defendant. 
53  
With respect to the May 1983 photo lineup, the following exchange 
occurred on direct examination:  “Q    Showing you what I’ve marked [exhibit] 65, 
were you shown this lineup?  [¶]  A    Yes, I was.  [¶]  Q    Did you pick out a – 
when were you shown this lineup, approximately?  [¶]  A    I believe it was in 
1983 or early ’84 when I was working in Arcadia.  [¶]  Q    Was that Detective 
Lewis?  [¶]  A    Yes, it was.  [¶]  Q    Did you pick somebody out of this lineup?  
[¶]  A    Yes, I did.  [¶]  Q    Were you sure --  [¶]  A    The man who drove the car 
 
 87
Defendant urges that Weissinger’s courtroom identification testimony was 
“tainted” by flaws in the lineup procedures.  These defects, defendant insists, 
include the illegal live lineup of October 1983, from which defendant’s counsel 
was absent (see United States v. Wade (1967) 388 U.S. 218 (Wade)), and the 
unnecessary, unduly suggestive reshowing of the May 1983 photo array on two 
later occasions, in 1985 and 1991 (see Manson v. Brathwaite (1977) 432 U.S. 98; 
Neil v. Biggers (1972) 409 U.S. 188; People v. Gordon (1990) 50 Cal.3d 1223, 
1242).  Defendant argues that due process thus required exclusion of Weissinger’s 
testimony because, under the multipronged “totality of circumstances” test 
established by the United States Supreme Court, the testimony did not possess 
sufficient indicia of reliability to overcome the corrupting effect of the improper 
lineups.  (Manson v. Brathwaite, supra, at pp.110-114; Neil v. Biggers, supra, at 
pp. 199-200.) 
However, no “taint” arising from improper lineups appears in Weissinger’s 
carefully circumscribed testimony, which was confined to her May 1983 photo 
identification.  Defendant does not suggest that, prior to May 1983, any efforts by 
the police to obtain an identification from Weissinger were unduly suggestive in a 
way that might cause her to misidentify defendant as the McDonald’s customer 
she saw.  Indeed, so far as appears, neither defendant’s photo, nor his person, 
                                                                                                                                      
 
that night is in this lineup.  [¶]  Q    Which one is he?  [¶]  A    This one.  [¶]  
Q    Pointing to number 4 . . . .  [¶]  Q    Why don’t you put your initials right 
under that picture that you just identified.  You did this some time ago as far as 
identifying a photograph?  [¶]  A    Yes.”  On cross-examination, defense counsel 
probed the degree of certainty Weissinger felt at the time of her May 1983 
identification.  Counsel also elicited that Weissinger was shown the same photo 
array again in 1985 and 1991.  However, counsel did not ask whether Weissinger 
reidentified defendant at those times, or whether she was still sure the photo she 
identified in May 1983 showed the man she saw at the McDonald’s in August 
1980. 
 
 88
played any part in those efforts.  Defendant criticizes the May 1983 photo lineup 
on grounds that Weissinger was shown pictures in a group, rather than 
sequentially.  However, he cites no case authority for the proposition that a group 
photo array is, per se, unduly suggestive. 
Defendant focuses on events that occurred after the May 1983 photo 
identification.  He insists that the improper October 1983 live lineup conducted in 
counsel’s unwaived absence, and the subsequent reshowing of the May 1983 
photo array to Weissinger in 1985 and 1991, may have locked her into her May 
1983 identification, and may actually have created false memories, hardening her 
sincere but mistaken belief in the accuracy of the identification she made at the 
earlier time. 
As noted, however, Weissinger did not testify to anything that could have 
been affected by these subsequent events.  She vouched only for the certainty of 
her May 1983 identification at the time it was made.  This was an issue upon 
which both she and Detective Lewis could be effectively examined.  Moreover, 
the jury could fully assess whether Weissinger’s testimony, so limited and 
scrutinized, constituted persuasive evidence that defendant was the man she 
observed at McDonald’s on August 22, 1980.  Under these circumstances, there 
was no need for an independent assessment whether Weissinger’s testimony 
should be excluded as unreliable.  It was properly admitted.54 
                                              
54  
Weissinger’s identification testimony was not rendered inadmissible as a 
result of the October 1983 live lineup conducted in counsel’s absence, because 
that testimony rested on a basis independent of, and untainted by, the improper 
lineup.  (People v. Bustamante (1981) 30 Cal.3d 88, 102-103; see Wade, supra, 
388 U.S. 218, 240-242.) 
 
