Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/2d/231/23.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 18:36:48+00:00

Document:
THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. GEORGE CHAMBERS, Defendant and Appellant.
Morris M. Grupp for Defendant and Appellant.
Stanley Mosk and Thomas C. Lynch, Attorneys General, Doris H. Maier, Assistant Attorney General, Daniel Kremer and Raymond M. Momboisse, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
Defendant George Chambers and one Sarah Spitler were jointly indicted on charges of assaulting Hugh Lawrence by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury on May 2, 1963, in violation of Penal Code section 245. Sarah Spitler was separately indicted for three [231 Cal. App. 2d 25] separate assaults upon Hugh Lawrence occurring on April 18, May 16 and May 27, 1963. Both defendant were represented by the same attorney. By stipulation of the prosecutor and defense counsel, the two actions were consolidated for trial. The jury found Sarah Spitler guilty of the four assaults charged against her and Chambers of the one charged against him. Following a judgment imposing a state prison sentence, Chambers appealed. Mrs. Spitler has not appealed.
At the time of the alleged offenses, Chambers was the owner of a state- licensed rest home for aged and mentally ill patients. He had purchased the establishment in 1962 from Mrs. Spitler, who had previously operated it for some years. Mrs. Spitler had extensive experience in the care of mental patients, and when Chambers purchased the home he employed her to stay on at the establishment as supervising nurse. The institution accommodated about 12 patients.
Without eliciting objection, Mrs. Delgado further testified that on two other occasions she saw Chambers strike Hugh Lawrence in the stomach with his fist; that during the first week of April 1963, while Chambers was sleeping on a sun porch, he was awakened by a patient named Snyder; that Chambers was much annoyed and struck Snyder six times in the face, giving him a bloody nose.
Both defendants took the witness stand. Both denied Mrs. Delgado's testimony of the May 2, 1963, incident and testified that it could not have happened because both were absent from the home on a shopping expedition to buy supplies and to pick up a patient in Sacramento. They introduced receipts from a grocery store, a gas station and an auto parts establishment to verify their testimony. Chambers denied the other incidents described by Mrs. Delgado. Mrs. Spitler testified that while Snyder was in fact assaulted, the person who had been awakened and had struck Snyder was another patient, one Charles Worth.
The rest of the evidence introduced during the three-day trial was directed against Mrs. Spitler alone. There was no evidence of joint or conspiratorial action. The prosecution produced against Mrs. Spitler testimony involving numerous other alleged assaults against patients. These other offenses included the slapping of a patient; striking a patient in the abdomen with a closed fist; beating one woman who ran away; slapping another patient three times; pouring mush on a woman patient, knocking her down, dragging her to the bathroom, putting her in a tub, pouring water on her face, forcing her to drink the water until she was bloated, then leaving her on the bathroom floor and walking out; cutting a patient's mouth by use of a spoon while the patient was being fed, then compelling the patient to swallow the blood along with food forced into her mouth; bashing a patient's head against the wall of the bathroom so hard that a dent was made in the wall and a bump raised on the patient's head; kicking a patient, causing her to fall. There was also testimony that Mrs. Spitler on one occasion had pushed an elderly woman into her room with such force that she fell against a bed and then to the floor; that she punched a 70-year-old woman in the stomach as she sat on the toilet; that she hit a woman in the mouth with a closed fist so hard that blood poured from her mouth. There was no testimony and no claim that Chambers had been connected with any of these instances of abuse committed by Mrs. Spitler. Testimony relative to such prior [231 Cal. App. 2d 27] incidents involving Mrs. Spitler represented more than half of the total testimony offered at the trial, and the incidents covered six or seven years. This evidence was offered with little or no objection from defense counsel.
On appeal defendant contends that the evidence was insufficient to sustain the conviction and that admission of evidence regarding prior offenses was erroneous and prejudicial. There are other defense contentions which, for reasons which will be apparent, require no comment.
In reviewing this conviction, we find ourselves in an unusual situation, characterized by a paucity of error technically available for appellate review, but emphatically demanding defendant's retrial under better circumstances. Our examination of the record convinces us that defendant was tried and convicted under conditions which deprived him of a fair trial and denied him due process of law.
