Opinion ID: 1237936
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Territorial Jurisdiction and Vicinage

Text: Defendant contends that Humboldt County Superior Court lacked territorial jurisdiction to try him for the murder of Richard Barnes, that trial of that offense in Humboldt County violated his right under the state and federal Constitutions to be tried by a jury drawn from the locality where the crime occurred, and that in any event the convictions for conspiracy and for Richard Barnes's murder are invalid because the jury failed to find the required jurisdictional facts. We reject each of these contentions. (1) Defendant maintains that territorial jurisdiction to try him for the murder of Richard Barnes existed only in Los Angeles County, because it was there that Richard Barnes was fatally wounded and died, and there that his body was discovered. Defendant relies on section 790, which provides that a charge of murder may be tried in a county where the fatal injury occurred, the victim died, or the victim's body was found. Defendant argues that section 790 gives him a state entitlement to be tried in Los Angeles County for the Barnes murder, and that deprivation of that entitlement denied him the due process of law guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the federal Constitution. Defendant recognizes that many cases have held that section 790 is not exclusive and that section 781 also applies to a charge of murder. (E.g., People v. Douglas (1990) 50 Cal.3d 468, 493-494 [268 Cal. Rptr. 126, 788 P.2d 640].) Under section 781, a public offense may be tried in a jurisdiction in which the defendant made preparations for the crime, even though the preparatory acts did not constitute an essential element of the crime. ( People v. Powell (1967) 67 Cal.2d 32, 62 [59 Cal. Rptr. 817, 429 P.2d 137].) Defendant urges us to overrule decisions applying section 781 to the crime of murder because they failed to consider the argument that section 790, as a special statute providing for trial of the offense of murder, should take precedence over a statute of general application like section 781. The rule of statutory construction cited by defendant applies only when two statutory provisions are inconsistent. (See Code Civ. Proc., § 1859 [when a general and particular provision are inconsistent, the latter is paramount to the former]; International Assn. of Fire Fighters Union v. City of Pleasanton (1976) 56 Cal. App.3d 959, 976 [129 Cal. Rptr. 68].) Two statutes dealing with the same subject are given concurrent effect if they can be harmonized, even though one is specific and the other general. ( Acco Contractors, Inc. v. McNamara & Peepe Lumber Co. (1976) 63 Cal. App.3d 292, 295 [133 Cal. Rptr. 717]; see also People ex rel. Deukmejian v. County of Mendocino (1984) 36 Cal.3d 476, 487-488 [204 Cal. Rptr. 897, 683 P.2d 1150].) Because sections 781 and 790 are not inconsistent and can be harmonized, we decline to overrule, and instead reaffirm, the decisions of this court holding that both sections are proper sources of territorial jurisdiction for trying the crime of murder. Under section 781, the courts of Humboldt County had territorial jurisdiction to try defendant for the murder of Richard Barnes. The prosecution's evidence showed that defendant was instructed to go to Northern California to procure a weapon or weapons with which to kill Barnes, that defendant went to his former home in Humboldt County a month after his release from prison, and that he returned three months later with a revolver and a sawed-off shotgun. He arrived in the Los Angeles area with these weapons just days after the Moore weapons were stolen. Meyers testified that the shotgun found in defendant's mother's garage appeared to be the same one defendant brought with him to Los Angeles. This shotgun was the same model as the one taken from Moore. The jury could reasonably infer that the shotgun was Moore's and that the revolver defendant brought back to Los Angeles was the one taken from Moore and never found. The jury could reasonably infer from these facts that defendant committed acts in Humboldt County that were preparatory to the murder of Barnes. (2) Defendant next argues that trial of the Barnes murder in Humboldt County deprived him of the right to be tried by a jury drawn from the locality or vicinage where the crime was committed, a right he contends is constitutionally guaranteed at both the federal (U.S. Const., Amends. VI, XIV) and state (see People v. Powell (1891) 87 Cal. 348, 355-360 [25 P. 481]; but see also People v. Guzman (1988) 45 Cal.3d 915, 938 [248 Cal. Rptr. 467, 755 P.2d 917]) levels. The issue is not preserved