 89
2. Sufficiency of Compton murder evidence 
Defendant claims that the evidence he murdered Compton was legally 
insufficient.  The prosecution’s failure to sustain its burden of proof, defendant 
insists, violated his due process and reliability interests under the Fifth, Eighth, 
and Fourteenth Amendments.  (See Jackson v. Virginia (1979) 443 U.S. 307.) 
On appeal, the test of legal sufficiency is whether there is substantial 
evidence, i.e., evidence from which a reasonable trier of fact could conclude that 
the prosecution sustained its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.  
(People v. Carter (2005) 36 Cal.4th 1114, 1156; Ochoa, supra, 19 Cal.4th 353, 
413-414; People v. Johnson (1980) 26 Cal.3d 557, 576.)  Evidence meeting this 
standard satisfies constitutional due process and reliability concerns.  (Carter, 
supra at p. 1156; People v. Osband (1996) 13 Cal.4th 622, 690.) 
While the appellate court must determine that the supporting evidence is 
reasonable, inherently credible, and of solid value, the court must review the 
evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, and must presume every 
fact the jury could reasonably have deduced from the evidence.  (People v. Carter, 
supra, 36 Cal.4th 1215, 1257-1258; People v. Hillhouse (2002) 27 Cal.4th 469, 
496 (Hillhouse); People v. Rodriguez (1999) 20 Cal.4th 1, 11.)  Issues of witness 
credibility are for the jury.  (E.g., Ochoa, supra, 19 Cal.4th 353, 414; People v. 
Jones (1990) 51 Cal.3d 294, 314.) 
Identification of the defendant by a single eyewitness may be sufficient to 
prove the defendant’s identity as the perpetrator of a crime.  (See People v. 
Anderson (2001) 25 Cal.4th 543, 570-575 (Anderson).)  Moreover, a testifying 
witness’s out-of-court identification is probative for that purpose and can, by 
itself, be sufficient evidence of the defendant’s guilt even if the witness does not 
confirm it in court.  (People v. Cuevas (1995) 12 Cal.4th 252, 263-275 (Cuevas), 
overruling People v. Gould (1960) 54 Cal.2d 621, 631; see Evid. Code, § 1238.)  
 
 90
Indeed, “an out-of-court identification generally has greater probative value than 
an in-court identification, even when the identifying witness does not confirm the 
out-of-court identification:  ‘[T]he [out-of-court] identification has greater 
probative value than an identification made in the courtroom after the suggestions 
of others and the circumstances of the trial may have intervened to create a fancied 
recognition in the witness’ mind.  [Citations.] . . . ’  [Citations].”  (Cuevas, supra, 
at p. 265.) 
Here, though based primarily on Weissinger’s out-of-court identification, 
the evidence that defendant murdered Compton was sufficient.  Weissinger readily 
testified that, after careful consideration, she made a positive identification of 
defendant from a photo array as the McDonald’s customer she saw on the night of 
the Compton murder.  While Weissinger did not independently identify defendant 
in the courtroom, or confirm that she remained certain of her photo identification, 
she did not disavow it (see Cuevas, supra, 12 Cal.4th 252, 267-268), and she 
explained at length why she felt sure of her choice at the time she made it.  There 
was nothing inherently improbable about the evidence she offered.  (See, e.g., 
People v. Lang (1974) 11 Cal.3d 134, 139.) 
Defendant’s counsel had a full opportunity to cross-examine Weissinger, 
not only about the actual degree of certainty of her photo selection, but about all 
aspects of the identification process, including the conditions under which she had 
observed the McDonald’s customer, and the occasions on which, as Weissinger 
candidly admitted, she had identified other men.  Defendant also presented expert 
testimony on factors affecting the accuracy of eyewitness identifications.  Under 
these circumstances, the jury was able to evaluate the credibility of Weissinger’s 
identification, and the weight her testimony deserved was for the jury to resolve.  
Moreover, William Harbitz provided some independent evidence of defendant’s 
identity as Compton’s killer by describing the incident, on an August 1980 
 
