Opinion ID: 1162168
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: EXPLICATION OF People v. Saling

Text: The gravamen of these objections is that any conspiracy which might have existed between the Kramers and Leach was solely a conspiracy to commit the murder of Howard Kramer, and so ended with the successful perpetration of that murder. All the parties to this appeal appear to agree that the controlling law on the time of termination of murder-for-hire conspiracies is set forth in People v. Saling (1972) 7 Cal.3d 844, 851-853 [103 Cal. Rptr. 698, 500 P.2d 610]. We share the parties' views on the pertinence of Saling and accordingly preface our discussion of the issues jointly raised by Saling and the instant case with a detailed explication of the facts of Saling and the views expressed therein as to the proper scope of Evidence Code section 1223, California's codification of the long-established coconspirator exception to the hearsay rule under the common law of evidence. [7] (See generally 4 Wigmore, Evidence (Chadbourne rev. 1972) § 1079, pp. 180-186; Levie, Hearsay and Conspiracy (1954) 52 Mich.L.Rev. 1159, 1161-1164.)
In Saling the defendant had been hired by Murphy (see People v. Murphy (1972) 8 Cal.3d 349 [105 Cal. Rptr. 138, 503 P.2d 594]) to assist in the murder of Murphy's wife. The principal witness against Saling was Jerry Carnes. Carnes testified that he had been approached by Murphy with an offer of money if he would rough up a recalcitrant debtor of Murphy. Carnes did not accept the offer but agreed to try and find someone who would accommodate Murphy. Carnes accordingly broached the offer to Saling, and subsequently took Saling to Murphy's house to introduce the two men. The pair discussed the job in the presence of Carnes. They agreed to a fee of $1,000, with $300 or $500 to be paid in advance. [8] In a later conversation with Murphy, Carnes learned that the planned battery would involve staging a hit and run accident while the victim was helping Murphy change a flat tire. Carnes was to participate in the scheme as a false witness. On the day of the murder Carnes, Saling and Murphy had jointly reconnoitered the scene of the planned accident. That night Carnes parked his car in the arranged location. He saw Murphy drive past, accompanied by a female. Carnes waited another 45 minutes for Saling to appear. During this period Murphy and the woman drove past several times in both directions. Upset by his realization that the victim was to be a woman, Carnes finally decided to abandon the enterprise. After traveling some distance he encountered Saling driving towards the scene of the crime accompanied by Jurgenson, whose car Saling was driving. Saling disclosed that his delay in arriving had been caused by his being stopped by a policeman. Carnes then drove back to the spot where he had been waiting, followed by Saling. Murphy was no longer in the vicinity. Saling said he would find Murphy later, and Carnes left the area. Three days later Carnes learned from a friend that Murphy's wife had been murdered on the night of the supposed battery of a debtor. Carnes thereupon went to Saling's home, where he encountered Jurgenson. Carnes sought an explanation for the murder of Murphy's wife. Jurgenson replied that the true nature of the job had been discussed in Carnes' absence. Jurgenson went on, at Carnes' urging, to describe the details of the murder, and over objection Carnes was allowed to repeat this narrative at Saling's trial. A fortnight or so after Jurgenson's narration, Jerry Carnes' brother Richard was used by Murphy as an intermediary to transmit $200 in cash to Jerry Carnes and $500 in cash to Saling. Shortly after this, through the assistance of the Carnes brothers, the police obtained tape recordings of conversations between Murphy and the Carnes brothers, each of which contained statements highly incriminating of Saling.