for appellate review, however, because no objection on this ground was made in the trial court. (Code Civ. Proc., § 225, subd. (a); former § 1060; People v. Hernandez (1988) 47 Cal.3d 315, 340 [253 Cal. Rptr. 199, 763 P.2d 1289].) (3) Defendant contends that his trial counsel's failure to object in the trial court on vicinage grounds constituted ineffective assistance in violation of his right to effective counsel under both the federal (U.S. Const., Amends. VI, XIV) and state (Cal. Const., art. I, § 15) Constitutions. We disagree. A defendant seeking relief on the basis of ineffective assistance of counsel must show both that trial counsel failed to act in a manner to be expected of reasonably competent attorneys acting as diligent advocates, and that it is reasonably probable a more favorable determination would have resulted in the absence of counsel's failings. ( People v. Fosselman (1983) 33 Cal.3d 572, 584 [189 Cal. Rptr. 855, 659 P.2d 1144]; see also Strickland v. Washington (1984) 466 U.S. 668, 687-696 [80 L.Ed.2d 674, 693-699, 104 S.Ct. 2052].) Here, a reasonably competent attorney would have been aware that a Court of Appeal had held in 1974 that trial of a murder charge in a county in which the defendant performed preliminary acts did not violate the defendant's vicinage rights even though the defendant completed the crime in a different county. ( People v. Powell (1974) 40 Cal. App.3d 107, 123 [115 Cal. Rptr. 109].) We have no occasion here to consider the soundness of that holding, but we conclude that a reasonably competent attorney might well have determined that an objection on vicinage grounds would have been futile in light of this precedent. Counsel does not render ineffective assistance by failing to make motions or objections that counsel reasonably determines would be futile. (4) Defendant next argues that we must set aside his convictions for conspiracy and the murder of Richard Barnes because the jury failed to make express findings of the jurisdictional facts. He asserts that the lack of such findings renders the guilt verdicts unreliable, thereby violating the Eighth Amendment to the federal Constitution. A charge of conspiracy may be tried in any county in which any overt act tending to effect such conspiracy shall be done. (§ 182, subd. (a).) The information charged defendant with conspiring to commit robbery, grand theft, and murder at and in the County of Humboldt. The information alleged that defendant committed specified overt acts in Humboldt and Los Angeles Counties, and in Washoe County, Nevada. The jury found defendant guilty of the crime of conspiracy as charged in the information. It made no findings as to the commission of particular overt acts. Because the information charged defendant with committing the crime of conspiracy in Humboldt County, the jury's general verdict convicting defendant of conspiracy as charged necessarily encompasses a finding that defendant committed the offense in Humboldt County. This in turn implies a finding that defendant committed at least one overt act in Humboldt County in furtherance of the conspiracy. Thus, the jury made a sufficient finding of the required jurisdictional fact. Defendant disputes this conclusion, arguing that the general verdict convicting defendant of conspiracy did not establish the required jurisdictional fact because the jury was not instructed on the need to determine jurisdictional facts, and so it may not have focused on whether the conspiracy occurred in Humboldt County. Defendant cites no authority for this argument, and we are not persuaded that the court was required, absent a request, to instruct on the determination of jurisdictional facts, or that the lack of instructions provides a basis to challenge the verdict as a finding of territorial jurisdiction. (See People v. Sering (1991) 232 Cal. App.3d 677, 687 [283 Cal. Rptr. 507].) The information charged defendant with the murder of Richard Barnes in the County of Los Angeles, and the jury found defendant guilty as charged. This verdict by itself does not establish territorial jurisdiction of the murder charge in Humboldt County. As we have seen, however, the jury also convicted defendant of conspiracy to commit murder. The evidence showed that the object of the conspiracy was the murder of Barnes, not the murder of Hickey. Because the jury found that defendant committed an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy in Humboldt County, it necessarily found that defendant committed acts preliminary to the murder in that county, and thus it found the facts necessary under section 781 to establish territorial jurisdiction in Humboldt County for the Barnes murder.