 91
evening, when defendant, wearing a bloodstained T-shirt, approached Harbitz and 
said he had been in a knife fight. 
In sum, there was substantial evidence from which a reasonable jury could 
conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that defendant was Compton’s murderer.  
Accordingly, the jury was properly allowed to consider, in aggravation of penalty, 
whether defendant committed this crime. 
B. Defendant’s statements to defense mental health experts as “fruit of 
the poisonous tree.” 
In an argument similar to one made at the guilt phase, defendant urges that 
his penalty trial expert witness, Sally Forbes, was improperly impeached with the 
reports of Dr. Loomis and Dr. Kaufman, mental health professionals consulted by 
the defense prior to the original trial. 
On cross-examination of Forbes, the prosecutor inquired if Forbes had 
considered whether defendant, in describing his childhood traumas, might be 
malingering as the result of an antisocial personality.  In this regard, the prosecutor 
asked whether Forbes had read the reports of Dr. Loomis and Dr. Kaufman.  
Forbes responded that she had not done so recently, and if she read them earlier, 
she could not remember what they said.  The prosecutor offered to refresh her 
recollection with her testimony from the prior trial. 
At a sidebar conference, defense counsel objected, among other things, that 
the reports of Dr. Loomis and Dr. Kaufman would not be available but for the 
erroneous failure to suppress defendant’s confession in the prior trial.  The trial 
court ruled that Forbes could be confronted with reports she had considered. 
In response to the prosecutor’s questions, Forbes agreed Dr. Kaufman had 
diagnosed defendant with an antisocial personality.  During additional cross-
examination on the issue of malingering, Forbes acknowledged this is always a 
concern with criminal defendants, but indicated the specificity of detail in 
 
 92
defendant’s claims of childhood sexual abuse indicated he was telling the truth.  
The prosecutor then inquired whether, in discussing the Harbitz killings with 
Forbes, defendant claimed amnesia and hallucinations.  Forbes answered in the 
affirmative, noting that, while defendant sometimes said “he must have done it 
because he had the knife,” at other times he claimed he absolutely could not 
remember, and he never flatly admitted “stabb[ing] those people.” 
At this point, the prosecutor asked whether Forbes “remember[ed] reading 
Dr. Kaufman’s report where he felt that the hallucination was a likely fabrication.”  
Forbes answered “[y]es.”  The prosecutor then inquired whether Forbes 
remembered reading Dr. Loomis’s report, indicating that defendant had also 
claimed amnesia to Dr. Loomis.  Again, Forbes said she had.  The examination 
then moved on to other subjects. 
Defendant insists that, because the defense decision to consult Dr. Loomis 
and Dr. Kaufman was a direct consequence of the original trial court’s erroneous 
refusal to suppress his illegally obtained confession, their reports were “fruit of the 
poisonous tree” and could not properly be used for impeachment of Forbes.  
(Citing James, supra, 493 U.S. 307.)  Their improper admission for that purpose, 
he posits, denied him his Eighth Amendment right to a reliable penalty judgment. 
We reject the contention for reasons previously stated.  Under general 
principles of evidence, Forbes could be impeached with reports of other experts 
she had considered in reaching her own conclusions.  Even if the “impeaching” 
experts in this case were consulted solely because the original trial court refused to 
suppress defendant’s confession—a dubious premise—their reports, voluntarily 
obtained by the defense, could be used to confront an expert witness whom the 
defense chose to present in a subsequent trial from which the illegal confession 
was excluded.  In such circumstances, the impeaching evidence was sufficiently 
attenuated to dissipate any “taint” arising from the illegal procurement of 
 