The adjudicatory process was profoundly influenced by an unusual combination of commonplace elements, in part quite permissible, in part erroneous but not assignable as error in the absence of objection in the trial court. These elements consisted of: (1) the stipulated consolidation of defendant's trial with the trial of separate and unrelated offenses charged against Mrs. Spitler; (2) admission without objection or admonition of voluminous evidence of unrelated acts of brutality by Mrs. Spitler, admissible only because she was on trial for offenses unrelated to that charged against Chambers; (3) the disgusting, inflammatory character of this evidence, which fastened Chambers with moral responsibility (but not [231 Cal. App. 2d 28] criminal responsibility) for the operation of an establishment in which elderly, helpless patients were cruelly treated; (4) admission without objection of inadmissible testimony of unconnected assaults by Chambers; (5) the comparative thinness of directly incriminating evidence in relation to the massive quantum of prejudice-arousing evidence of brutality in the rest home owned by Chambers; (8) the technical correctness and practical inadequacy of an instruction directing the jury to disregard evidence adduced against one defendant alone; (7) and finally, accentuation of the impression of moral partnership by an astounding line of prosecution questions suggesting to the jurors that Chambers and Mrs. Spitler probably shared a single bed.
Guilt by association is a thoroughly discredited doctrine; personal guilt, on the other hand, is a fundamental principle of [231 Cal. App. 2d 29] American jurisprudence, inhabiting a central place in the concept of due process. (Uphaus v. Wyman, 360 U.S. 72, 79 [79 S. Ct. 1040, 3 L. Ed. 2d 1090]; Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U.S. 135, 163 [65 S. Ct. 1443, 89 L. Ed. 2103], concurring opinion.) The record impresses us with the belief that Chambers was probably fastened with vicarious responsibility for the long-continued brutality of Mrs. Spitler, in the absence of any charge of concerted or conspiratorial action. Hope Delgado's eyewitness account was the sole testimony incriminating Chambers. We cannot reexamine her testimony for the purpose of invading the jury's province but we do evaluate it, quantitatively and qualitatively, to determine whether the procedural and evidentiary aspects of the trial provided defendant with the essential attributes of due process. (See People v. Parham, 60 Cal. 2d 378, 384-385 [33 Cal. Rptr. 497, 384 P.2d 1001].) Cross-examination revealed unrepaired inconsistencies in her direct testimony. Lucid and articulate on direct examination, Mrs. Delgado lapsed into frequent silences on cross-examination, claiming lack of comprehension and lapses of memory. Although Hugh Lawrence was visited regularly by a doctor who practiced in the area and by his son who lived 30 miles away, Mrs. Delgado said nothing regarding the mistreatment. She demonstrated resentment that Mrs. Spitler had called her a foreigner. Her testimony, such as it was, was countered by the denials of both defendants, who were somewhat supported by receipts for purchases made in Sacramento on May 2. Considered in isolation, the thin evidence of Chambers' guilt may well have failed to convince the jury.
Apparently the trial judge, the prosecutor and defense counsel shared a belief in the admissibility of evidence of separate incidents in which either Mrs. Spitler or Chambers inflicted blows on patients. The district attorney offered extensive evidence of blows and similar acts to establish, as he described it, Mrs. Spitler's "characteristic behavior pattern of assaults towards patients." Defense counsel objected only in occasional instances, when the acts were "not of sufficient similarity" to those specified in the indictments. The trial judge instructed the jury that: "The value, if any, of such evidence depends on whether or not it tends to show that the defendant was guilty of the crimes charged by showing a peculiar or characteristic behavior pattern of the defendant. ..."
 In the prosecution of Chambers intent was not in issue; nor were these separate and unconnected acts of violence asserted as separate manifestations of a common plan or scheme. Hope Delgado's description of other assaults by Chambers was tendered as part of the prosecution's case in chief, prior to the disclosure of the defendant's position. (Cf. People v. Pike, 58 Cal. 2d 70, 91-92 [22 Cal. Rptr. 664, 372 P.2d 656].) Chambers' defense, as disclosed by his testimony, was an alibi, an outright denial of presence or participation. Neither at the time the evidence was offered nor thereafter during the trial was there any claim that on May 2 Chambers had physically contacted Hugh Lawrence without criminal intent. The described objective of the evidence (to show [231 Cal. App. 2d 31] "characteristic behavior pattern") was a euphemism which scarcely concealed its real purpose, to demonstrate the defendant's predisposition to commit assaults on helpless patients, in short, his criminal proclivities. Offered with that objective, the evidence was inadmissible. Nevertheless, it was offered and received without objection.
 The Attorney General has cited a number of cases which do indeed permit evidence of other offenses on the strength of the phrase "peculiar or characteristic behavior pattern." (See, for example, People v. Cavanaugh, 44 Cal. 2d 252, 265-266 [282 P.2d 53]; People v. Crisafi, 187 Cal. App. 2d 700, 707 [10 Cal. Rptr. 155].) Analytically examined, the phrase is confined to the notion of modus operandi, a characteristic method or plan pursued by a defendant in the performance of repeated criminal acts. It does not open the door to indiscriminate proof of the defendant's sadistic character.
