Opinion ID: 1349797
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Application of our referee's findings

Text: (4) As we explain below, the pre-May 21, 1979, evidence was the core of Oglesby's testimony. The evidence that was obtained from petitioner after that date consisted merely of the fine tuning of the escape plan evidence that was otherwise properly obtained and presented to the jury. Accordingly, we shall conclude that, even assuming (as our referee found) that the post-May 21, 1979, evidence was improperly procured in violation of petitioner's Sixth Amendment rights and should have been excluded at trial ( Nix v. Williams (1984) 467 U.S. 431, 442 [81 L.Ed.2d 377, 386, 104 S.Ct. 2501]), introduction of that evidence was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, in light of the evidence properly obtained before that date. The properly obtained evidence consisted of the following:
Soon after petitioner met Oglesby, he engaged him in a conversation about guns and asked specifically whether the police would be able to link shotgun shells to a specific firearm. Later, petitioner told Oglesby that he, Blackie (Coward), and two others had held up a motel and that he had shot a man, woman, and their daughter in the motel.
Petitioner asked Oglesby about the chances of escape, and Oglesby replied they were very poor. Later, petitioner said that transfer from the jail to court and vice versa was the weak link in the custody system. At that time, petitioner drew a detailed map of the court layout, diagrammed his escape plan, [10] and explained his plan to Oglesby. Petitioner was aware that one deputy always exited the bus after it stopped to back into the court area, and he believed that someone could point a gun at and disarm that deputy while another person pulled a car in front of the bus. (Petitioner explained that his friends on the outside would be involved in the escape.) According to petitioner's plan, the person with a gun on the deputy could then obtain keys to the bus cage and arm petitioner and Oglesby. Petitioner said he would then kill a person on the bus (who was set to testify against petitioner in this case), and that he and Oglesby would drive the bus to a nearby point, kill the two deputies, and transfer to a waiting vehicle to complete their escape. A few days after relating this plan, petitioner told Oglesby he had someone on the outside who could help him. He said he would use, among others, a woman named Lynn, and asked if Oglesby likewise had anyone on the outside who could help. At that point, petitioner handed to Oglesby the map of the courthouse escape plan. Oglesby told petitioner that Oglesby's wife was the only person he trusted on the outside. Shortly thereafter, petitioner gave Oglesby two additional notes. The first came shortly after Oglesby returned to his cell from the visiting room. Oglesby asked petitioner if the person he had just met in the visiting room was going to help in the escape. In response, petitioner threw Oglesby a note saying that person was his other woman, not the one who would help for their mission. [11] The second note was delivered after petitioner returned to his cell from another visit. On May 11, 1979, petitioner gave Oglesby a note saying another woman had a new seven-pump shotgun for petitioner. [12] On May 21, 1979, Oglesby spoke to Lieutenant Fitzgerald for an hour and a half. Oglesby told Fitzgerald about the escape plan and said he had the map and notes in his cell with his legal papers. Fitzgerald asked petitioner to give him those documents, and they agreed to meet the next day, at which time Oglesby produced the escape map and the two notes.
Against this properly obtained and properly presented evidence, the evidence introduced at trial that Oglesby obtained from petitioner after May 21, 1979, is comparatively less significant and predominantly cumulative. That evidence consisted of (i) testimony that petitioner changed the escape plan to blow up the bus with dynamite in order to dismember all inside it and thereby mask his escape, and (ii) five additional notes in which petitioner refined and revised the plan. [13] It is true, as petitioner stresses, that the prosecutor addressed the evidence obtained by Oglesby during closing argument at the penalty phase trial. Although the majority of the thirty-page argument focused on the violent and callous nature of petitioner's crimes, the prosecutor made one reference to Oglesby and four references to his testimony. First, the prosecutor reminded the jury that Oglesby had testified that petitioner mentioned he liked to rob Orientals, because he thought they would usually have money. Next, he recounted how petitioner wrote a note saying that Blackie, the codefendant who eventually testified against him, was a heartbeat away from death. Then the prosecutor turned to the escape plan: What does the plan show? Not only is the driver of the transportation going to be killed, not only the swamper, the guy in the back of the bus going to be killed; but dynamite is going to be thrown into the bus to disfigure the inmates so that you can't tell who got away. [¶] Could there be any better illustration of the brutality, the cruelty, and the viciousness that is in the system of Stanley Williams than that plan? Finally, the prosecutor returned to the escape plan: And, of course, the escape plan is filled with the planning, rather detailed planning, of violence. And this is long after the defendant has already killed four people and is in County Jail and is still making the same kinds of plans involving the same kinds of violence to benefit only one person in society. That person is Stanley Williams. It is also true, as petitioner observes, that in this argument the prosecutor referred to some of the evidence obtained after May 21, 1979  i.e., petitioner's revised plan to blow up the transport bus with dynamite, and his threat to kill Blackie Coward, whom petitioner suspected of turning against him and cooperating with the police. [14] But, as noted above, this evidence played a relatively minor role in the prosecutor's penalty phase argument, and in any event, the essence of the escape plan evidence, and the fact that defendant made incriminating statements linking himself to the underlying murders, were properly before the jury. The jury was properly informed through various witnesses other than Oglesby that petitioner had made incriminating statements about both the convenience store murder and the motel murders, and it properly learned, through the pre-May 21, 1979, evidence obtained by Oglesby, that petitioner had developed a sophisticated and violent escape plan. Moreover, the jury was properly aware of the map and the initial two notes concerning the escape plan. Given this, and in view of the other aggravating evidence that was properly before the jury  including petitioner's bragging admissions to Coward, James Garrett, and Esther Garrett (as well as to Oglesby), and his laughing portrayal of the sounds the convenience store victim made while dying  we can confidently say that the jury would have returned the same verdict of death in the absence of the evidence obtained after May 21, 1979. In other words, we conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that assuming the escape plan evidence obtained after May 21, 1979, was procured and presented in violation of petitioner's Sixth Amendment rights under Kuhlmann v. Wilson, supra, 477 U.S. 436, any such error did not affect the jury's penalty decision in this case. (See also post, p. 612, fn. 24.)