 93
defendant’s confession, and the deterrent purposes of the exclusionary rule were 
outweighed by the interest in true and accurate evidence.  (See discussion, ante, at 
pp. 57-66.) 
In any event, we discern no prejudice by any applicable standard.  The 
prosecutor’s fleeting allusions to the reports of Dr. Loomis and Dr. Kaufman 
during the cross-examination of Forbes simply touched on issues of defendant’s 
possible malingering, and his antisocial personality, that had been amply explored 
and acknowledged, under proper circumstances, by defense experts at both the 
guilt and penalty trials.  Beyond reasonable doubt, these brief references cannot 
have affected the penalty verdict. 
C.  Constitutionality of death penalty law. 
Defendant raises numerous challenges to the California death penalty 
scheme, in general and as applied to his case.  Except as noted, we have rejected 
similar or identical claims many times in the past, and defendant establishes no 
ground for reconsidering our prior conclusions.  We note below our pertinent 
rulings on these issues, as follows: 
The homicide and death penalty statutes adequately narrow the class of first 
degree murderers eligible for the death penalty.  The scheme is not overbroad 
because it permits capital exposure for many first degree murders, including 
unintentional felony murder.  (People v. Stitely (2005) 35 Cal.4th 514, 573 (Stitely); 
Anderson, supra, 25 Cal.4th 543, 601; People v. Crittenden (1994) 9 Cal.4th 83, 
154-155.)  Nor are the special circumstances overinclusive in number or scope.  
(Stitely, supra, at p. 573; People v. Ray (1996) 13 Cal.4th 313, 356.) 
The death penalty law does not fail to genuinely narrow the death-eligible 
class, or result in arbitrary and capricious penalty decisions, insofar as it grants 
prosecutors discretion to choose, from among cases meeting the statutory standards, 
 
 94
those in which the death penalty will actually be sought.  (People v. Nakahara (2003) 
30 Cal.4th 705, 722; Snow, supra, 30 Cal.4th 43, 126; Anderson, supra, 25 Cal.4th 
543, 601-602; People v. Keenan (1988) 46 Cal.3d 478, 505-506.) 
The multiple-murder special circumstance (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(3)) is not 
constitutionally overbroad insofar as it encompasses a wide range of culpable 
conduct, theoretically including two accidental felony murders.  Categorizing 
those who commit two or more murders subject to a single prosecution as 
especially deserving of the death penalty is not arbitrary or irrational, and it 
adequately narrows the pool of death-eligible offenders.  (People v. Boyette (2002) 
29 Cal.4th 381, 440; People v. Box (2000) 23 Cal.4th 1153, 1217.) 
With respect to statutory aggravating and mitigating circumstances set forth 
in section 190.3 of the death penalty law, factor (a) (“[t]he circumstances of the 
[capital] crime . . .and the existence of any special circumstances”) is not 
impermissibly vague or imprecise.  (Tuilaepa v. California (1994) 512 U.S. 967, 
975-980; Stitely, supra, 35 Cal.4th 514, 574.)  Nor is factor (b) (defendant’s other 
violent criminal activity) unconstitutional insofar as it permits consideration of 
unadjudicated crimes.  (People v. Gray (2005) 37 Cal.4th 168, 236 (Gray); 
People v. Morrison (2004) 34 Cal.4th 698, 729.) 
Because of the “catchall” provision of section 190.3, factor (k) (jury may 
consider in mitigation “[a]ny . . . circumstance which extenuates the gravity of the 
crime, even [if] . . .not a legal excuse for the crime”), factors (d) (whether 
defendant committed offense while under “extreme” mental or emotional 
disturbance) and (g) (whether defendant acted under “extreme” duress or 
“substantial” domination) do not unconstitutionally inhibit consideration of 
mitigating evidence by implying that unless the conditions described are 
“extreme” or “substantial,” the factors are not mitigating, or are aggravating.  
(People v. Panah (2005) 35 Cal.4th 395, 500 (Panah); People v. Prieto (2003) 
 
