Opinion ID: 2590211
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Sufficiency of EvidenceБ─■Loggins Homicide

Text: Defendant contends the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction for the murder of Robert Wyatt Loggins, Jr., noting a coroner's investigator originally classified the death as due to an accidental overdose of drugs based on the lack of external trauma to the body. Defendant also argues that because the record lacks sufficient proof of criminal agency in Loggins's death, the list entry assertedly pertaining to Loggins (MC HB TATTOO) should have been excluded. Addressing the latter question first, we have no trouble concluding the corpus delicti rule was satisfied here. In any criminal prosecution, the corpus delicti must be established by the prosecution independently from the extrajudicial statements, confessions or admissions of the defendant. [Citations.] The elements of the corpus delicti are (1) the injury, loss or harm, and (2) the criminal agency that has caused the injury, loss or harm. [Citation.] Proof of the corpus delicti need not be beyond a reasonable doubt; a slight or prima facie showing is sufficient. [Citation.] ( People v. Diaz (1992) 3 Cal.4th 495, 528-529, 11 Cal.Rptr.2d 353, 834 P.2d 1171.) The identity of the perpetrator is not an element of the corpus delicti. ( People v. Cobb (1955) 45 Cal.2d 158, 161, 287 P.2d 752.) That Loggins's naked body was found beside a road in a trash bag with a rope around his ankles and wrists supplies at least a prima facie showing of criminal agency, inasmuch as the bodies of victims of accidental drug overdose typically would not be disposed of in such a fashion. The inference of criminal agency in connection with the death is therefore reasonable and supports admission into evidence of the list entry assertedly pertaining to Loggins. The evidence as a whole, moreover, sufficed to prove defendant murdered Loggins, under the standard applied in connection with defendant's challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence to support eight of the other murder convictions. In addition to the evidence recited above, photographs of Loggins were found in defendant's car and in a briefcase located in defendant's house. In some of the photographs Loggins was partially clothed or naked, and one photograph depicted Loggins holding his penis. According to Loggins's father, however, Loggins was not homosexual (and thus, one could infer, would not voluntarily have posed for defendant). Loggins, who had various tattoos, was a Marine and was last seen alive by some fellow Marines at the Huntington Beach pier; the prosecutor plausibly argued the entry MC HB TATTOO on defendant's list referred to Loggins. The jury could properly find defendant guilty of the first degree murder of Robert Wyatt Loggins.