Opinion ID: 2590211
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Sufficiency of Evidence of MayhemБ─■Geoffrey Alan Nelson

Text: Defendant argues his conviction of mayhem must be reversed because the crime of mayhem requires a live victim (see People v. Jentry (1977) 69 Cal.App.3d 615, 629, 138 Cal.Rptr. 250) and the record lacks any evidence Nelson was alive when he was emasculated. We disagree with defendant's characterization of the record. Officer Donald Batchelder of the Los Angeles Police Department testified that, shortly after he discovered Nelson's body on the Euclid Street on-ramp to the Garden Grove Freeway while driving to work at 5:15 a.m. on February 12, 1983, he saw Nelson's foot move. Nelson's body was warm to the touch, although a responding Garden Grove police officer detected no pulse or respiration. Pathologist Robert Richards, reviewing the autopsy report of Dr. Fischer (who was deceased at the time of trial), which noted the bleeding caused by the severing of Nelson's penis and scrotum was not that great, opined the emasculation probably occurred postmortem, although it might have happened perimortem, or around the time of death. Although the bleeding, in Dr. Richards's opinion, was not that great and there [wa]sn't too much in the way of tissue response to the cutting, evidently there was some bleeding and some tissue response, lending support to Dr. Richards's testimony the emasculation could have occurred perimortem. The jury could reasonably find the elements of mayhem were present here. That a contrary conclusion might also be reasonable does not compel reversal of the conviction. ( People v. Thomas, supra, 2 Cal.4th at p. 514, 7 Cal.Rptr.2d 199, 828 P.2d 101.) Even were we to reverse the mayhem conviction, however, there could be no conceivable effect on the judgment, in light of the 16 murders of which defendant was convicted and the eight additional murders, evidence of which was presented during the penalty phase.