 95
30 Cal.4th 226, 276 (Prieto); People v. Barnett (1998) 17 Cal.4th 1044, 1178-
1179.) 
For similar reasons, factors (d) (whether “the offense was committed” 
under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance) and (h) (whether, 
“at the time of the offense,” defendant’s ability to appreciate criminality was 
impaired by mental disease or defect, or intoxication) of section 190.3 do not 
inhibit consideration of mitigating evidence by implying that the conditions 
described must relate directly to defendant’s culpability for the capital crime.  
(People v. Maury (2003) 30 Cal.4th 342, 439 (Maury); Hughes, supra, 27 Cal.4th 
287, 405, fn. 33.) 
The death penalty statute is not constitutionally deficient for failing to 
require “intercase” proportionality review, even though such review is provided to 
noncapital sentencees under the Determinate Sentencing Act.  (Pulley v. Harris 
(1984) 465 U.S. 37, 50; People v. Ramos (1997) 15 Cal.4th 1133, 1182; People v. 
Cox (1991) 53 Cal.3d 618, 690-691; Allen, supra, 42 Cal.3d 1222, 1285-1288.) 
Execution by lethal injection is not, per se, cruel and unusual punishment.  
(Gray, supra, 37 Cal.4th 168, 237; People v. Carter, supra, 36 Cal.4th 1114, 1213; 
Hughes, supra, 27 Cal.4th 287, 406; People v. Samayoa (1997) 15 Cal.4th 795, 
864.)  Defendant’s assertion that execution by lethal gas is cruel and unusual is not 
cognizable, given that current law provides for lethal injection unless the prisoner 
chooses lethal gas.  By affirmatively electing lethal gas, he would waive any claim 
that this form of punishment violates the Eighth Amendment.  (People v. Bradford 
(1997) 14 Cal.4th 1005, 1058-1059.) 
Defendant’s claim that the Department of Corrections (now part of the 
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) (Department) has not adopted 
required standards for the administration of lethal injection (§ 3604, subd. (a)) also 
is not cognizable, because alleged imperfections in the method of execution do not 
 
 96
affect the validity of the death judgment itself.  Defendant’s attack on illegalities 
in the execution process that may or may not exist when his death sentence is 
carried out are premature.  (People v. Cornwell (2005) 37 Cal.4th 50, 105-106 
(Cornwell); People v. Young (2005) 34 Cal.4th 1149, 1234 (Young); People v. 
Holt (1997) 15 Cal.4th 619, 702 (Holt).)55 
D.  Death penalty instructional issues. 
Defendant asserts that the penalty instructions given in his case were 
constitutionally and statutorily deficient in multiple respects.  Again, we have 
frequently dismissed identical or similar arguments, and defendant fails to 
persuade that any of these issues deserve renewed reconsideration.  Following are 
pertinent rulings on the arguments raised: 
The trial court did not err in failing to instruct on “core adjudicative 
principles,” including (1) the burden and standard of proof at the penalty phase; 
(2) the necessity for proof, and jury findings, beyond reasonable doubt (a) of every 
aggravating factor supporting a death verdict (aside from other crimes), (b) of 
every fact underlying each aggravating factor, (c) that aggravation outweighs 
mitigation, and (d) that death is the appropriate penalty; (3) the need for jury 
unanimity on each aggravating factor; and (4) the presumption of life over death.  
(Gray, supra, 37 Cal.4th 168, 236-237; Stitely, supra, 35 Cal.4th 514, 573; Panah, 
supra, 35 Cal.4th 395, 499; People v. Smith (2003) 30 Cal.4th 581, 641-642; 
Maury, supra, 30 Cal.4th 342, 440; People v. Welch (1999) 20 Cal.4th 701, 767-
768 (Welch).)  Nor was it necessary to require a written statement of findings and 
reasons for the jury’s penalty verdict.  (People v. Monterroso (2004) 34 Cal.4th 
                                              
55  
We note that the validity of the lethal injection procedures used by the 
Department is the subject of current litigation in the United States District Court 
for the Northern District of California.  (Morales v. Hickman et al. (N.D.Cal. No. 
C 06-219 JF).) 
 
