Opinion ID: 1190343
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Appellant's Guilty Plea and Its Factual Basis

Text: In an amended information, appellant was charged in the following counts: count I, the murder of Virginia Aceves (Pen. Code, § 187; all undesignated statutory references are to this code), personal use of a deadly or dangerous weapon (§ 12022, subd. (b)), and allegations of three special circumstances  multiple murder (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(3)), robbery-murder (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(17)(i)), and rape-murder (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(17)(iii)); count II, the murder of Nancy Croom (§ 187), personal use of deadly or dangerous weapon (§ 12022, subd. (b)), and a special circumstance allegation of rape-murder (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(17)(iii)); and, count III, the attempted murder of Kimi Marie Hansel (§§ 187, 664), the personal use of a deadly and dangerous weapon (§ 12022, subd. (b)), and an allegation that appellant inflicted great bodily injury upon the victim (§ 12022.7). In eight additional counts (IV through XI), appellant was charged with burglary (§ 459), rape (§ 261, former subd. (2)), robbery (§ 211), and weapons enhancements (§§ 12022, subd. (b), 12022.5), including firearm (§ 12022, subd. (a)), and habitual criminal (§§ 667, subd. (a), 1192.7, subds. (c)(18), (23)) allegations. Appellant initially pleaded not guilty and denied all special allegations; his motion to sever the case into three trials was denied, but the murder charges were severed from the remaining counts. Appellant's case proceeded to trial on the murder charges (counts I, II, and III) and related special allegations. After 11 court days of voir dire and examination, a jury was death qualified and impaneled to try the cause. On the afternoon before the jury was impaneled, appellant withdrew his plea of not guilty and entered a plea of guilty to the first degree murders of Virginia Aceves and Nancy Croom and to the attempted murder of Kimi Hansel (counts I, II, and III). He also admitted all special-circumstance allegations, the weapons enhancements on the first three counts, and the great bodily injury allegation on count III. [1] The evidence at the preliminary hearing, which the parties stipulated contained the factual basis for appellant's pleas of guilty and admissions of special circumstances, reveals the following: On the evening of March 6, 1987, appellant stabbed three women within the radius of a few blocks on the streets of Santa Barbara. Two of the women died; a third was permanently paralyzed. Nancy Croom, 47, was found dead, naked from the waist down, under the hoist area in an automobile transmission shop. She suffered a total of 33 stab wounds to her head, neck, face, and back. Her body had been dragged to the shop from the steps of a nearby church, where her purse and personal belongings were found. Approximately one hour before she was killed, Croom was with appellant and another man, sitting in the doorway of the Santa Barbara Community Center drinking wine. Croom's brother-in-law, a homeless person named John Logan, stopped to talk with them. He saw appellant lick Croom's nose and heard him say to her: I'd like to come all over your body. Croom pushed appellant back, threw wine on him, and retorted: I don't want to hear it. Appellant replied: That's not how you acted when I bought you the mickey of wine. When Croom responded she was married, appellant fell back against the wall and remarked: She never even told me she was married. A man matching appellant's description was later observed by witnesses chasing a woman of Croom's description down the street in the same area. While walking down the alley toward her apartment, Kimi Marie Hansel, a 22-year-old waitress and part-time student, heard appellant running behind her. Before she could turn around, appellant hit her in the middle of the back, pushing her five feet forward and knocking the wind out of her. Appellant called her a bitch and hit and stabbed her repeatedly until she momentarily lost consciousness. As he dragged her on her back by her wrists, appellant asked Hansel to look up at him. Smiling, he remarked to her: You are not going to live long, are you? When she did not respond, he stated: Now, I'm going to take you in the bushes and fuck you. Hansel felt her body drop and again lost consciousness. Although Hansel survived appellant's attack, one of the stab wounds he inflicted transected her spine, paralyzing the right side of her body. After attacking Hansel, appellant encountered a third victim, Virginia Aceves, age 55, as she was entering the alley. Steve Putnam, a friend of Hansel's who was coming to her house, saw appellant and Aceves struggling in the alley. Aceves was crying: Please don't do this. Putnam saw appellant stab Aceves in the neck. Putnam grasped his bike chain and approached appellant. Knife in hand, appellant pivoted and told Putnam to get out. Appellant then ran down the alley, holding his knife and something else in his hands. Putnam proceeded down the alley, observed Hansel's body, but did not recognize her, and then called police. A police search of the area revealed, among other things, a trail of personal items belonging to Aceves running for two blocks from the alley, including a wallet, purse, and perfume samplers. No money was found in the wallet or purse, or along the trail. Appellant's fingerprints were found on the perfume samplers. Aceves suffered 12 knife wounds. Her death was caused by a sharply incised stab wound inflicted with considerable force in the left temporal region of the brain. The wound pierced the skull and severed the medulla from the pons, effectively separating her brain into two pieces.