The declarations of both Jurgenson and Murphy implicating Saling had occurred out of court and evidence of their content was offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted, i.e., that Saling had participated in the murder of Murphy's wife. This evidence was accordingly hearsay. (Evid. Code, § 1200.) Having disposed of the contention that Jurgenson's declaration was an adoptive admission of Saling (Evid. Code, § 1221; 7 Cal.3d at pp. 849-850, fn. 6), we treated the admissibility of this evidence as being governed exclusively by the coconspirator exception. First, [9] we rejected the contention that two conspiracies were involved, one to murder Murphy's wife, the other to obtain the proceeds of various insurance policies on the victim's life. We found that there was lacking in the record the requisite independent evidence to establish prima facie the existence of an insurance conspiracy. [10] Thus the dispositive question regarding the admissibility of evidence of the declarations became the time of the termination of the conspiracy to murder Murphy's wife. We recognized that [i]t has long been the law in this state that a conspirator's statements are admissible against his coconspirator only when made during the conspiracy and in furtherance thereof, and that [t]he conspiracy usually comes to an end when the substantive crime for which the coconspirators are being tried is either attained or defeated. However, since [p]articular circumstances may well disclose a situation where the conspiracy will be deemed to have extended beyond the substantive crime to activities contemplated and undertaken by the conspirators in pursuance of the objectives of the conspiracy, we decided that it was for the trier of fact  considering the unique circumstances and the nature and purpose of the conspiracy of each case  to determine precisely when the conspiracy has ended. (7 Cal.3d at p. 852.) Since we found it clearly established that the money offered by Murphy for killing his wife motivated [Saling] and Jerry Carnes to participate in the plan, and that the transfer of the money was one of [the conspiracy's] main objectives as far as [Saling] and Carnes were concerned, (id.) we decided that the jury could properly have found that the conspiracy to murder Murphy's wife had not terminated until the time of payment of Saling and Carnes. Since payment to either [Saling] or Carnes had not yet occurred by the time of the conversation between Carnes and Jurgenson only three days after the murder, Jurgenson's statements to Carnes were admissible as being made during the conspiracy. (Id.) However, since the recorded conversations of Murphy with the Carnes brothers were clearly made not only after Catherine Murphy had been killed but also after payment had been made to [Saling] and Jerry Carnes, we ruled that evidence of these statements was inadmissible because they had not been made during any activity in pursuance of any significant objective of the conspiracy. ( Id., at p. 853.) In this respect, we expressly adopted the holding of Krulewitch v. United States (1949) 336 U.S. 440, 443 [93 L.Ed. 790, 794, 69 S.Ct. 716], that conspiracies are not to be deemed still operative merely because the conspirators act in concert to avoid detection and punishment. (7 Cal.3d at p. 853.)
In light of the misunderstanding of Saling apparent in the rulings in this case by both the trial court and the Court of Appeal, two aspects of Saling demand special emphasis. First, Saling did not purport to declare that all conspiracies in which one conspirator is hired by another are to be deemed as a matter of law to continue until the hireling is paid to his satisfaction. Second, Saling was in no way contrary to the explicit language of Evidence Code section 1223 and its three-fold requirement of independent proof of preliminary facts. (See ante, fn. 10.) Our ruling in Saling that evidence of Jurgenson's declaration was admissible under the coconspirator exception was premised on the particular circumstances of that case and had not one but three essential factual elements. To be sure, one element was that neither Carnes, the testifying witness, nor Saling, the defendant against whom the evidence was offered, had been paid in full at the time of Jurgenson's declaration. However, our holding was also expressly premised on the facts that Murphy's offer of money had been the motivation for the participation of both Saling and Carnes, and that the declaration had occurred only three days after the murder. (7 Cal.3d at p. 852.) Nor did we intimate in any way that the particular circumstances which might keep a conspiracy alive after the commission of the crime which was its principal objective could be gleaned from the very evidence of a coconspirator's statement sought to be so admitted under the coconspirator exception. In Saling there was ample independent proof of the continuing nature of the conspiracy in question to establish preliminarily to any substantive consideration of the content of the proffered evidence of the declaration that the evidence was admissible under section 1223. Not only did one of the conspirators testify in court to the nature of and participants in the conspiracy, but also a non-conspirator testified to having witnessed previous associations of the conspirators and to having personally transmitted money from one conspirator to two others after the homicide contemplated by the conspiracy had been accomplished. Thus there was plentiful but nonetheless independent evidence in Saling that the conspirators had still been acting in concert at the time of the post-homicide, prepayment declaration of which evidence was therein deemed admissible.