 97
743, 795; Jenkins, supra, 22 Cal.4th 900, 1053.)  Recent United States Supreme 
Court decisions in Apprendi v. New Jersey (2000) 530 U.S. 466, and Ring v. 
Arizona (2002) 536 U.S. 584, have not altered our conclusions regarding 
necessary findings, burden of proof, or jury unanimity.  (Monterroso, supra, at p. 
795; Prieto, supra, 30 Cal.4th 226, 275.) 
The penalty instructions given in defendant’s case were not deficient insofar as 
they failed (1) to clarify the phrase “whether or not” in various of the factors set forth 
in section 190.3 by specifying which factors are aggravating and which are mitigating 
(Gray, supra, 37 Cal.4th 168, 236; People v. Jones (2003) 30 Cal.4th 1084, 1123; 
People v. Kraft (2000) 23 Cal.4th 978, 1078-1079), (2) to delete “inapplicable” 
mitigating factors where, as here, the jury was told to consider only “applicable” 
aggravating and mitigating circumstances (Gray, supra, at p. 236; Maury, supra, 
30 Cal.4th 342, 439-440), or (3) to limit the aggravating circumstances to those 
specifically enumerated in section 190.3 (People v. Taylor (2001) 26 Cal.4th 1155, 
1180; People v. Earp (1999) 20 Cal.4th 826, 899). 
The definition of mitigation included in CALJIC No. 8.88, as given here,56 
did not fail to explain that concept adequately.  (Welch, supra, 20 Cal.4th 701, 
772-773.)  We are not persuaded otherwise by defendant’s citation to certain 
empirical research, not part of the current record and not subject to cross-
examination, suggesting that substantial numbers of persons, given the standard 
instruction, misunderstand mitigation as limited to the circumstances of the capital 
crime.  (Ibid.) 
                                              
56  
Defendant’s jury was told, in the words of the 1989 revision to CALJIC 
No. 8.88, that “[a] mitigating circumstance is any fact, condition or event which as 
such, does not constitute a justification or excuse for the crime in question, but 
may be considered as an extenuating circumstance in determining the 
appropriateness of the death penalty.” 
 
 98
Furthermore, CALJIC No. 8.88, which permits a judgment of death only 
upon the jury’s unanimous determination that aggravation is “so substantial” in 
comparison with mitigation as to “warrant[ ] death instead of life without parole,” 
is not deficient on grounds that it fails to say expressly a life sentence is required if 
mitigation outweighs aggravation.  (People v. Smith (2005) 35 Cal.4th 334, 370; 
People v. Medina (1995) 11 Cal.4th 694, 781; People v. Duncan (1991) 53 Cal.3d 
955, 978-979.)  Nor does CALJIC No. 8.88 improperly imply that death is 
required if aggravation outweighs mitigation.  The instruction makes clear that 
death is permitted only if aggravation is “so substantial” compared to mitigation 
that death, rather than life without parole, is “warranted.”  (People v. Smith, supra, 
35 Cal.4th at p. 370; People v. Arias (1996) 13 Cal.4th 92, 171 (Arias).) 
Having admonished the penalty jury to consider “any sympathetic or other 
aspect of the defendant’s character or record that the defendant offers as a basis for 
a sentence less than death, whether or not related to the offense for which he is on 
trial,” and to “disregard any [conflicting] instruction [from] the guilt or innocence 
phase of this trial,” the court was not required to instruct the jury further to 
consider all sympathetic mitigating factors, mercy, and nonstatutory mitigating 
factors, nor was it required to caution expressly that the “anti-sympathy” 
instruction given only at the guilt phase (CALJIC No. 1.00) did not apply at the 
penalty phase.  (Panah, supra, 35 Cal.4th 395, 497; Lewis, supra, 26 Cal.4th 334, 
393; People v. Bolin (1998) 18 Cal.4th 297, 343-344; People v. Adcox (1988) 
47 Cal.3d 207, 265.) 
Having told the penalty jury it must choose, under California’s capital 
sentencing law, between death and “life without parole,” the court was not obliged 
to instruct further on the “true meaning” of life without parole.  Any instruction 
that such a sentence guaranteed defendant’s incarceration until his death would be 
inaccurate, considering the Governor’s commutation and pardon powers.  (Arias, 
 