 Mrs. Spitler had denied her presence in the assault of May 2. She also denied having committed the assaults charged against her alone. As to the latter charges, she did not deny her physical presence. Rather, her testimony inferred that she had been engaged in normal and reasonable handling of patients. The application of superior strength in the care of mental patients may pass by gradations from proper restraint to an extreme of brutality. (Coomes v. State Personnel Board, 215 Cal. App. 2d 770, 776 [30 Cal. Rptr. 639].) An assertion that the nurse or attendant exercised no more than that degree of discipline necessary to accomplish the assigned task places in issue the question of intent, knowledge or design. Thus evidence of other acts of violence by Mrs. Spitler was properly in the record to negate innocent intent. (See People v. Wells, 33 Cal. 2d 330, 341-343 [202 P.2d 53].) Evidence of Mrs. Spitler's acts could not, however, be considered in weighing Chambers' guilt, there being no claim of concerted or conspiratorial action.
Had Chambers been tried alone, evidence of Mrs. Spitler's "characteristic" treatment of patients would have been patently impermissible. It plays a role in Chambers' trial only because both defendants were tried together.  Penal Code section 954 authorizes the consolidated trial of multiple charges, first, where a single accusatory pleading charges multiple offenses and second, where several accusatory pleadings charge separate offenses which are connected or of the same class. Section 954 does not directly deal with the joint trial of multiple defendants. That subject is covered by section [231 Cal. App. 2d 32] 1098, which directs the joint trial of jointly charged defendants in the absence of an order for separation. Such an order is discretionary with the trial court.
These Penal Code provisions do not expressly authorize consolidation of separate charges against different defendants involving distinct and unconnected offenses. Several decisions hold that consolidation under such circumstances is error. (People v. Biehler, 198 Cal. App. 2d 290 [17 Cal. Rptr. 862]; People v. Davis, 42 Cal. App. 2d 70, 74-75 [108 P.2d 85]; see also People v. Duane, 21 Cal. 2d 71, 76 [130 P.2d 123].) Although Mrs. Spitler was subject to a single trial on these multiple offenses of the same class (§ 954), and Chambers was subject to a joint trial with her on the joint indictment (§ 1098), nevertheless the offense charged against Chambers was utterly disconnected from the assaults charged against Mrs. Spitler. By the standard of the Biehler-Davis line of cases, the consolidation which occurred here would have been highly objectionable.
Without regard to the specific terms of sections 954 and 1098, another line of cases authorizes consolidation of separate charges against multiple defendants where the charges have "a common element of substantial importance in their commission." (People v. Spates, 53 Cal. 2d 33, 36 [346 P.2d 5]; People v. Chapman, 52 Cal. 2d 95, 97 [338 P.2d 428]; People v. Williams, 189 Cal. App. 2d 29, 36-37 [11 Cal. Rptr. 43].) The common element, according to substantial authority, is an underlying set of common facts and common evidence. (McElroy v. United States, 164 U.S. 76, 80 [17 S. Ct. 31, 41 L. Ed. 355]; People v. Duane, supra, 21 Cal.2d at p. 76; People v. Biehler, supra, 198 Cal.App.2d at pp. 294-295.) In People v. Spates, however, the Supreme Court rejected the plaint of an appellant who urged that he should not have been jointly tried with another defendant who was separately charged with seven felonies other than the robbery and attempted robbery charged against both. The court stated (53 Cal.2d at p. 36): "The fact that defendant Spates was charged with only two of the crimes does not render the joinder improper, since there was a joint charge as to two of the crimes and a common element of substantial importance in the commission of all of them."
What "common element of substantial importance" all nine offenses possessed was not specified in the Spates opinion. There was no indication of common evidentiary elements underlying all nine offenses. To all appearances the sweeping [231 Cal. App. 2d 33] concept of joinder authorized by the Spates case embraces the present situation. We shall assume for present purposes that the joint charge of one felony against Chambers and Mrs. Spitler and the three separate felonies charged against Mrs. Spitler alone met the consolidation criterion of People v. Spates.
That we speak in terms of possibilities is no answer. We do not know of course what actually motivated the guilty verdict. Where fundamental demands for the individual adjudication of personal guilt may have been violated, we cannot take refuge in threadbare presumptions that the jury resolutely ignored inflammatory, irrelevant evidence and hewed strictly to the letter of its instructions. Instead we remand the matter to provide an opportunity for the defendant's retrial under more acceptable circumstances.
Pierce, P. J., and Van Dyke, J., fn. * concurred.

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