 99
supra, 13 Cal.4th 92, 172; People v. Gordon, supra, 50 Cal.3d 1223, 1277; 
People v. Thompson (1988) 45 Cal.3d 86, 130.)  On the other hand, the meaning of 
“[l]ife without parole” is plain.  (Arias, supra, at pp. 172-173, distinguishing 
Simmons v. South Carolina (1994) 512 U.S. 154 [requiring explanation, under 
particular circumstances, that “life imprisonment” as alternative to death penalty 
meant defendant would be ineligible for parole].)  We are not persuaded otherwise 
by defendant’s citation to certain “contemporary research,” not part of the current 
record or subject to cross-examination, suggesting many jurors do not understand 
that life without parole actually means no possibility of parole.57 
Though defendant was free to argue residual doubt about his degree of 
culpability in the Harbitz homicides, the trial court had no obligation, let alone a 
sua sponte obligation, to instruct the penalty jury specifically that it could consider 
in mitigation any “lingering doubt” about defendant’s degree of guilt.  The federal 
Constitution does not require a “lingering doubt” instruction.  (Franklin v. 
Lynaugh (1988) 487 U.S. 164, 173-174.)  Moreover, the concept is adequately 
covered in the standard instruction, given here, that the jury could consider, in 
mitigation, any extenuating circumstance of the crime, even if not a legal excuse 
therefor, and any sympathetic or other aspect of defendant’s character or record he 
offered as a basis for a sentence less than death, whether or not related to the 
capital crime.  (People v. Harris (2005) 37 Cal.4th 310, 359; People v. 
Musselwhite (1998) 17 Cal.4th 1216, 1272; People v. Hines (1997) 15 Cal.4th 
997, 1068 (Hines).) 
                                              
57  
In any event, although the court on one occasion referred simply to “life 
without parole,” at two other points in the instructions it specified that the 
penalties available were “death or confinement in [the] state prison for life without 
possibility of parole.”  (Italics added.) 
 
 
100
E. Death sentence as disproportionate to individual culpability. 
Defendant insists his death sentence is disproportionate to his individual 
culpability, and thus violates state and federal constitutional provisions against 
cruel and/or unusual punishment.  In assessing such a claim, we must examine the 
circumstances of the crime, as well as the defendant’s personal characteristics.  
(Panah, supra, 35 Cal.4th 395, 501.)  If, given these factors, “the penalty imposed 
is ‘grossly disproportionate to the defendant’s individual culpability’ [citation], so 
that the punishment ‘ “ ‘shocks the conscience and offends fundamental notions of 
human dignity’ ” ’ [citation], [we] must invalidate the sentence as 
unconstitutional.”  (People v. Lucero (2000) 23 Cal.4th 692, 739-740.) 
Defendant, acting alone, robbed and brutally murdered an elderly couple 
who had shown kindness to him.  He was not a youth at the time of these offenses, 
and he had previously committed at least one other serious felony, an armed 
robbery.  Defendant cites his difficult early childhood, leading to drug addiction, 
and the possibility he killed in a “panic,” and in a misguided effort at self-defense, 
induced by his intoxicated state.  However, the jury, on substantial evidence, 
essentially rejected this version of the homicides, and we may not substitute our 
judgment for the factfinder’s.  Moreover, though defendant’s earliest years may 
have been deprived, he was adopted when still a young child by parents who 
showered him with wholesome love, attention, and support.  His personal 
hardships pale in comparison to the gravity of his crimes.  We cannot conclude 
that the penalty imposed is disproportionate to his culpability. 
Defendant further urges that we have, and should exercise, authority under 
sections 1181, subdivision 7, and 1260 to reduce his death sentence to life 
imprisonment without possibility of parole.  But we have concluded we may not, 
under these statutes, disturb the jury’s penalty determination absent prejudicial 
error or legal insufficiency of evidence.  (Hines, supra, 15 Cal.4th 997, 1080.) 
 
 
101
F. Conflict of interest. 
Defendant claims his “convictions, death sentence, and confinement violate the 
state and federal [C]onstitutions in that he has been represented on appeal by counsel 
burdened by an unconstitutional conflict of interest.”  Defendant urges that an 
inherent conflict arises where, as here, his appointed appellate counsel has also been 
appointed to represent him in habeas corpus proceedings.  But while habeas corpus 
counsel might have a conflict when investigating issues of his or her own ineffective 
appellate representation, no reason appears why counsel’s dual role would interfere 
with his or her effective representation on appeal.  Moreover, a claim that habeas 
corpus counsel is burdened by an unconstitutional conflict of interest is not cognizable 
on appeal; it lacks merit in any event because there is no constitutional right to the 
effective assistance of counsel in state habeas corpus proceedings.  (Young, supra, 
34 Cal.4th 1149, 1232; People v. Kipp (2001) 26 Cal.4th 1100, 1139-1140; see 
Coleman v. Thompson (1991) 501 U.S. 722, 756-757.) 
G. Delayed execution. 
Noting that he was first convicted and sentenced to die in 1984, defendant 
urges that his long confinement on death row awaiting execution constitutes cruel 
and unusual punishment.  He observes that the delay stems from matters chargeable 
solely to the state—in particular, the need for a retrial after his illegal confession 
was erroneously admitted in the original trial, and the four and one-half-year wait 
for appointment of counsel to represent him in the current appeal.  We have 
consistently rejected the contention that the delays inherent in the capital appeal 
process render the death penalty, or the process leading to it, cruel and unusual.  
(E.g., People v. Dunkle (2005) 36 Cal.4th 861, 942; Anderson, supra, 25 Cal.4th 
543, 606; People v. Massie (1998) 19 Cal.4th 550, 574.)  We do so again. 
 
 
102
H.  Cumulative penalty phase error. 
Defendant urges that the cumulative prejudicial effect of errors at his penalty 
trial requires reversal of the death judgment.  The contention fails because we have 
identified no error under state or federal law at the penalty phase of the trial. 
I. International law. 
Defendant claims that, because of the due process violations he suffered 
throughout the guilt and sentencing phases of his capital trial, he was “denied his 
right to a fair trial by an independent tribunal, and his right to the minimum 
guarantees for the defense under customary international law as informed by the 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and 
Political Rights, and the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man.”  
We have consistently held that international law does not prohibit a death sentence 
rendered in accordance with state and federal constitutional and statutory 
requirements.  (Panah, supra, 35 Cal.4th 395, 500; Hillhouse, supra, 27 Cal.4th 
469, 511.)  Applying those standards, we have found no errors under state or 
federal law whose cumulative effect was prejudicial.  Hence, defendant has no 
basis for his claim of international law violations.  (Cornwell, supra, 37 Cal.4th 
50, 106; People v. Blair (2005) 36 Cal.4th 686, 755.) 
CONCLUSION 
The judgment is affirmed in its entirety. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
BAXTER, J. 
WE CONCUR: 
 
GEORGE, C.J. 
KENNARD, J. 
WERDEGAR, J. 
CHIN, J. 
MORENO, J. 
CORRIGAN, J. 
 
  
See next page for addresses and telephone numbers for counsel who argued in Supreme Court. 
 
Name of Opinion People v. Boyer 
__________________________________________________________________________________ 
 
Unpublished Opinion 
Original Appeal XXX 
Original Proceeding 
Review Granted 
Rehearing Granted 
 
__________________________________________________________________________________ 
 
Opinion No. S029476 
Date Filed: May 11, 2006 
__________________________________________________________________________________ 
 
Court: Superior 
County: Orange 
Judge: Donald A. McCartin 
 
__________________________________________________________________________________ 
 
Attorneys for Appellant: 
 
R. Clayton Seaman, Jr., under appointment by the Supreme Court, for Defendant and Appellant. 
 
 
 
 
__________________________________________________________________________________ 
 
Attorneys for Respondent: 
 
Bill Lockyer, Attorney General, Robert R. Anderson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Gary W. Schons, 
Assistant Attorney General, Esteban Hernandez, Frederick B. Clark, Teresa Torreblanca, William M. 
Wood, Adrianne S. Denault and Lise S. Jacobson, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent. 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
Counsel who argued in Supreme Court (not intended for publication with opinion): 
 
R. Clayton Seaman, Jr. 
P.O. Box 12008 
Prescott, AZ  86304 
(928) 776-9168 
 
Lise S. Jacobson 
Deputy Attorney General 
110 West A Street, Suite 1100 
San Diego, CA  92101 
(619) 645-2293